The Fall of the Confederate Government by Jefferson Davis

Author:Jefferson Davis [Davis, Jefferson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781411438347
Publisher: Barnes and Noble, Inc.

During the night batteries were put in position to open on the town at 4 AM. At daybreak the action was to begin on the left, to be immediately followed by an advance on the extreme right. The order was not executed, the commander of the wing which was to make the attack failed to do so, and another officer was sent to take his place. In the meantime the center became engaged, and the action extended to the left. The plan had been disarranged; nevertheless, the center and left pushed forward and planted their colors on the last stronghold of the enemy; his "heavy guns were silenced, and all seemed about to be ended, when a heavy fire from fresh troops that had succeeded in reaching Corinth was poured into our thin ranks," and with this combined assault on Price's exhausted corps, which had sustained the whole conflict, those gallant troops were driven back. The day was lost. The enemy, reenforced, was concentrated against our left, and Lovell's division, which was at this time advancing, pursuant to orders, and was on the point of assaulting the works, was ordered to move to the left to prevent a sortie, and cover their retreat. Our army retired during the day to Chewalla without pursuit, and rested for the night free from molestation.

Our loss was very heavy of gallant men and officers. In the fierce conflicts the officers displayed not only daring, but high military skill, their impetuous charges being marked by judicious selection of time and place. Colonel William S. Barry, who, as commander of the burial party, visited General Rosecrans, was courteously received by that officer, who, while declining to admit the command within his lines, sent assurance to General Van Dorn that "every becoming respect should be shown to his dead and wounded. . . . He had the grave of Colonel Rodgers, who led the Second Texas sharpshooters, inclosed and marked with a slab, in respect to the gallantry of his charge. Rodgers fell before Gates called on me to reenforce him on the edge of the ditch of Battery Robbinet."86 This officer, W. P. Rodgers, was a captain in the First Regiment of Mississippi Rifles in the war with Mexico, and the gallantry which attracted the admiration of the enemy at Corinth was in keeping with the character he acquired in the former service referred to. Of this retreat, that able soldier and military critic, General Dabney H. Maury, in a contribution to the "Annals of the War," wrote:

Few commanders have ever been so beset as Van Dorn was in the forks of the Hatchie, and very few would have extricated a beaten army as he did then. One, with a force stated at ten thousand men, headed him at the Hatchie Bridge; while Rosecrans, with twenty thousand men, was attacking his rear at the Tuscumbia Bridge, only five miles off. The whole road between was occupied by a train of nearly four hundred wagons, and a defeated army of about eleven thousand muskets.

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