Sunday night there was a council of war, but if the Major-General commanding developed any plans there, beyond the simple arrangement of our line of battle, I am very certain that some of the Division Commanders didn't find it out. Stubborn fighting alone delayed our losses on Sunday; stubborn fighting alone saved us when we had reached the point beyond which came the child's "jumping-off place;" and stubborn fight, with such generalship as individual Division Commanders displayed, regained on Monday what we had lost before.
To those who had looked despairingly at the prospects Sunday evening, it seemed strange that the Rebels did not open out on us by daybreak again. Their retreat before the bomb-shells of the gunboats, however, explained the delay. Our own divisions were put in motion almost simultaneously. By seven o'clock Lew. Wallace opened the ball by shelling, from the positions he had selected the night before, the Rebel battery, of which mention has been made. A brisk artillery duel, a rapid movement of infantry across a shallow ravine, as if to storm, and the Rebels enfiladed and menaced in front, limbered up and made the opening of their Monday's retreating.
To the left we were slower in finding the enemy. They had been compelled to travel some distance to get out of gunboat range. Nelson moved his division about the same time Wallace opened on the Rebel battery, forming in line of battle, Ammon's Brigade on the extreme left, Bruce's in the centre, and Hazen's to the left. Skirmishers were thrown out, and for nearly or quite a mile the division thus swept the country, pushing the outlying Rebels before it, till it came upon them in force. Then a general engagement broke out along the line, and again the rattle of musketry and thunder of artillery echoed over the late silent fields. There was no straggling this morning. These men were better drilled than many of those whose regiments had broken to pieces on the day before, and strict measures were taken, at any rate, to prevent the miscellaneous thronging back to places of safety in the rear. They stood up to their work and did their duty manfully. It soon became evident that, whether from change of commanders or some other cause, the Rebels were pursuing a different policy in massing their forces. On Sunday the heaviest fighting had been done on the left. This morning they seemed to make less determined resistance here, while toward the centre and right the ground was more obstinately contested, and the struggle longer prolonged.
Till half-past ten o'clock, Nelson advanced slowly but steadily, sweeping his long lines over the ground of our sore defeat on Sunday morning, and forward over scores of Rebel dead, resistlessly pressing back the jaded and wearied enemy. The Rebels had received but few reinforcements during the night, their men were exhausted with their desperate contest of the day before, and manifestly dispirited by the evident fact that notwithstanding their well-laid plans of destruction in detail, they were fighting Grant and Buell combined.
Gradually, as Nelson pushed forward his lines under heavy musketry, the enemy fell back, till about half-past ten, when, under cover of the heavy timber and a furious cannonading, they made a general rally. Our forces, flushed with their easy victory, were scarcely prepared for the sudden onset, where retreat had been all they had been seeing before. Suddenly, the Rebel masses were hurled against our lines with tremendous force. Our men halted, wavered, and fell back. At this juncture, Captain Terrill's regular battery came dashing up. Scarcely taking time to unlimber, he was loading and sighting his pieces before the caissons had turned, and in an instant was tossing shell from twenty-four pound howitzers into the compact and advancing Rebel ranks.
Here was the turning-point of the battle on the left. The Rebels were only checked, not halted. On they came. Horse after horse from the batteries were picked. Every private at one of the howitzers fell, and the gun was worked by Captain Terrill himself and a corporal. Still the Rebels advanced, till, in the very nick of time, a regiment dashed up from our line, and saved the disabled piece. Then for two hours artillery and musketry at close range. At last they began to waver. Our men pressed on, pouring in deadly volleys. Just then Buell, who assumed the general direction of his troops in the field, came up. At a glance he saw the chance. "Forward at double-quick by brigades!" Our men leaped forward as if they had been tied, and were only too much rejoiced at suddenly finding themselves able to move. For a quarter of a mile the Rebels fell back. Faster and faster they ran, less and less resistance was made to the advance. At last the front camps on the left were reached, and by half-past two that point was cleared. The Rebels had been steadily swept back over the ground they had won, with heavy loss as they fell into confusion; we had retaken all our own guns lost here the day before, and one or two from the Rebels were left as trophies, to tell in after days how bravely that great victory over treason in Tennessee was won.
I have sketched the advance of Nelson. Next to him came Crittenden. He, too, swept forward over his ground to the front some distance before finding the foe. Between 8 and 9 o'clock, however, while keeping Smith's Brigade on his left up even with Nelson's flank, and joining Boyle's Brigade to McCook on the right, in the grand advance, they came upon the enemy with a battery in position, and well supported. Smith dashed his brigade forward; there was sharp, close work with musketry, and the Rebels fled, leaving us three pieces—a twelve-pound howitzer, and two brass six-pounders. But they cost the gallant Thirteenth Ohio dear. Major Ben. Piatt Runkle fell, mortally wounded. Softly may he sleep, and green grow the laurels over his honored grave. None worthier wear them living.
For half an hour, perhaps, the storm raged around these captured guns. Then came the reflex Rebel wave that had hurled Nelson back. Crittenden, too, caught its full force. The Rebels swept up to the batteries, around them, and on down after our retreating column. But the two brigades, like those of Nelson to their left, took a fresh position, faced the foe, and held their ground. Mendenhall's and Bartlett's Batteries now began shelling the infantry that alone opposed them. Before abandoning the guns so briefly held, they had spiked them with mud, and the novel expedient was perfectly successful. From that time till after 1 o'clock, while the fight raged back and forth over the same ground, the Rebels did not succeed in firing a shot from their mud-spiked artillery.
At last our brigades began to gain the advantage again. Crittenden pushed them steadily forward. Mendenhall (with his accomplished First Lieutenant Parsons, one of our Western Reserve West Pointers), and Bartlett, poured in their shell. A rush for the contested battery, and it is ours again. The Rebels retreated toward the left. Smith and Boyle, holding the infantry well in hand, Mendenhall again got their range, and poured in shell on the new position. The fortune of the day was against them as against their comrades to Nelson's front, and they were soon in full retreat.
Just then Brigadier-General Thomas J. Wood's advance brigade, from his approaching division, came up. It was too late for the fight, but it relieved Crittenden's weary fellows, and pushed on after the Rebels, until they were found to have left our most advanced camps.