n at
its head, took position on the right of the Twenty-sixth Ohio, with its
right advanced so that its line of fire would sweep the front of the
regiments on its left. The Ninety-seventh Ohio and One Hundredth Illinois
came up and still further strengthened the right of Hazen's position. They
had not long to wait for the attack. These dispositions had barely been
made when a long line of infantry emerged from behind the hill. Adam's and
Jackson's fresh brigades were on the right, and Donelson's and Chalmers's,
badly cut up but stout of heart, were on the left. Out they came in
splendid style, full six thousand strong. Estepp's case-shot tore through
their ranks, but the gaps closed up. Parsons sent volley after volley of
grape shot against it, and the Sixth and Twenty-sixth Ohio, taking up the
refrain, added the sharp rattle of their minie rifles to the unearthly
din. Still the line pressed forward, firing as they came, nor wavered in
the onward march, until met by a simultaneous volley of musketry which
stretched hundreds of their number mangled upon the earth. They staggered
back, but, quickly reformed and reinforced by Preston and Palmer,
advanced again to the charge. The battle had hushed on the extreme right,
and the dreadful splendor of this advance is indescribable. The right was
even with the left of the Union line, and the left stretched way past the
point of woods from which Negley had retired. It was such a charge as this
that broke the lines of Wallace and Hurlbut at Shiloh, and enveloped
Prentice in its strong embrace. It had no sooner moved into the open field
from the cover of the river bank than it was saluted with such a roar of
artillery as shook the earth. Men plucked the cotton from the bolls at
their feet and stuffed it in their ears. No human force could withstand
the tornado of iron that swept against it. Huge gaps were torn in it at
every discharge. Men lay in heaps before and behind it. Shells exploding
sent showers of mangled forms into the air. They staggered forward half
the distance across the fields, when the infantry lines blazed in their
front, and a shower of minie balls was added to the fury of the storm.
They wavered and fell back. The field was won. Night fell upon a field
strewn with the mangled forms of men, who, but twenty-four hours before
were buoyant with life and hope, upon the faces of dead men turned upward
to the sky; upon long lines of infantry faint for lack of food and gasp