THE REBEL ATTACK AT PITTSBURG LANDING. 61 under Gen. John C. Breckinridge, | still alive, when we recovered those closely following. This order, how- tents next evening. ever, was soon sacrificed to the exigencies of the contest. Rumors of a Rebel advance, and the capture of some of our officers thereby, had reached our camps on Friday;" and an Ohio brigade had been sent out to reconnoiter, which had a brush with a smaller Rebel force, and pushed it back to a battery which was found in position near our lines. Gen. Lew. Wallace's division was thereupon ordered out, and advanced to Adamsville, on the road to Purdy; but, meeting no opponent, after passing a night in drenching rain, it returned to its camp. On Saturday, there was firing along our front, which ought to have incited inquiry, if not alarm, but did not. 60 As day broke, our pickets in Prentiss's front came rushing into camp, barely in advance of the pursuing Rebels, whose shells were tearing through our tents a moment afterward. Some of our men were dressing; others washing or cooking; a few eating their breakfasts; many, especially officers, had not yet risen. The next instant, magnificent lines of battle poured out of the woods in front of our camps, and at doublequick rushed in upon our bewildered, half-dressed, and not yet half-formed men, firing deadly volleys at close range, then springing upon the helpless, coatless, musketless mob with the bayonet. Some fell as they ran; others as they emerged from their tents, or as they strove to buckle on their accouterments; some tried to surrender; but the Rebels could not stop then to take prisoners. Some of these were found, though disabled, April 4. 59 Thus was Prentiss's division routed before it had time to form in line of battle; and Hildebrand's brigade, on Sherman's right, was demolished with equal expedition, in spite of Sherman's best exertions. His ef forts and influence, backed by the most reckless self-exposure, held his remaining brigades, under Buckland and McDowell, steady for a time; but these were soon compelled to fall back behind the next ravine, leaving their camps, with all their tents and tent equipage, to the enemy. McClernand's division, comprising 10 regiments and 4 batteries, had been astonished with the rest, but not yet directly assailed. Moving up, at 7 A. M., to the support of Sherman, it found his division mostly gone or going; its best officers killed or wounded, its batteries either captured or badly cut up. Buckland's brigade, which had gone after Hildebrand's, forming our extreme right on the front, had fallen back to avoid certain destruction. To all practical intents, and in spite of its leader's desperate and untiring exertions, Sherman's division was out of the fight by 8 o'clock that ominous morning. It seemed a miracle that their commander, always in the hottest of the Rebel fire, escaped with a single musket-ball through his hand. Prentiss formed his division as quickly as possible, and not far in the rear of their camps, where his men faced to the front and fought stubbornly for a time; but they had been strangely drawn up in an open field, leaving to the enemy the cover of a dense scrub-oak thicket in our 60 On Sunday, April 6. PRENTISS CAPTURED-McCLERNAND WORSTED. 63 hurried to the Rebel rear as prisoners, and soon started on the road to Corinth. McClernand for a while stood firm; but the defection of Sherman's division on one side, and Prentiss's on the other, left the Rebels free to hurl themselves against him in tremendous force. Two green regiments, the 15th and 16th Iowa, which he now brought to the front under a heavy fire, gave way at once in disorder. Changing his front to meet the Rebel onset, he faced along the Corinth road and planted his batteries to command it; so that the Rebels were for a time foiled in their efforts to advance; and an effort to come in on his rear, over ground abandoned by Sherman's division, was handsomely repulsed, with heavy mutual loss, by Dresser's rifled battery. But one division could not sustain the weight of more than half the Rebel army, admirably handled, and constantly advancing fresh regiments to replace those already blown or too badly cut up. After repulsing several determined attacks, sometimes advancing a little, but generally giving ground, and losing three Colonels of the line and three officers of his staff, with at least half the effective force of his batteries, McClernand, by 11 A. M., found himself pushed back, with Hurlbut's fresh division on his left, and the débris of Sherman's on his right. Meantime, a brigade of Sherman's division, under Col. David Stuart, which had been oddly posted on our extreme left, holding what was known as the Hamburg road, had been suddenly shelled from the opposite bluffs of Lick creek, by a force which the next instant peppered them with grape, and the next rushed across the creek and began pouring in sharp volleys of musketry, while the Rebel batteries, firing over the heads of their infantry, soon made our position un tenable. Stuart fell back to the next ridge; and, finding the Rebels who had followed Prentiss beginning to come in on his right, sent to Gen. W. H. L. Wallace for assistance. Gen. McArthur's brigade was promptly dispatched to Stuart's support; but, bearing too much to the right, was soon sharply engaged with the pursuers of Prentiss. Falling back to a good position, he held it, though wounded, until Wallace came to his aid; but Stuart, receiving no direct support, was driven back from one ridge to another, until by noon, himself wounded, several of his officers fallen, and his command sadly shattered, he fell in behind McArthur to reorganize. And thus, of our six divisions, three had been thoroughly routed before mid-day. Gen. Grant had arrived on the battle-field about 8 a. m.; but, early as was the hour, his army was already beaten. As this, however, is a circumstance of which he is not easily convinced, it did not seem to make as vivid an impression on him as on others. Sending word to Lew. Wallace to hasten up with his division on our right, he devoted his personal attention to reforming his shattered brigades, rëestablishing his silenced batteries, and forming new lines of defense to replace those so suddenly demolished. Hurlbut's and W. H. L. Wallace's divisions were still intact; while of the others the better but not the larger part of those not already disabled fell into line on their flanks, or just behind them. pelled them to fall back also, or be flanked and surrounded as Prentiss had been. Just now, their leader fell, mortally wounded; closing in death a day's work which had won for him the admiration of all beholders and the lasting gratitude of his country. The division fell back into line with Hurlbut's new position; losing of its batteries but a single gun, whereof the carriage had been disabled. Lew. Wallace was at Crump's Landing, with his force extended on the road to Purdy, when he received, at 11 A. M., Grant's order to bring his division into the fight. He had been anxiously awaiting that order, listening to the sound of the mutual cannonade since morning; and his Hurlbut held the direct road to Corinth, with woods at his back and open fields commanded by his batteries in his front; and here he stood, fighting a more numerous, equally gallant, and victory-flushed enemy, for more than five hours. Here he was thrice charged in full force, and thrice he repulsed the foe with terrible slaughter. The close ranks which rushed upon him were first plowed through and through with grape, then, as they came nearer, with more deadly musketry; until the shouted orders, entreaties, menaces, of frantic officers no longer availed, and the long lines sank back defeated to the shelter in their rear. Here fell, at 2 o'clock, Albert Sidney Johnston, the Rebel commander-in-column was instantly put in motion. chief, struck in the thigh by a fragment of shell, but sitting silently on his horse for some minutes, and only taken off to die. Beauregard at once assumed command; but the death of Johnston was concealed, so far as possible, until his army had returned to Corinth. An hour later, Hurlbut's division, worn out by incessant fighting against fresh regiments, fell back nearly half a mile, to a position about that distance from the Landing. W. H. L. Wallace's division was in like manner exposed to and attacked by the exultant Rebels about 10 A. M.; and for six hours was hotly engaged, with scarcely an intermission. Four times was it charged along its whole line; and every charge was repulsed with heavy slaughter. Once or twice, our men pursued their retreating foes; but the disparity of numbers was too great, and they were soon pushed back to their lines. They were still fighting as eagerly and confidently as ever, when Hurlbut's retreat com But he was Snake creek, with steep banks and WEBSTER'S GUNS STOP THE REBEL ADVANCE. 65 rare It was hardly 6 o'clock when the Rebel batteries, once more in position, opened, at a distance of a few hundred yards, on our last possible holding-ground. At 41 P. M., our surprised but | remaining guns-22 only—and plant otherwise over-matched army, apart them on the bluff in a semicircle, from Lew. Wallace's division, had commanding the roads whereby the been crowded back into a semicircle Rebels must approach. Gunners of three or four hundred acres imme- proving scarce, Dr. Cornyn, surgeon diately around, but rather to the left of the 1st Missouri artillery, volunof the Landing. It could retreat no teered in that capacity, and proved farther. A deep, rapid river in its himself a workman who needed not rear could only be crossed with the to be ashamed. There was loss of half its remaining men" and virtue inherent in those 22 guns, and every thing beside. Of its five divi- men around them who knew how to sions, two had been beaten back; the evoke it. other three utterly routed. Our artillery was half lost or disabled; our field-hospitals overflowing; our tents and camp-equipage mainly in the hands of the enemy; our losses in men enormous; and those who had not fallen were in good part disheartened; not less than 5,000 men in uniform, possibly twice that number-to say nothing of sutlers, commissaries, and the usual rabble of camp-followers-were huddled under the bank of the river, not all of them privates, but all repeating the stereotyped excuse, "Our regiment is all cut to pieces," and resisting every entreaty of their more zealous officers to bring them again into line. But the Rebels, whose losses had also been heavy, fearing a trap, hesitated for a few minutes to follow W. H. L. Wallace's division, as it recoiled from the position it had so long and so stoutly defended. Those moments were incalculably precious, and were thoroughly improved. Col. J. D. Webster, chief of staff to Gen. Grant, a believer in artillery, improved the opportunity to collect our Our next recoil must be over the bank, into the hideous, helpless massacre of a grander Ball's Bluff. Promptly and most efficiently, Webster's guns make reply. Soon, the Rebel infantry was seen crowding up to their guns, opening fire at rather long range, to find our shattered battalions reformed and giving abundant answer. At this moment, the gunboats Tyler and Lexington, which had all day been chafing at their impotence, opened on our left, firing up a deep ravine that seemed to have been cut through the bluff on purpose. Seven-inch shell and 64-pound shot were hurled by them diagonally across the new Rebel front, decidedly interfering with the regularity of its formation, and preventing that final rush upon our guns and the supporting infantry whose success would have perfected their triumph. So, far into the evening of that busy, lurid Sabbath, our asked Buell. "Oh, across the river," responded Grant. "But you could not have ferried over more than 10,000 men," persisted Buell. "Well, there would not have been more than that," re-. plied Grant. Temerity was then so rare among our Generals that it seemed a virtue. |