Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 27.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

[35]

The Sixth corps passed around to the right and formed in the rear of the Ninth corps, which, as already shown, was holding the outer circle of the Confederate works, which it had captured in the morning. Ord's men, after parting with the Sixth corps, pushed on to the inner line of strong forts, covering the west side of Petersburg and assailed them. There was fierce fighting at one of these forts, and the colored regiments, especially, suffered heavy loss in the assault. When the Sixth corps passed over the same ground on the next day, after Petersburg had been evacuated, they found the dead bodies of the colored soldiers lying in front of this fort like sheaves on the harvest field.

From the events of the day, it seems more than probable that the body of General Hill was recovered in the manner described by Mr. Mauk, before the Union troops came back from Hatcher's Run. After the advance of Ord's divisions, no Confederate skirmishers could have reached that locality, and before these troops arrived there was nobody to skirmish with, except the little squad of stragglers, led by Corporal Mauk, precisely as he has related.

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Corporal, afterward Sergeant Mauk.

The Union soldier (John W. Mauk), who was the principal actor in this tragedy, died August 19, 1898, at the age of 58 years. He was a fair type of the enlisted men in the Pennsylvania regiments. The great majority of them sprang from the plain people, and were reared in humble homes. They were mostly farmer boys and common laborers, with about the same proportion of mechanics in each company as could be found in the communities from which they came. When the successive calls for troops were promulgated from Washington, the village workshops as well as the farms yielded their quota.

Mauk grew up in a little valley in Bedford county, not far from the town of Bedford. A high mountain overshadowed his home on either side. With the exception of his three years service in the Union army, his whole life was spent in the same neighborhood. He died in the village of Centreville, midway between the city of Cumberland, on the Potomac, and the town of Bedford, on the headwaters of the Juniata. When a boy, he picked up the rudimentary education which most lads, in his condition of life, obtained in the ‘log school-house,’ and his ambition never reached beyond the simple employments which required no large stock of school-book