LEW. WALLACE’S MOVEMENTS.
When Major-General Lew. Wallace opened the battle at seven o’clock by shelling with enfilading fires a rebel battery, a few shots demonstrated to the rebels that their position was untenable. The instant Sherman came in to protect his left, Wallace advanced his infantry. The rebel battery at once limbered up and got out of the way. The advance had withdrawn the division from Sherman, making a left half wheel, to get back into the neighborhood of the Federal line; they advanced some two hundred yards, which brought them to a little elevation, with a broad open stretch to the front. As the division halted on the crest of the swell, through the edge of the timber, skirting the fields, the head of a rebel column appeared, marching past in splendid style on the double-quick. Banner after banner flashed out through the foliage; the “Stars and Bars” forming a long line, stretching parallel with Wallace’s line of battle. Regiment after regiment swept forward, the line lengthened, and doubled and trebled; the head of the column was out of sight and still they came. Twenty regiments were counted passing through the woods. Their design was plain. The rebels had abandoned the idea of forcing their way through the Union left, and the manifest attempt was to turn the right.
Thompson’s and Thurber’s batteries were now ordered up, and the whole column was shelled as it passed. The rebels threw their artillery into position rapidly, and a brisk cannonading began. After a time, while the fight still rested with the artillery, the rebels opened a new and destructive battery to the right, which the Union men soon ascertained was “Watson’s Louisiana battery,” from the marks on the ammunition boxes the enemy were forced from time to time to leave behind.
Batteries, with a brigade of supporting infantry, were now moved forward over open fields, under heavy fire, to contend against this new assailant. The batteries opened, the sharpshooters were thrown out to the front to pick off the rebel artillerists, and the brigade was ordered down on its face to protect it from the flying shell and grape. For an hour and a half the contest lasted, while the body of the division was still delayed, waiting for Sherman.
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.