In consequence of this delay, and notwithstanding the men were carried at a doublequick time over very heavy ground a considerable distance to make up for it, when the signal for attack was given only my line of skirmishers, the Sixth Alabama and another regiment, the Twelfth Mississippi, were in position. Having received, while on the march, several messages from General Hill urging me to move forward, I warned him before the signal was given, through Captain Tayloe, of his staff, and also through an orderly, whom he had sent to ascertain my position, that I could not possibly reach the point from which we were to start within less than half an hour. When the signal was given my line of skirmishers and the Twelfth Mississippi Regiment moved to the attack and immediately thereafter the action began. Under these circumstances, as each of the remaining regiments came up I caused it to move forward to the attack, so that my brigade moved to the field of battle en échelon and in the following order: 1st, Sixth Alabama Regiment, Colonel Gordon commanding, deployed as skirmishers, covering the whole front of the brigade; 2d, Twelfth Mississippi, Col. W. H. Taylor, moving with its left on the Williamsburg road; 3d, Heavy Artillery Battalion, Capt. C. C. Otey commanding; 4th, Fifth Alabama Regiment, Col. C. C. Pegues commanding; 5th, Twelfth Alabama Regiment, Col. R. T. Jones commanding. The King William Artillery, Capt. Thomas H. Carter commanding, I ordered to proceed by the shortest route to the Williamsburg road, and to follow the left of the brigade along that road after the whole of the brigade had advanced.
Ascertaining the position of the right of the Twelfth Mississippi Regiment, I endeavored to move the remaining regiments rapidly into line of battle with it; but finding that this regiment was pressed, I moved the Fifth Alabama directly to its support. The ground over which we were to move being covered with very thick undergrowth, and the soil being very marshy, so marshy that it was with great difficulty either horses or men could get over it, and being guided only by the fire in front, I emerged from the woods upon the Williamsburg road under a heavy fire of both artillery and musketry with only five companies of the Fifth Alabama; the remaining companies, having become separated, had moved into the abatis in their front and on the right of the Twelfth Mississippi. Finding that the Twelfth Mississippi had moved forward into the abitis and was gallantly holding its own along its front, and my battle instructions requiring me to operate upon the right of the Williamsburg road, I ordered the left wing of the Fifth to move through the abatis and join the right, and moving toward the right myself, found the battalion of heavy artillery opposite their position in line, but halted and lying down in the wood behind the abatis, which Captain Bagby, temporarily in command, informed me was in obedience to an order from Major-General Hill. Ordering them forward, I proceeded farther to the right, and found that the Twelfth Alabama, which had moved over less difficult ground than the other regiments had, was considerably in advance of the brigade, and that, together with the Sixth, still deployed as skirmishers, it was engaging the enemy, having driven him steadily up to his intrenchments. Concentrating the Sixth, I moved both it and the Twelfth Alabama about 60 yards to the rear, in order to form the whole brigade in a continuous line preparatory to an advance upon the enemy’s earthworks.