Alfred Roman, The military operations of General Beauregard in the war between the states, 1861 to 1865

[302] all attempts to create enthusiasm on the part of the men. General Hardee, in command on the left, to whom General Beauregard had sent Lieutenant Chisolm, of his staff, to ascertain how he was faring, answered: ‘We are getting along very well, but tell the General they (meaning the enemy) are putting it to us very severely.’ Chisolm, though ordered to return, and report before dark, remained as aide-de-camp to General Hardee, who had none of his staff with him, and was bringing up two regiments into position, from the rear, when one of them broke in disorder, under the artillery fire from the field-pieces and gunboats, and fell back out of the fight.¹ Here, also, part of Pond's brigade, when about to make a last forward movement, received a fatal volley from the 27th Tennessee, of Cleburne's brigade, which compelled it to face about, and their artillery support to take a new position against a supposed hostile attack from the rear—an untoward event, which ended the share of this brigade in the conflict of that day.²

The remaining troops, under General Hardee—that is to say, Wood's brigade, greatly diminished by detachment and casualties, and a small portion of Cleburne's—did not succeed in making any impression on the force of artillery and infantry defending the position of Wallace's camps, still held by fragments of Wallace's, McClernand's, and Sherman's divisions. The forces on the right of General Hardee, under General Polk's direction, were engaged in the same desultory and indecisive contest, Gibson's and Anderson's brigades not being actively employed by him.³ So was it with General Breckinridge's division. Colonel Trabue, commanding the first Kentucky brigade of that division, in his report of the battle, speaking of the events of the day, following the surrender and capture of General Prentiss's command, says:

Finding the troops who had come in from my right halting one or two hundred yards in my front, I allowed the 6th and 9th Kentucky regiments hastily to change their guns for Enfield rifles, which the enemy had surrendered, and I then moved up and rejoined General Breckinridge, who, with Statham's and Bowen's brigades, was occupying the front line, being on the crest of the hill (or highland) overlooking the narrow valley of the Tennessee River, on which, and near by, was Pittsburg Landing. Having been halted here for more than an hour, we endured a most terrific cannonading