But the battery was silenced. "Forward," was the division order. Rushing across the corn-fields under heavy fire, they now met the Rebels face to face in the woods. The contest was quick, decisive. Close, sharp, continuous musketry for a few minutes, and the Rebels fell back.
Here, unfortunately, Sherman's right gave way. Wallace's flank was exposed. He instantly formed Colonel Wood's (Seventy-sixth Ohio) in a new line of battle, in right angles with the real one, and with orders to protect the flank. The Eleventh Indiana was likewise here engaged in a sharp engagement with the enemy attempting to flank, and for a time the contest waxed fierce. But Sherman soon filled the place of his broken regiments; again Wallace's Division forced forward, and again the enemy gave way.
By 2 o'clock the division was into the woods again, and for three-quarters of a mile it advanced under a continuous storm of shot. Then another contest or two with batteries—always met with skirmishers and sharp-shooting—then, by 4 o'clock, two hours later than on the right, a general Rebel retreat—then pursuit, recall and encampment on the old grounds of Sherman's Division, in the very tents from which those regiments were driven that hapless Sunday morning.
The camps were regained. The Rebels were repulsed. Their attack had failed. We stood where we began. Rebel cavalry were within half a mile of us. The retreating columns were within striking distance. But we had regained our camps. And so ended the battle of Pittsburgh Landing.
I do not pretend to give more than an estimate; but I have made the estimate with some care, going to the adjutants of different regiments that had been in as heavy fighting as any—getting statements of their losses, sure to be very nearly if not quite accurate, and approximating thus from the loss of a dozen regiments to the probable loss of all. I have ridden over the grounds, too—have seen the dead and wounded lying over the field—have noted the number in the hospitals and on the boats. As the result of it all, I do not believe our loss in killed and wounded will number over five thousand. The question of prisoners is another matter.
The best opinions of the strength with which the Rebels attacked us place their numbers at sixty thousand. They may have been reinforced five to ten thousand Sunday night.
Grant had scarcely forty thousand effective men on Sunday. Of these, half a dozen regiments were utterly raw—had scarcely had their guns long enough to know how to handle them. Some were supplied with weapons on their way up.
Buell crossed three divisions that took part in the action—Nelson's, Crittenden's, and McCook's. They numbered say twenty thousand—a liberal estimate. Lew. Wallace came up on Monday, with say seven thousand more. That gives us, counting the Sunday men as all effective again, sixty-seven thousand on Monday, on one side, against sixty to seventy thousand Rebels. It was not numbers that gained us the day, it was fighting. All honor to our Northern soldiers for it.