“There, for half an hour, they held the ridge, unyielding in purpose, exhaustless in courage. There were gaps in the line, but it nowhere bent. Their General was severely wounded, early in the fight, but they fought on. Their supports did not come—they determined to win without them. They began to go down the hill and into the corn; they did not stop to think that their ammunition was nearly gone; they were there to win that field, and they won it. The rebel line for the second time fled through the corn and into the woods. I cannot tell how few of Hartsuff’s brigade were left when the work was done; but it was done. There was no more gallant, determined, heroic fighting, in all this desperate day. General Hartsuff is very severely wounded, but I do not believe he counts his success too dearly purchased. “The crisis of the fight at this point had arrived. Rickett’s division, vainly endeavoring to advance and exhausted by the effort, had fallen back. Part of Mansfield’s corps was ordered to their relief, but Mansfield’s troops came back again, and their General was mortally wounded. The left nevertheless was too extended to be turned, and too strong to be broken. Rickett sent word he could not advance, but could hold his ground. Doubleday had kept his guns at work on the right, and had finally silenced a rebel battery that for half an hour had poured in a galling enfilading fire along Hooker’s central line. There were woods in front of Doubleday’s hill which the rebels held, but so long as those guns pointed toward them they did not care to attack. “With his left, then, able to take care of itself, with his right impregnable, with two brigades of Mansfield still fresh and coming rapidly up, and with his centre a second time victorious, General Hooker determined to advance. Orders were sent to Crawford and Gordon—the two Mansfield brigades—to move forward at once, the batteries in the centre were ordered to advance, the whole line was called on, and the General himself went forward. “To the right of the corn-field and beyond it was a point of woods. Once carried and firmly held, it was the key of the position. Hooker determined to take it. He rode out in front of his furthest troops on a hill, to examine the ground for a battery. At the top he dismounted and went forward on foot, completed his reconnoissance, returned, and remounted. The musketry fire from the point of woods was all the while extremely hot. As he put his foot in the stirrup a fresh volley of rifle bullets came whizzing by. The tall, soldierly figure of the General, the white horse which he rode, the elevated place where he was, all made him a dangerously conspicuous mark. So he had been all day, riding often without a staff-officer or an orderly near him—all sent off on urgent duty—visible everywhere on the field. The rebel bullets had followed him all day, but they had not hit him, and he would not regard them.