The incoming Confederate small arms rounds which passed over their intended targets along the Emmitsburg Road plopped harmlessly among the sleeping soldiers of the 1st Delaware without disturbing them to any great extent. At 7:00 a.m., after enduring about two and a one-half hours of harassment Brigadier General Hays, their division commander, decided to clean out the Bliss farm yard as he had done the day before. He personally ordered First Lieutenant John L. Brady (Company E, 1st Delaware) to drive the Rebels out of the barn and to hold it "at all hazards."
The lieutenant gathered up twenty-seven men from his regiment and three or four volunteers from the 12th New Jersey. Slipping to the right, with the stone wall covering their flank, they halted just north of the Brian barn, near the eastern end of the farm lane which fed directly into the Emmitsburg Road. Stripping themselves of all of their superfluous equipment, except their belts, cap boxes, cartridge boxes, and weapons, they raced toward the road. Striking it, they jigged left, then right into Bliss' long farm lane. They dragged Captain William Kenney (Company B), acting major of the 8th Ohio, and Companies G and H with them. On the way to the rise west of the road, Company B, 8th Ohio joined in the movement. "...as far as I know," Sergeant Thomas Galwey later wrote, "without any orders, we charged straight ahead."
The Confederates in the barn let them cover all but the last fifty feet of the track when they opened fire from slits in the upper story. On the Federal left, all but six of the Yankees went down in the blast. the raiders, hurriedly dragging their wounded with them, limped back toward their lines, leaving Corporal John B. Sheets and Private William J. Dorsey (both Company D) dead upon the field. The three companies of the 8th Ohio managed to push the Confederates back onto the ridge west of the Bliss farm house. Captain James W. Wyatt's Virginia Battery (three 3-inch rifled pieces) and Captain Joseph Graham's 1st North Carolina Artillery (two 12 pounder Napoleons) responded quickly to the threat. Several rounds of canister and the appearance of Confederate reinforcements not 200 yards to the west abruptly stopped the three companies. Halting, they reformed, and, firing as they went, they inched their way back to the fence rails west of the road. They took cover behind the destroyed fence and settled down to steady skirmishing. Their foray cost them eleven wounded and two dead, one of whom was Sergeant John G. Peters.
One hundred skirmishers under Captain Sebastian D. Holmes (Company D, 111th New York) and a couple companies from the 125th New York rushed to the relief o Companies F and G, 111th New York, south of the Bliss farm lane. Simultaneously, Companies C, F, H, and K from the 126th New York with Companies A and C of the 108th New York (Sherrill's brigade), on the far right of the line, supported the 8th Ohio's withdrawal by deploying in extended order west of the Taneytown Road. they were going to dislodge Confederate skirmishers who had infiltrated the Northern end of the Emmitsburg Road beyond the Ohioans' right flank.
The two regiments charged the rebels. A round dropped the orderly sergeant of Company A, 108th New York. First Lieutenant Dwight H. Ostrander immediately replaced him with the skinny Corporal William H. Raymond. Coming on line with the 8th Ohio, they ran into a prone Confederate brigade. The Confederates met them with a withering fire. The 126th New York went to the ground in a futile effort to protect themselves. In short order, the Rebels killed Captains Charles M. Wheeler (Company K) and Orin J. Herendeen (Company H). Captain Isaac Shimer (Company F), while lying between two of his men, raised his head to see where the fire was coming from when a bullet slammed into his forehead. He died without making a sound. Four of his men hurriedly rolled him onto their muskets and carried him off the field as soon as the Confederates loosed the next volley at them. Captain Winfield Scott (Company C) lost his only lieutenant, Sidney E. Brown, and over one-third of his company in one of the bitterest "scrapes" he had ever experienced. He retired to the Emmitsburg Road with bullet holes in his hat, his pants and his coat. The two companies from the 108th remained on the forward line despite the loss of three killed and four wounded.
As the four companies from the 126th New York pulled back, Colonel Eliakim Sherrill dispatched the picket reserves to the eastern side of the Emmitsburg Road on the brigade's right front. Company A, 126th New York, under Captain Morris Brown and Captain Samuel C. Armstrong (Company D) quickly occupied the Emanuel Trostle house and yard.