cupied the redoubt), for fifteen murderous minutes, were
shot down like mown grass. The conflict was bloody, short, and
decisive. The enemy were in such numbers that we had to yield. The
gate had been crushed down by rebel shot, and the enemy poured in to
the number of five or six hundred, with thousands on the outside.
Great confusion then ensued; guns were spiked, musket barrels bent,
and all sorts of mischief practiced by the Union soldiers, while the
enemy were swearing at a terrible rate, because we would not take off
equipments and inform them if the guns could be turned on the town,
and in trying to reorganize their troops, who were badly mixed, to
take the next work. We were prisoners, and as we marched out of the
fort we could see at what a fearful cost it was to them. There were in
the fort at the time, forty artillery men, who fired grape and
canister, and forty-two of Company "G," (two being unable to get in,
or not hearing the orders, went back to town,) making a total of
eighty-two men, against five or six thousand. Our loss was one
wounded, an artillery man, while the rebel loss, from their latest
accounts, was five hundred killed and wounded. The enemy then passed
in the rear and on the bank of the river, to the right of the town,
and while part of their force was on the right working towards the
center, those on the left were doing the same. Every position was
obstinately maintained. A squad of men here, and a squad there, the
redoubts and forts were but slowly captured. For three or four hours,
Fort Williams, with guns turned, did murderous execution, nearly two
hours of which was in the streets of Plymouth. By half-past ten
o'clock the last gun had been fired, the flag over our citadel
lowered, and _Plymouth had fallen_.

The troops were captured by an overwhelming force, after one of the
severest fights of the war. In the words of J.W. Merrill, the author
of "Records of the Twenty-fourth N.Y. Battery," "there is no question
that the defense of Plymouth by its garrison of 1,600 men against a
besieging force of 12,000 men, was one of the hardest fought battles
of the war." The rebels raised the "black flag" against the negroes
found in uniform, and mercilessly shot them down.

The shooting in cold blood of three or four hundred negroes and two
companies of North Carolina troops who had joined our army, and even
murdering peaceable citizens (as I have the personal knowledge of the
killing, with the bu