The Union Counterattack

The Union Counterattack. "The Struggle for the Hell-Spot". , Mid-Morning, Having captured the Coaling and the valuable Union cannons, the Confederates faced the challenge of holding onto them. Even before the southerners had won the struggle to seize the height, Union commander Gen. Erastus Tyler had begun marshaling troops for a counterattack, and now they advanced from multiple directions., The 66th Ohio rushed up the slope to your right, and the 5th Ohio and 7th Ohio, who had been embroiled in the fight with Confederates on the river plain to your distant front, disengaged, pivoted, and surged towards you. Meanwhile, Union cannon on the lower ground to your right began sending a scathing fire of canister into the Louisianians here., The Confederates, now "an unorganized mass around the captured guns," were caught by surprise. Fearing they would be unable to hold the height, and that the Federals would then pull their cannons to safety, the Confederates began slaughtering the artillery horses, shooting them in the head and cutting their throats. Over 50 horses were killed., The Federals swarmed onto the height, and fighting again raged around this spot. One Ohio soldier described "the yells, hurrahs, screams, and dying groans and gasps of fierce, bleeding, victorious, and dying combatants.", The Confederates fell back, but soon reformed and rushed back up the slope. Union artillerymen fired their revolvers until they ran out of ammunition, then threw rocks. When the southerners reached the guns, one remembered, "the men shoot, stab, cut, hack, [and] grapple under the wheels of the cannon" in a struggle to the death., The Federals retreated, but then they, too, stubbornly counterattacked once again - and once again, the ferocity of the combat was stunning. "Men beat other's brains out with muskets which they have no time to load," a Louisiana soldier recalled., The Confederates were driven from the Coaling again - but southern reinforcements were on their way., (Captions):, Col. Charles Candy, commander of the 66th Ohio. , Library of Congress, Union Capt. Robert Lacy Kilpatrick, 5th Ohio. A veteran of the 42nd Highlanders (the "Black Watch") in the British Army who immigrated to America before the war. This photo was taken affer he was wounded and his right arm was amputated at Chancellorsville in May 1863. , Library of Congress., "In every great battle of the war there was a hell-spot. At Port Republic it was on the mountain side. , - a Louisiana soldier