Griffin's Guns

First Manassas

Griffin’s Guns

Shortly after Union Captain Charles Griffin advanced two cannon into this position, several hundered Confederates of the 33rd Virginia infantry charged from the treeline on the left and captured the guns.

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Captain Charles Griffin, commanding Battery D of the Fifth U.S. Artillery: “[The battery] changed position to the right and fired two rounds, when it was charged by the enemy’s infantry from the woods on the right of our position. This infantry was mistaken for our own forces, an officer on the field having stated that it was a regiment sent by Colonel Heintzelman to support the battery. In this charge of the enemy every cannoneer was cut down and a large number of horses killed, leaving the battery (which was without support except in name) perfectly helpless.” -- Griffin’s battle report, in War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, series I, volume 2, page 394

Brigadier General Thomas J. Jackson, commanding First Brigade of the Army of the Shenandoah: “The enemy not being able to force our lines by a direct fire of artillery, inclined part of his batteries to the right, so as to obtain an oblique fire; but in doing so exposed his pieces to a more destructive fire from our artillery, and one of his batteries was thrown so near to Colonel Cummings that it fell into his hands in consequence of his having made a gallant charge on it with his regiment.” -- Jackson’s battle report, in War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, series I, volume 2, page 481

Private John O. Casler of the 33rd Virginia Infantry: “We then charged bayonets, yelling like savages, and they retreated, and our regiment took their artillery; but they were reinforced, and we had to fall back, exposed to two heavy fires, when we were reinforced by a North Carolina regiment; then we charged again and they retreated, and that part of the field, with the famous Griffin’s Battery, was ours.” -- Letter from Casler to his parents, three days after the battle, quoted in Casler’s memoirs Four Years in the Stonewall Brigade, page 38

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