In Edward's second line of battle, Lieutenant Colonel Elisha Hunt Rhodes led his 2nd Rhode Island Volunteer Infantry Regiment on a flanking maneuver down a wagon path where he could reform a battle line and cross the main Confederate line. The pickets in the rifle pits quickly surrendered. Rhodes spotted four cannons on the left and two more on the right. Rhodes and several men ran forward and jumped into the ditch in front of the line just as Lane's and Thomas's troops opened fire. The Union soldiers then quickly climbed up the exterior slope to the top of the earthworks before the Confederates could reload and fire, causing the Confederates to retreat from the onrushing Rhode Islanders. Lieutenant Frank S. Halliday and Corporal William Railton stopped a Confederate counterattack with a blast from one of two captured cannons.