Churchill came to report the result of his attack, and seemed much depressed. I gave such consolation as I could, and directed him to move his command to the mill stream, seven miles to the rear, where he would find his trains and water. A worthy, gallant gentleman, General Churchill, but not fortunate in war.
The mill stream was the nearest water to be had, and I was compelled to send the troops back to it. The enemy made no attempt to recover the ground from which his center and right had been driven. Bee picketed the field with his cavalry, his forage wagons were ordered up from the mill stream, and it was hoped that water for his two regiments could be found in the wells and cisterns of the village. Sounds of retreat could be heard in the stillness of the night. Parties were sent on the field to care for the wounded, and Bee was ordered to take up the pursuit toward Grand Ecore at dawn, to be followed by the horse from the mill stream as soon as water and forage had been supplied. These dispositions for the morning made, worn out by fatigue and loss of sleep, I threw myself on the ground, within two hundred yards of the battle field, and sought rest. The enemy retreated during the night, leaving four hundred wounded, and his many dead unburied. On the morning of the 10th Bee pursued for twenty miles before he overtook his rear guard, finding stragglers and burning wagons and stores, evidences of haste.
In the two actions of Mansfield and Pleasant Hill my loss in killed and wounded was twenty-two hundred. At Pleasant Hill we lost three guns and four hundred and twenty-six prisoners, one hundred and seventy-nine from Churchill's, and two hundred and forty-seven from Scurry's brigade at the time it was so nearly overwhelmed. The Federal loss in killed and wounded exceeded mine, and we captured twenty guns and twenty-eight hundred prisoners, not including stragglers picked up after the battle. The enemy's campaign for conquest was defeated by an inferior force, and it was doubtful if his army and fleet could escape destruction.
These were creditable results, yet of much less importance than those that would have been accomplished but for my blunder at Pleasant Hill. Instead of intrusting the important attack by my right to a subordinate, I should have conducted it myself and taken Polignac's division to sustain it. True, this would have removed my reserve from the center and line of retreat, and placed it on a flank; but I was confident that the enemy had no intention of resuming the offensive, and should have acted on that conviction. All this flashed upon me the instant I learned of the disorder of my right. Herein lies the vast difference between genius and commonplace: one anticipates errors, the other discovers them too late.
The foregoing account of Churchill's attack at Pleasant Hill, hidden from me by intervening wood, is taken from his official report and the reports of his subordinates; and I will now supplement it by some extracts from the testimony given by General Francis Fessenden of the Federal army. On pages 94 and 95 of the second volume of the "Report on the Conduct of the War," the following appears:
"In the afternoon we were changed, from a position in the woods in front of Pleasant Hill, to a position in rear of a deep ditch near the town. We were placed behind this ditch, in open ground, and practically held the left of the front line; and my regiment was on the left. I think it was not expected that an attack would be made by the enemy in that direction. The attack was expected by the road which led in by the right center of the army. Instead of that, however, the enemy came around through the woods, and about half-past 5 o'clock drove in our skirmishers, and made a very fierce attack on the brigade I was in—Colonel Benedict's brigade. The brigade fell back under the attack a great deal broken up, and my regiment was separated from the other three regiments which went off in another direction. I had fallen back still further to the left, as I knew there was a brigade of troops in there to protect our left flank and rear from attack in that direction. My regiment being the last of the brigade to fall back, the enemy had already advanced so far after the other three regiments that I could not fall back where they did. I therefore fell back in another direction, rallying my regiment and forming on the right of the brigade referred to; and that brigade, my regiment, and another brigade, which I think had been brought up under General Emory, made an attack upon the enemy's column, which had advanced some distance, and drove them back with great loss. We continued to advance, and drove them a mile or more, so completely off the field that there was no other attack made by the enemy in that direction.
"That night we fell back again, marching all night and all the next morning, until we reached the camping ground at the end of our first day's march from Grand Ecore. I ought to state here that in that attack of the enemy on our left the brigade commander, Colonel Benedict, was killed, and I then assumed command of the brigade. We remained at Grand Ecore some eight or nine days, where we built intrenchments to a certain extent—rifle pits. I think the whole army threw up a kind of temporary work in front."
General Fessenden's statements accord with the reports of Churchill and his officers, and in other respects are accurate.
On page 62 of the volume quoted from, General A.L. Lee, commanding mounted division of Banks's army, testifies:
"The next morning (9th of April) I was ordered by General Banks to detach one thousand cavalry to act as scouts and skirmishers, and to take the remainder of my division, and take whatever was left of the detachment of the 13th army corps and some negro troops that were there, and take the trains and the majority of the artillery of the army to Grand Ecore. It was thought that the enemy would get between us and Grand Ecore. I started about 11 o'clock with this train, and with six or eight batteries of artillery, and reached Grand Ecore the next day. The battle of the 9th of April commenced just as I was leaving. The next day at night the main army had reached Grand Ecore and joined me there. General Banks impressed on me very strongly that, in sending me back from Pleasant Hill just as the fight was commencing, it was of the greatest importance to save what material we had left. Early the next morning, when I was distant from Pleasant Hill eighteen miles, I received a dispatch from General Banks. I have not the dispatch with me, but it was to this effect: that they had whipped the enemy terribly; that Price was killed, also two or three other rebel generals whom he named, but who have since recovered; and that I was to send back the subsistence trains for such and such troops. I was very much puzzled by that order, and immediately sent a staff officer back for more specific instructions. But he had not been gone more than half an hour when a staff officer of General Banks arrived with an order to me, with which he had left in the night, for me to continue pressing on with the whole train to Grand Ecore, and with instructions if any wagons broke down to burn them, not stop to fix anything, but get everything into Grand Ecore as quickly as I could, and look out very carefully on the flanks."