The Third Battle of Winchester
Confederate Defense
In the mid-morning of September 19, Confederate Gen. John B. Gordon's infantry, veteran troops from Georgia, Louisiana, and Virginia, took position to your right on the other side of Hackwood Lane. At 11:40 a.m., at the sound of artillery fire, infantry of the Union Nineteenth Corps advanced upon the Confederates. During the assault, Confederate Col. Carter M. Braxton brought seven guns to the hill on which you are standing.
Braxton positioned his guns wheel to wheel, loaded with double canister - two cans each filled with dozens of iron balls - and waited. When the Union troops were within 60 yards, recalled one Confederate, "the guns fired as one, when the front line of the enemy was almost close enough to feel the flame of the powder." These cannon, along with Confederate horse artillery firing from the other side of Red Bud Run, devastated the Union line. An Iowa soldier called it, "one of the most withering fires of shot, shell, and canister I have ever witnessed." Another soldier wondered how "so many of us got off alive."
Marker can be reached from Redbud Road (County Route 661), on the right when traveling east.
Courtesy hmdb.org
