The battle had been mainly fought by Price's division on our left. The troops had made a quick march of ten miles over dusty roads without water; the line of battle had been formed in forests with undergrowth; the combats of the day had been so severe that General Price thought his troops unequal to further exertion on that day, and it was decided to wait until morning. Of this, General Van Dorn says:
"I saw with regret the sun sink behind the horizon as the last shot of our sharpshooters followed the retreating foe into their innermost lines. One hour more of daylight, and victory would have soothed our grief for the loss of the gallant dead who sleep on that lost but not dishonored field."
During the night batteries were put in position to open on the town at 4 A.M. At daybreak the action was to begin on the left, to be immediately followed by an advance on the extreme right. The order was not executed, the commander of the wing which was to make the attack failed to do so, and another officer was sent to take his place. In the mean time the center became engaged, and the action extended to the left. The plan had been disarranged; nevertheless, the center and left pushed forward and planted their colors on the last stronghold of the enemy; his "heavy guns were silenced, and all seemed about to be ended, when a heavy fire from fresh troops that had succeeded in reaching Corinth was poured into our thin ranks," and, with this combined assault on Price's exhausted corps, which had sustained the whole conflict, those gallant troops were driven back. The day was lost. The enemy, reënforced, was concentrated against our left, and Lovell's division, which was at this time advancing, pursuant to orders, and was on the point of assaulting the works, was ordered to move to the left to prevent a sortie, and cover their retreat. Our army retired during the day to Chewalla without pursuit, and rested for the night free from molestation.
Our loss was very heavy of gallant men and officers. In the fierce conflicts the officers displayed not only daring, but high military skill, their impetuous charges being marked by judicious selection of time and place. Colonel William S. Barry, who, as commander of the burial party, visited General Rosecrans, was courteously received by that officer, who, while declining to admit the command within his lines, sent assurance to General Van Dorn that "every becoming respect should be shown to his dead and wounded. . . . He had the grave of Colonel Rodgers, who led the Second Texas sharpshooters, inclosed and marked with a slab, in respect to the gallantry of his charge. Rodgers fell before Gates called on me to reënforce him on the edge of the ditch of Battery Robbinet." [75] This officer, W. P. Rodgers, was a captain in the First Regiment of Mississippi Rifles in the war with Mexico, and the gallantry which attracted the admiration of the enemy at Corinth was in keeping with the character he acquired in the former service referred to. Of this retreat, that able soldier and military critic, General Dabney H. Maury, in a contribution to the "Annals of the War," wrote:
"Few commanders have ever been so beset as Van Dorn was in the forks of the Hatchie, and very few would have extricated a beaten army as he did then. One, with a force stated at ten thousand men, headed him at the Hatchie Bridge; while Rosecrans, with twenty thousand men, was attacking his rear at the Tuscumbia Bridge, only five miles off. The whole road between was occupied by a train of nearly four hundred wagons, and a defeated army of about eleven thousand muskets. But Van Dorn was never for a moment dismayed. He repulsed Ord, and punished him severely; while he checked Rosecrans at the Tuscumbia, until he could turn his train and army short to the left, and cross the Hatchie by the Boneyard road, without the loss of a wagon."
He then moved near Holly Springs, Mississippi, to await farther developments. In the mean time General Grant massed a heavy force, estimated at eighty thousand men, at various points on the Memphis and Charleston Railroad. Thence he moved south, through the interior of Mississippi, until he encamped near Water Valley. The country was teeming with great quantities of breadstuffs and forage, and he accumulated an immense depot of supplies at Holly Springs, and hastened every preparation necessary to continue his advance southward. Unless his progress was arrested, the interior of the State, its capital, Jackson, Vicksburg, and its railroads, would fall into his possession. As we had no force in front sufficient to offer battle, our only alternative was to attack his communications. For this purpose. General Van Dorn, on the night of December 15th, quietly withdrew our cavalry, amounting to less than twenty-five hundred men, from the enemy's front, and marched for Holly Springs. That place was occupied by a brigade of infantry and a portion of the Seventh Illinois Cavalry. The movement of Van Dorn was so rapid that early on the morning of the 19th he surprised and captured the garrison, and before eight o'clock was in quiet possession of the town. The captured property, amounting to millions of dollars, was burned before sunset, with the exception of the small quantity used in arming and equipping his command. General Grant was thus forced to abandon his campaign and to retreat hastily from the State.
After the battle of Murfreesboro, which closed in the first days of 1863, there was a cessation of active operations in that portion of Tennessee, and attention was concentrated upon the extensive preparations which were in progress for a campaign into Mississippi, with Vicksburg as the objective point. The plan, as it was developed, was for a combined movement by land and river, the former passing through the interior of Mississippi to approach Vicksburg in rear, the latter to descend the Mississippi River and attack the city in front. General Pemberton, with the main body of his command, held the position on the Tallahatchie and Yazoo Rivers, and among the various devices to turn that position was one more ingenious than ingenuous. It was an offer to furnish, at prices lower than ruled in our markets, provisions of which we stood in need, to be sent through the Yazoo Pass and transported in boats through to the Yazoo River if we should desire. I had, some time before, directed that cypress rafts, as far as practicable, of sinking timber, should be thrown into the main channel leading down from the Yazoo Pass; and saw that, if it was not the purpose of the proposer, the effect of accepting the proposition would be to open a water line of approach from the Mississippi, below Memphis, then in the hands of the enemy, to the interior in rear of Vicksburg: for that reason, I resisted much importunity in favor of allowing the supplies to be brought in that manner.
In the latter part of December General Sherman, having descended the Mississippi River, entered the Yazoo with four divisions of land troops and five gunboats, the object being to reduce our work at Haines's Bluff and turn Vicksburg so as to attack it in rear. The first point at which the range of hills extending from Vicksburg up the Yazoo approaches near to the river is at Haines's Bluff, some twenty miles by the course of the Yazoo from the Mississippi River. Here the troops were landed the 26th of December to attack the redoubts which had been built upon the bluff.
On the 27th little progress was made. On the 28th the attempt, by one division, to approach the causeway north of the Chickasaw Bayou, was repulsed with heavy loss. The troops were withdrawn and moved down the river to a point below the bayou, there to unite with the rest of the command. At daylight on the 29th the attack was resumed and continued throughout the most of the day; the enemy were again repulsed with heavy loss. On the next day there was firing on both sides without conclusive results. On the 31st General Sherman sent in a flag of trace to bury the dead.
[Illustration: Map of action of December 26-31]