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| The graves of the Illinois troops.2 |
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They were all on horseback.
Grant held some dispatches in his hand.
He spoke of the seeming necessity of falling back and intrenching, so as to stand on the defensive, until re-enforcements and Foote's flotilla should arrive.
His words were few, as usual, and his face was flushed by strong emotions of the mind, while he turned his eyes nervously now and then on the dispatches.
It was suggested that McClernand's defeat uncovered the road by which the enemy might escape to Clarksville.
In an instant the General's countenance changed from cloudiness to sunshine.
A new thought took possession of him and he acted instantly on its suggestions.
Grasping the dispatches more firmly, he ordered McClernand to retake the hill he had lost, while Smith should make a simultaneous attack on the Confederate right.1
The new movement was immediately begun.
McClernand requested Wallace to retake the ground lost in the morning.
A column of attack was soon formed, with the Eighth Missouri, Colonel Morgan L. Smith, and the Eleventh Indiana (Wallace's old regiment), Colonel George McGinnis (both led by the former as a brigade), moving at the head.
Two Ohio regiments, under Colonel Ross, formed a supporting column.
At the same time, Colonel Cruft formed a line of battle at the foot of the hill.
The Eighth Missouri led the van, closely followed by the Eleventh Indiana; and when about half way up the hill, they received a volley from its summit.
The ground was broken, rough, and partly wooded.
The Nationals pressed on, and the struggle was fierce and unyielding for more than an hour.
Gradually the Confederates were pushed back, and their assailants soon cleared the hill.
They drove the insurgents to their intrenchments, and would have assailed them there had not an order reached Wallace, when he was only one hundred and fifty yards off the works, to halt and retire his column, as a new plan of operations was in contemplation for the next day. That commander was astonished and perplexed.
He was satisfied that Grant was not informed of the entire success of his movement.
He was also satisfied that if he should fall back and give up the hill (it was then five o'clock in the evening) the way would be opened for the Confederates to escape under cover of approaching darkness.
So he assumed the responsibility of disobeying the order, and he bivouacked on the field of victory.
All of that keen wintry night his wearied troops were busy in ministering to the wants of the wounded, and in burying the many Illinois
1 General Sherman says that General Grant told him that, at a certain period of the battle, “he saw that either side was ready to give way if the other showed a bold front, and he determined to do that very thing, to advance on the enemy, when, as he prognosticated, the enemy surrendered.” --Sherman's Letter to the Editor of the United States service magazine, January, 1865.
2 this is from a sketch made by the author early in May, 1866. this burial-place, surrounded by a rude wattling fence, was in Hysmith's old field, in the edge of a wood, near where McArthur's troops were posted. The trees and shrubbery in the adjoining wood showed hundreds of marks of the severe battle.
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