In the afternoon General McClernand determined to make a formidable assault of a redoubt of the enemy, fronting the centre of his right. The redoubt was the only one which could be distinctly seen, owing to timber and undergrowth. At this point the ground was for the most part void of large timber, the barren extending even beyond the road on the ridge which the Union troops passed. The batteries of this redoubt had a very perfect range, and gave the troops considerable uneasiness, by blazing away at them whenever they passed over the brow of the hill. Three regiments were detailed for the work—the Forty-eighth, Seventeenth and Forty-ninth Illinois. They advanced in line of battle order, the Forty-ninth, Colonel Morrison, on the right, the Seventeenth, under command of Major Smith, in the centre, and the Forty-eighth, Colonel Hainley, on the left. Colonel Morrison, as senior Colonel, led the attack. The advance was a most beautiful one. With skirmishers arrayed in front, the three regiments swept down the hill, over a knoll, down a ravine, and up the high hill on which the redoubt was situated, some two hundred and fifty or three hundred feet in height, covered with brush and stumps, all the time receiving a galling fire of grape, shell and musketry, with a precision which would have done them credit on the parade ground. The breastworks were nearly reached, when Colonel Morrison, while gallantly leading his men, was struck by a musket ball. The captain of the company on his right was also killed, while the Forty-ninth fell into some confusion; but unappalled the Seventeenth still gallantly pressed forward and penetrated even to the very foot of the works. But it was not in the power of man to scale the abattis before them. Brush piled upon brush, with sharp points, fronted them wherever they turned; so, after a few interchanges of musketry with the swarming regiments concentrated there, the word for retiring was given. It was done in good order, by filing off to the left and obliqueing into the woods below; but many a gallant soldier was left behind underneath the intrenchments he had vainly sought to mount. They were not, however, destined to die unavenged. Scarcely, had their retiring columns got out of range, ere Taylor’s Chicago battery opened on the swarming rebel masses with shell and shrapnell. The effect was fearful. Each gun was aimed by the captain himself, and when its black mouth belched out sudden thunder, winrows of dead men fell in its track.
While this heavy firing had been heard on the right, General Smith, had ordered the enemy to be engaged on the left. The Twenty-fifth Indiana, at the head of a brigade, led the way. They had reached a position on the brow of a hill where the successful assault was afterwards made, and were met by the enemy in force, who swarmed behind the works, pouring a deadly hail of bullets and grape into them. The leading regiment broke in disorder after sustaining a hot fire, and the whole line fell back out of range. The object of the sortie had been accomplished, and the enemy’s forces drawn from the other side, but the advantage did not result, as might have been anticipated, in the occupation of the fort on the right by General McClernand.
Six companies of the famous regiment of riflemen, raised by Colonel Birge, accompanied the expedition from Fort Henry, and two companies afterwards arrived by the transports. This was a corps of picked men skilled in the use of the rifle, drawn from the North-west.
These hardy pioneers started out in the morning, with a hard biscuit in their pocket and a rifle on their shoulder, for the rebel earthworks, where they remained until relieved by a fresh gang. So adventurous were they, that many of them crept within fifty yards of the rifle-pits and exchanged words as well as shots with the enemy.
One piece in front of Dresser’s battery was kept in silence during the morning by the sharpshooters picking off their gunners. At last a shell from a Union battery, falling short, drove them away. One valiant southerner, to prove his bravery, jumped into the rampart to take aim; in an instant he was pierced by three balls, and fell out of the intrenchment, where he lay till nightfall.
The firing for the rest of the day was slow, and appeared by general consent to be abandoned. The Unionists seemed to have failed in every attempt on the fort. Wounded men were being brought in on stretchers; some limped along, supported by comrades, others staggered forward with bleeding hands and battered heads tied in handkerchiefs. The ambulances had brought in the maimed and seriously wounded. In the gray dusk of evening men came forth with spades to dig the graves of their fellow-soldiers, whose remains, stiffened in death, were lying under the pale stars.
Hardly had the camp-fires been kindled for the night when a drizzling shower set in, which soon turned into a steady fall of rain. The wind grew suddenly colder. The weather, hitherto so pleasant, was chilled in an hour to a wintry blast. Snow began to fall, and the mercury sank below freezing point.
Many of the soldiers had lost their overcoats and blankets during the day. Not a tent, except hospital tents, in the command. Provisions growing very scarce—the muddy, wet clothing freezing upon the chilled limbs of the hungry soldiers. It was a most comfortless night. Not five houses could be found within as many miles, and these were used as hospitals. Various expedients were devised to ward off the cold. Saplings were bent down and twigs interwoven into a shelter; leaves piled up made a kind of roof to keep off the snow. Large fires were kindled, and the men lay with their feet to the fire. The victims who perished of cold, exposure, hunger and neglect, on this night, will fill up a long page in the mortality record of that eventful siege.
On Friday, the conflict was maintained only by the pickets and sharpshooters, General Grant having concluded to await the arrival of additional forces, before assaulting the works.
Hitherto the investment had been made by the divisions of Generals McClernand and Smith, about ten thousand men each, including the cavalry and artillery. A third division had been sent up the Cumberland, and should, by reasonable calculation, have been opposite Fort Henry on Wednesday night. Here was Friday morning and no transports arrived. What could have befallen them? General L. Wallace, who had been left in command at Fort Henry, was summoned over, and arrived on Friday evening with two regiments of his brigade. Couriers were seen dashing along from the headquarters to the point where the boats were expected to land. About ten o’clock came the joyful intelligence that the gunboat fleet, with fifteen transports, had landed five miles below the fort. The troops from Fort Henry were pouring in, and close upon them came the troops from the boats. The men had heard something of the fighting, and moved up in splendid order, expecting to be marched directly into battle.