pike at a distance of not more
than 150 yards. Many contradictory statements have been made relative to
the distance of that part of the Confederate line from the pike. The
owner of the land pointed out to me a small plantation graveyard as
being just inside their line that night. He said that the position of
their line was marked, after they had gone in the morning, by the rail
barricades they had built, and by the remains of their bivouac fires,
and he very positively asserted that no part of their line, facing the
pike, was distant more than 150 yards from the pike. All the intervening
space was cleared land. When the divisions of Cox, Wood and Kimball came
up from Duck river later in the night, they marched along unmolested
within that easy range of the Confederate line, and could plainly see
the men around the bivouac fires. A staff officer was stationed on the
pike beyond Johnson's left, where the fires first came into view, to
caution the troops as they came up to march by the fires as silently as
possible. Captain Bestow, of General Wood's staff, has related that when
the officer told Wood, riding at the head of his division, that the long
line of fires he could see paralleling the pike so closely on the right
was the bivouac fires of the enemy, the veteran Wood was so astounded
that he exclaimed: "In God's name, no!" When they came abreast of the
fires one of Wood's orderlies, believing it to be impossible they could
be the enemy, started to ride over to one of the fires to light his
pipe, but had gone only a short distance when he was fired on, and came
galloping back. A colonel of Johnson's division has stated that he held
his regiment in line, momentarily expecting an order to open fire, until
his men, one after another, overcome with fatigue, had all dropped to
the ground to go to sleep. Some of Johnson's men, on their own
responsibility, went out on the pike between the passage of the
different divisions, to capture stragglers for the sake of getting the
contents of their haversacks. They were the men who made it unsafe, as
reported by General Stanley, for a staff officer or an orderly to ride
along the pike when a column of troops was not passing.

General Hood had gone to bed in Thompson's house when he was informed
that troops were marching along the pike. Without getting out of bed he
directed Colonel Mason, his chief of staff, to send an order to Cheatham
to advance on the pike and attack, but Mason a