General Hood, commanding the enemy’s right corps, says: 

“On the morning of the 27th the enemy were known to be rapidly extending their left, attempting to turn my right as they extended.  Cleburne was deployed to meet them, and at half-past five P.M. a very stubborn attack was made on this division, extending to the right, where Major-General Wheeler with his cavalry division was engaging them.  The assault was continued with great determination upon both Cleburne and Wheeler.”

That, then, was the situation:  a weak brigade of fifteen hundred men, with masses of idle troops behind in the character of audience, waiting for the word to march a quarter-mile up hill through almost impassable tangles of underwood, along and across precipitous ravines, and attack breastworks constructed at leisure and manned with two divisions of troops as good as themselves.  True, we did not know all this, but if any man on that ground besides Wood and Howard expected a “walkover” his must have been a singularly hopeful disposition.  As topographical engineer it had been my duty to make a hasty examination of the ground in front.  In doing so I had pushed far enough forward through the forest to hear distinctly the murmur of the enemy awaiting us, and this had been duly reported; but from our lines nothing could be heard but the wind among the trees and the songs of birds.  Some one said it was a pity to frighten them, but there would necessarily be more or less noise.  We laughed at that:  men awaiting death on the battlefield laugh easily, though not infectiously.

The brigade was formed in four battalions, two in front and two in rear.  This gave us a front of about two hundred yards.  The right front battalion was commanded by Colonel R.L.  Kimberly of the 41st Ohio, the left by Colonel O.H.  Payne of the 124th Ohio, the rear battalions by Colonel J.C.  Foy, 23d Kentucky, and Colonel W.W.  Berry, 5th Kentucky—­all brave and skillful officers, tested by experience on many fields.  The whole command (known as the Second Brigade, Third Division, Fourth Corps) consisted of no fewer than nine regiments, reduced by long service to an average of less than two hundred men each.  With full ranks and only the necessary details for special duty we should have had some eight thousand rifles in line.

We moved forward.  In less than one minute the trim battalions had become simply a swarm of men struggling through the undergrowth of the forest, pushing and crowding.  The front was irregularly serrated, the strongest and bravest in advance, the others following in fan-like formations, variable and inconstant, ever defining themselves anew.  For the first two hundred yards our course lay along the left bank of a small creek in a deep ravine, our left battalions sweeping along its steep slope.  Then we came to the fork of the ravine.  A part of us crossed below, the rest above, passing over both branches, the regiments inextricably intermingled, rendering all military