James D. Porter, Confederate Military History, a library of Confederate States Military History: Volume 7.1, Tennessee
Clement Anselm Evans, Ed.

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[336] Tennessee; in the autumn of 1861 he was promoted to major on the staff of General Cheatham, in the same department, and in a few months was made lieutenant-colonel of the Fifteenth. He commanded it at the battle of Shiloh, was soon promoted to colonel, and led it with distinction in all the engagements of the Southwest until, on the promotion of General Bate, he was made brigadier-general. At Missionary Ridge he was dangerously wounded and permanently disabled, and was not in the field again until Major-General Wilson, with 10,000 cavalry, was sent to Alabama and Georgia to lay waste and destroy the country. General Tyler, still on crutches, was sojourning near West Point, Ga., when Col. O. H. LaGrange, commanding a brigade of Wilson's cavalry, entered that place on the 16th of April and made an easy capture of a lot of quartermaster and commissary stores. Hearing of the approach of LaGrange, General Tyler organized a lot of convalescents and Georgia militia, and undertook the defense of a little earthwork provided for the protection of a railroad bridge and called that day ‘Fort Tyler.’ Colonel LaGrange reported that it was defended by two field pieces and a 32-pounder, and ‘265 desperate men.’ There were no trained gunners in the garrison, so no one of the attacking force was injured by the artillery. This fort, said Colonel LaGrange, was ‘a remarkably strong earthwork, 35 yards square.’ He assailed it with a brigade composed of the Second and Fourth Indiana, First Wisconsin and Seventh Kentucky regiments, dismounted, and the Eighteenth Indiana battery, and reported that the assault was made ‘under a scathing fire;’ and his chief, Major-General Wilson, in his report to Maj.-Gen. George H. Thomas, said the assault was made ‘under a withering fire of musketry and grape,’ but in this large attacking column, Colonel LaGrange stated his loss was only 7 killed and 29 wounded. He reported the loss of the defenders of the fort at ‘18 killed and 28 seriously wounded, mostly shot through ’