Robert Underwood Johnson, Clarence Clough Buell, Battles and Leaders of the Civil War: The Opening Battles. Volume 1.

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“ [605] to drive the enemy he may find in his front into the river. He needs no further orders.” The words are, as near as I can remember them, exactly the ones General Johnston used. I obeyed the order given, met General Breckinridge, conducted him to the place where I had left my cavalry, but found both them and the Federal division gone. I rode with General Breckinridge a few hundred yards forward, and we soon received a volley which let us know that the Federal forces had retired but a very short distance from their original position. General Breckinridge deployed Bowen's and Statham's brigades, moved them forward, and soon engaged the Federal forces. I bade the General good-day and good luck, and once more rode down the line of battle until I found General Bragg. With him I remained, excepting when carrying orders and making reconnoissances, until the close of the first day's fight.

I witnessed the various bloody and unsuccessful attacks on the “Hornets' Nest.” During one of the dreadful repulses of our forces, General Bragg directed me to ride forward to the central regiment of a brigade of troops that was recoiling across an open field, to take its colors and carry them forward. “The flag must not go back again,” he said. Obeying the order, I dashed through the line of battle, seized the colors from the color-bearer, and said to him, “General Bragg says these colors must not go to the rear.” While I was talking to him the color-sergeant was shot down. A moment or two afterward I was almost alone on horseback in the open field between the two lines of battle. An officer came up to me with a bullet-hole in each cheek, the blood streaming from his mouth, and asked, “What are you doing with my colors, sir?” “I am obeying General Bragg's orders, sir, to hold them where they are,” was my reply. “Let me have them,” he said. “If any man but my color-bearer carries these colors, I am the man. Tell General Bragg I will see that these colors are in the right place. But he must attack this position in flank; we can never carry it alone from the front.” It was Colonel H. W. Allen, afterward Governor Allen of Louisiana. I returned, miraculously preserved, to General Bragg, and reported Colonel Allen's words. I then carried an order to the same troops, giving the order, I think, to General Gibson, to fall back to the fence in the rear and reorganize. This was done, and then General Bragg dispatched me to the right, and Colonel Frank Gardner (afterward Major-General) to the left, to inform the brigade and division commanders on either side that a combined movement would be made on the front and flanks of that position. The movements were made, and Prentiss was captured.

As Colonel William Preston Johnston says, that capture was a dear triumph to us — dear for the many soldiers we had lost in the first fruitless attacks, but still dearer on account of the valuable time it cost us. The time consumed in gathering Prentiss's command together, in taking their arms, in marching them to the rear, was inestimably valuable. Not only that; the news of the capture spread, and grew as it spread; many soldiers and officers believed we had captured the bulk of the Federal army, and hundreds left their positions and came to see the “captured Yanks.” But after a while the Confederates were gotten into ranks, and a perfect line of battle was formed, with our left wing resting on Owl Creek and our right on the Tennessee River. General Polk was on the left, then Bragg, then Hardee, then Breckinridge. In our front only one single point was showing fight, a hill crowned with artillery. I was with General Bragg, and rode with him along the front of his corps. I heard him say over and over again, “One more charge, my men, and we shall capture them all.” While this was going on a staff-officer (or rather, I think, it was one of the detailed clerks of General Beauregard's headquarters, for he wore no uniform) came up to General Bragg, and said, “The General directs that the pursuit be stopped; the victory is sufficiently complete; it is needless to expose our men to the fire of the gun-boats.” General Bragg said, “My God, was a victory ever sufficiently complete?” and added, “Have you given that order to any one else?” “Yes, sir,” was the reply, “to General Polk, on your left; and if you will look to the left, you will see that the order is being obeyed.” General Bragg looked, and said, “My God, my God, it is too late!” and turning to me, he said, “Captain, carry that order to the troops on the right” ; and to Captain Frank Parker, “You carry it to the left.” In a short time the troops were all falling back-and the victory was lost. Captain Parker and myself were the only members of General Bragg's staff who were with him at that time. Captain Parker, I think, is still living in South Carolina, and will surely remember all that I have narrated.

In this hasty sketch I have intentionally omitted everything but the beginning and end of that day's operations, to throw what light I can upon the two great points of dispute: Was the Federal army surprised by our attack? and whose fault was it that the victory was not sufficiently complete on the first day?

In regard to the second day's fight, I will touch upon but one point. I, as a great many other staff-officers, was principally occupied in the early hours of the second day in gathering together our scattered men and getting them into some sort of manageable organization. In this duty I collected and organized a body of men about a thousand strong. They were composed of men of at least a half-dozen different regiments. The 7th Kentucky, with a tattered flag, and the 9th Arkansas were the most numerously represented. We had not one single field-officer in the command. When I reported to General Beauregard that I had the troops divided into companies, had assigned a captain to duty as lieutenant-colonel and a first lieutenant as major, he himself put me in command of them as colonel. In order that my command might have a name, I dubbed it the “Beauregard regiment,”--a name that was received with three rousing cheers. Not long after my regiment was thus officered and christened, a message came from General Breckinridge on our