The engagement soon became general. The enemy, however, retreated and fell back beyond the old Confederate breastworks, the same that I had helped to locate before the evacuation of Corinth. As our line advanced, we discovered that the Union Army was making a stand at an entrenched camp, which was strongly fortified. Their resistance was stubborn, but we drove them from their strong position. They did not retire a great distance before making another stand, seemingly with greatly increased numbers. After a brief stand, they charged us. The Second Texas received the shock, and, furiously counter attacking, they cut the Union line and captured some three hundred prisoners. At this juncture several Union batteries opened a tremendous fire on the right of the Texans from an elevated position on the south side of the Memphis and Charleston (now Southern) Railroad. The Second Texas was ordered to charge the batteries. Colonel Rodgers saw that they had been discovered by a brigade of infantry, and asked for reënforcements. Johnson’s and Dockery’s Arkansas Regiments of Cabell’s Brigade were sent, and the three regiments charged, driving back the infantry and capturing three batteries of light artillery.
We next found the stubborn enemy entrenched in a camp on an elevation between two prongs of a creek, where fresh troops had already been massed. Here was presented the most determined stand we had met with during the day. After hard fighting, with heavy losses on both sides, the Union troops were finally driven from this position at the point of the bayonet. The Union officers tried gallantly to stem the tide, General Ogelsby and General Hackelman being desperately wounded in a vain effort to rally their beaten soldiers. In this camp we found bread, butter, cheese, crackers, and other food in abundance, and, while enjoying a short rest, partook of the enemy’s unwilling hospitality during his enforced absence—the first food we had tasted that day.
When driven from this position, the enemy fled precipitately to the protection of the inner fortifications at Corinth.
About sunset the exhausted Confederates, with empty cartridge boxes, halted within about a half mile of Corinth and very near the inner fortifications. The loss in our regiment was very heavy. Among the wounded were Lieut. A. K. Leigh and Halbert Rodgers, the youthful son of the colonel who, during the day, had handled his regiment with consummate skill, being with it in every position of danger.
Before daylight on October 4 the Confederate artillery opened a vigorous fire on the enemy’s works, and a lively contest between the gray and blue cannon was kept up until after daylight. During the early morning there was sharp fighting on the skirmish line in front of the Second Texas, in which the Union skirmishers were driven in and their commander, Col. Joseph A. Mower, was severely wounded and captured, but again fell into the hands of his friends that evening after our retreat from Corinth.
Directly in front of the Second Texas, a short distance north of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, was “Fort Robinette,” with three twenty-pound siege guns; and in “Fort Williams,” on the south side of the railroad, there were four twenty-four pounders and two eight-inch Howitzers. On the eminence between “Fort Williams” and the railroad were six guns of Battery F., U. S. Light Artillery; and on the south side of the same fort were two guns of the Second Illinois Light Artillery—all commanding the field to the westward and in positions to sweep the hillside in front of “Robinette.” In addition to these, two guns of the Wisconsin Light Artillery occupied a point just north of and very close to “Robinette,” between it and the Chewalla dirt road, and in a position to sweep the top and side of the hill in front.
These were the positions of the Union artillery, seventeen guns in all, in front of the Second Texas Regiment and commanding the ground over which that wonderful organization of fighters was about to deliver one of the most daring and desperate assaults in the history of wars.
The Union infantry was also placed advantageously for dealing destruction to the assaulting column.
The Forty-Seventh Illinois Regiment lay behind the railroad, immediately in front of “Fort Williams,” covering the hillside with their deadly Springfield rifles. The Forty-Third Ohio occupied the ground immediately behind the breastworks on the north side of “Robinette,” with its left near the fort. The Eleventh Missouri was lying down under the hill, about fifty yards in the rear of “Robinette,” with its right and left wings expanding opposite the Forty-Third and Sixty-Third Ohio, respectively. The Twenty-Seventh Ohio occupied the trenches on the right of the Sixty-Third; and the Thirty-Ninth Ohio was still further to the north, on the right of the Twenty-Seventh, with its right wing facing north, at right angles to the line of its left wing and to the Twenty-Seventh and the Sixty-Third.
The order to charge had been expected every moment since daylight; but owing to the sudden illness of General Herbert, commanding the Left Division of Price’s Corps, the initial attack had been delayed until about ten o’clock. During the interval of waiting the men were subjected to the most intense mental strain. As every trained and experienced soldier will testify, the suspense of waiting in the prelude of an onset is more trying than the actual conflict, wherein the heat of battle fevers the mind into a kind of fearless frenzy that causes it to lose the weights and measures of danger.