The Overlapping enemy's line. Part of Forty-Ninth Virginia captured.
The Forty-ninth was the extreme right of our line. The enemy's line overlapped, outflanked, and encompassed us. It seemed we were shot at from everywhere. Finally the brave old Captain Stratton, from Nelson, said: ‘Colonel, in five minutes you won't have a man left, let them surrender!’ Seeing the futility of continuing the unequal struggle of three officers and eighteen men against twenty thousand of the enemy, I said: ‘Captain, that is so, let them surrender, but I'll be hanged if I will.’ Eugene Flippin, of Lowesville, (whose leg had just been torn off), laying close by, [61] heard this and raised a so-called white flag, red with blood and black with powder, and the enemy ceased firing. The little remnant of the Forty-ninth Virginia Regiment stood up at an order arms, after which the writer started to run the gauntlet of death and cut his way out, if possible. I got about fifty yards and cleared the men when, as General Anderson, who commanded the Pennsylvania reserves we were fighting afterwards told me, three thousand shots were fired at me, all at once.
