According to William Fleming,
comensed cannonading at sun rise and kept it up during the day also a brisk firing on the skirmish line several of our boys getting killed and wounded
That night, William Fleming's company, along with three other companies from the 77th Illinois were ordered out in front of the skirmish line. Their orders were to advance their rifle pits. William Fleming noted their progress of the night:
we kept up a pretty hot fire of musketry while others was ingaged in digging rifle pits we advanced them within four hundred yds of there forts and within two hundred yds of there rifle pits
William Fleming closed his diary entry for the day with this:
while writing the shells are bursting all around me
