reports of Casey and Couch. These two divisions made up Keyes corps, and it so happens that on the very morning of the battle, May 31st, Keyes sent in to the government his certified return of men present in his corps. He reports as present, but sick, etc., 1,074, and as "present for duty" in those two divisions on that day, 17,132;[1] his two division commanders report, at 1 o’clock of the same day, and with no march and no battle intervening, that between them they had only 10,000 men. How on that peaceful May morning 7, 132 men could, between morning and 1 o’clock, disappear, "vanish into unsubstantial air" and not be missed, is difficult to understand. But grant that they did, and that Couch and Casey were right, and that they and Kearny together had but 15,000 men, still were they not outnumbered.
General Hill had only four brigades that day in his division, Ripley s being absent. In their official reports, his brigadiers report their forces that morning as follows: Anderson reports that he took into action 1,865; Garland, 2,065; Rodes, 2,200. Rains states no numbers; nearest field returns, May 2ist, give him 1,830. Total, Hill’s division, 7,960. R. H. Anderson, of Longstreet’s division (same field return), 2,168. Total Confederate force engaged on the right in the first day s battle, 10,128. So, taking the lowest estimate that the Federals make, they were evidently not outnumbered, but out numbered the Confederates by at least 5,000 men. With the front attack of Garland and Anderson went the Fourth, Fifth and Twenty-third North Carolina regiments. These moved at once into a nerve-testing conflict. The Fourth was under command of Maj. Bryan Grimes. Major Grimes, after speaking of the regiment’s wading through pools of water waist-deep, in which many of the wounded were drowned, thus described the advance: "The enemy also had a section of a battery (two pieces), which was dealing destruction to my left
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- ↑ Rebellion Records, Vol. XI, Part 3, p. 204.
