After four hours of constant and desperate fighting there was a noticeable fading in the vim of the Confederate assaults and diminishing stubbornness of resistance to the Union blows. When the Union soldiers pushed on through the woods after their enemies they found them falling back across the fields beyond in great disorder. A few shells from the Union guns frustrated all attempts to rally them. Osterhaus and Davis pushed their skirmishers through the woods for a mile, and the cavalry went still further, finding the three guns of the flying battery with the carriages burned off, and reporting back that everything seemed to be in full retreat for Bentonville.
One squad of cavalry came back with Col. Hebert, the next in command to Gen. Mcintosh; Col. Mitchell and Maj. W. F. Tunnard, of the 3d La., of the same division; a Major, two Captains and 33 privates, all having been separated from their commands in the rush through the woods, and unable to regain them.
After the fall of Gens. McCulloch and Mcintosh the command in that part of the field devolved upon Gen. Albert Pike, and it is rare that so great a responsibility falls upon one so unfit. Something of a poet Pike certainly was; much more of a successful politician and place-hunter, but nothing of a leader of men upon the battlefield. His soldiership became sicklied o'er when he went beyond the parade ground. Apparently he did not know what to do, nor, if he did, how to do it.
Regimental commanders reported that they were unable to find him.
His own verbose report, made six days after the battle, is quite full of unintentional humor. He says that after the first charge the field was "a mass of the utmost confusion, all talking, riding this way and that, and listening to no orders from any one." He could get no one to pay any attention to what he said. His Indians, who had stopped in the charge to scalp the dead and wounded, would at once stampede whenever a shell was thrown in their direction. He devoted himself for a couple of hours to what has been described as "heavy standing around."
Then he fell back with some of the troops a short distance and did some more standing around, until a Union artillerist noticed him and threw a shell in his direction, when he fell back out of range, and again stood around until some one informed him that a body of 7,000 Federals was moving around the left flank. He quickly decided that the "position was not tenable," and fell back still more, "when the officers assured me that the men were in such condition that it would be worse than useless to bring them into acton again that day." Such is the demoralization of "standing around."
Finally, it occurred to him to take what troops he could gather and join Gen. Van Dorn, whose cannon had been thundering two or three miles away all this time. First, however, he decided to march them back some distance to a creek, "where they could all get a drink, and join Gen. Van Dorn in the morning."
Col. E. Greer, 3d Tex. Cav., who became the senior officer of McCulloch's Division, reported that he gathered up fragments of regiments to the number of 3,000 after the casualties to his superiors, and being informed that Gen. Pike had left the field with the remainder of the command, retired some distance, sending word to Gen. Van Dorn that, unless he ordered otherwise, he would march to join him at 1:30 in the morning. Van Dorn approved of this.