General Prentiss's Division was composed of the Twelfth Michigan, Sixteenth Wisconsin, Eighteenth Wisconsin, Eighteenth Missouri, Twenty-third Missouri, Twenty-fifth Missouri, and Sixty-first Illinois.
[CHAPTER XII.]
"AGATE'S" STORY CONTINUED.
The Battle of Sunday, April 6th—The Union Troops Surprised—An Army in Disorder—Sherman's Heroic Effort to Stem the Tide—McClernand's Share in the Battle—The Rebels Pressing their Advantage—The Assault on Sherman's Left—Men too Brave to be Killed—Desperate Position of the Union Army—Looking to the Gunboats For aid—Three Desperate Charges Repulsed—Death of General Wallace.
"Agate" continues the story of the great battle of Sunday, April 6th, as follows:
Almost at dawn, Prentiss's pickets were driven in; a very little later Hildebrand's (in Sherman's Division) were; and the enemy were in the camps almost as soon as were the pickets themselves.
Here began scenes which, let us hope, will have no parallel in our remaining annals of the war. Some, particularly among our officers, were not yet out of bed. Others were dressing, others washing, others cooking, a few eating their breakfasts. Many guns were unloaded, accoutrements lying pell-mell, ammunition was ill-supplied—in short, the camps were virtually surprised—disgracefully, it might be added, unless someone can hereafter give some yet undiscovered reason to the contrary—and were taken at almost every possible disadvantage.
The first wild cries from the pickets rushing in, and the few scattering shots that preceded their arrival, aroused the regiments to a sense of their peril; an instant afterward shells were hurling through the tents, while, before there was time for thought of preparation, there came rushing through the woods with lines of battle sweeping the whole fronts of the division-camps, and bending down on either flank, the fine, dashing, compact columns of the enemy.
Into the just-aroused camps thronged the Rebel regiments, firing sharp volleys as they came, and springing toward our laggards with the bayonet. Some were shot down as they were running, without weapons, hatless, coatless, toward the river. The searching bullets found other poor unfortunates in their tents, and there, all unheeding now, they still slumbered, while the unseen foe rushed on. Others fell, as they were disentangling themselves from the flaps that formed the doors to their tents; others as they were buckling on their accoutrements; a few, it was even said, as they were vainly trying to impress on the cruelly exultant enemy their readiness to surrender.