On the south side of the river were Shackelford’s cavalry and Cameron’s brigade of Hascall’s Division, Twenty-third army corps, the latter supporting Koukle’s battery of four guns and two sections of Wilder’s battery (all three-inch rifles). Riley’s brigade was held in reserve in the streets of the town. The defences at first raised by the troops were simply ditches four feet wide and deep, with the excavated earth embanked on the outside; except the more formidable structures on Temperance Hill and those held by Lieut. Benjamin’s battery built by the engineer battalion. Fatigued as were the soldiers who had been at Campbell’s Station, they as well as others, labored with energy upon the entrenchments throughout the whole day and night of November 17th, and would then have been compelled to cease, had not Col. Sanders, with his cavalry on the Kingston road, and Col. Pennybaker, with his mounted regiments on the Clinton road, held Longstreet’s forces in check. Capt. Poe says: “The hours in which to work, that the gallant conduct of our cavalry secured us, were worth to us a thousand men each.” The next morning two hours of rest were given them, and were used in sleep by the men without delay on the ground where they stood. At the same time Gen. Burnside, in consultation with Capt. Poe and Col. Sanders, was informed by the first that the rifle pits would be ready for defence before the end of many hours, and by the other, that with his cavalry, “seven hundred strong and in good fighting trim,” he could hold Longstreet at bay until that time had expired. For another day and night the men persevered in labor with ready wills and hands. The suggestion by one of their officers that the alternative of effective resistance to the enemy would be a visit to Libby prison, served as an incentive to both industry and heroism. Many of them had been without rest but for two hours in a hundred, and it was necessary for their relief that contrabands and citizens should be pressed into service. The former did heartily the tasks assigned them, the difficulty of which in some instances may be inferred from the fact that places for the guns of Benjamin’s and Buckley’s batteries could only be cleared by four hours diligent labor of two hundred men. Of the citizens who had to work on the entrenchments, they who were loyal to the United States did their duty cheerfully, but “many,” according the Chief Engineer, “were rebels, and worked with a very poor grace, which blistered hands did not tend to improve.”