SHERMAN’S DIVISION.
Sherman had received orders from Grant to advance and recapture his camps. His division was composed of odds and ends, as it came out of the conflict on Sunday evening.
His command was of a mixed character. Buckland’s brigade was the only one that retained its organization. Colonel Hildebrand was personally there, but his brigade was not. Colonel McDowell had been severely injured by a fall of his horse, had gone to the river, and the regiments of his brigade were not in line. The Thirteenth Missouri, Colonel Crafts J. Wright, had reported itself on the field, and fought well, retaining its regimental organization, and it formed a part of Sherman’s line during Sunday night and all Monday. Other fragments of regiments and companies had also fallen into his division, and acted with it during the remainder of the battle.
This was not a very promising host with which to “advance and recapture his camps.” Sherman, full of ardor, moved forward and reoccupied the ground on the extreme right of General McClernand’s camp, where he attracted the fire of a battery located near Colonel McDowell’s headquarters. Here he remained, patiently awaiting the sound of General Buell’s advance upon the main Corinth road. It was this independent action of Sherman which caused Wallace to halt—he evidently not understanding that General’s design.
By ten o’clock Sherman’s right, under Colonel Marsh, came up. He started to move across the field, but the storm of musketry and grape was too much for him, and he fell back in good order. Again he started on the double-quick and gained the woods. The Louisiana battery was turned; Marsh’s position left it subject to fire in flank and in front, and it then fled. The other rebel batteries at once followed, and Wallace’s division, in an instant, now that a master move had swept the board, pushed forward. Before them were broad fallow fields, then a woody little ravine, succeeded by cornfields and woods.
The left brigade was sent forward. It crossed the fallow fields, under fire, gained the ravine, and was rushing across the cornfields, when the same Louisiana steel rifled guns opened on them. Dashing forward they reached a little ground swell, behind which they dropped like dead men, while skirmishers were sent forward to silence the troublesome battery. The skirmishers crept forward till they gained a little knoll, not more than seventy-five yards from the battery. Of course the guns opened on them. They replied to some purpose. In a few minutes the battery was driven off, the artillerists killed, the horses shot down, and badly crippled every way. But the affair cost the Union cause a brave man—Lieutenant-Colonel Garber, who could not control his enthusiasm at the conduct of the skirmishers, and in his excitement incautiously exposed himself. All this time rebel regiments were pouring on to attack the audacious brigade that was supporting the skirmishers, but fresh regiments from Wallace’s division came up in time to defeat their purpose.
The battery was silenced. “Forward” was the division order. Rushing across the cornfields under a heavy fire, they now met the rebels face to face in the woods. The contest was quick and decisive. Close, sharp, continuous musketry drove the rebels back.
Here unfortunately Sherman’s right gave way. Wallace’s flank was exposed. He instantly formed Colonel Wood’s Seventy-sixth Ohio in a new line of battle, in right angles with the real one, with orders to protect the flank. The Eleventh Indiana was likewise contesting a sharp engagement with the enemy, who made a desperate attempt to flank it, and for a time the contest waxed furious. But Sherman soon filled the place of his broken regiments. Wallace’s division came forward, and again the enemy gave way.
By two o’clock the division was in the woods again, and for three-quarters of a mile it advanced under a murderous storm of shot. Then another contest, and another with the batteries, always met with skirmishers and sharpshooting—then by four o’clock, two hours later than on the right, a general rebel retreat—a sharp pursuit—from which the triumphant Union soldiers were recalled to encamp on the old ground of Sherman’s division, in the very tents from which those regiments were driven that hapless Sunday morning.
With great thanksgiving and shouts of triumph the Union army took possession of the camps. They had repulsed the enemy in one of the most hardly contested battles of the war, under many disadvantages, and with a heroism that fills a glorious page in the history of nations. The enemy was near, yet retreating—his columns broken and altogether defeated. His cavalry still hovered within half a mile of the camps, but it was allowed to depart, and the battle of Pittsburg Landing, written by more than a hundred thousand bayonets, was at an end.