Alan Pitts
Major William C. Oates
Sat Jan 20 21:22:56 2001


Commanding the 48th Alabama that day, Oates wrote, "No men in any battle of the world ever fought more heroically on any field than did the officers and men of that regiment near the Darbytown Road, August 16, 1864. It went into the fight about 300 strong with some 15 officers. It came out with but 51 men and 3 officers unhurt, and none of them were captured. The State ought to erect a monument inscribed, "To the Forty-eighth Alabama Regiment, Darbytown Road, Virginia, August 16, 1864, where it lost five-sixth of its men and four-fifths of its officers, and captured more prisoners than its total number present, and did not lose a prisoner."

See pp. 372-384 of his book, 'The War Between the Union and the Confederacy and Its Lost Opportunies', reprinted by Morningside in 1974.

As to Confederate burials, I would suspect Hollywood Cemetery (Richmond) as the best possibility.