or 20,000 men; and it seems to me to
be impossible to draw the line that gives the right to a subordinate
officer to use his own judgment in engaging an enemy when a great battle
is within his hearing.

Suppose the Sixteenth Corps, with less than 5,000 men, seeing at least
three times their number in their front, should have retreated, instead of
standing and fighting as it did: What would have been the result? I say
that in all my experience in life, until the two forces struck and the
Sixteenth Corps stood firm, I never passed more anxious moments.

Sprague's Brigade, of the same corps, was engaged at the same time within
hearing, but on a different field,--at Decatur,--fighting and stubbornly
holding that place, knowing that if he failed the trains massed there and
_en route_ from Roswell would be captured. His fight was a gallant and
sometimes seemingly almost hopeless one--giving ground inch by inch,
until, finally, he obtained a position that he could not be driven from,
and one that protected the entire trains of the Army.

As Hardee's attack fell upon the Sixteenth Army Corps, his left Division
(Cleburn's) lapped over and beyond Blair's left, and swung around his left
front; they poured down through the gap between the left of the
Seventeenth and the right of the Sixteenth Corps, taking Blair in front,
flank, and rear. Cheatham's Corps moved out of Atlanta and attacked in
Blair's front. General Giles A. Smith commanded Blair's left Division, his
right connecting with Leggett at Bald Hill, where Leggett's Division held
the line until they connected with the Fifteenth Corps, and along this
front the battle raged with great fury.

As Cleburn advanced along the open space between the Sixteenth and
Seventeenth Corps they cut off from Blair's left and captured a portion of
two Regiments of his command, and forced the Seventeenth Corps to form new
lines, utilizing the old intrenchments thrown up by the enemy, fighting
first on one side and then on the other, as the attack would come from
Hardee in the rear or Cheatham in the front, until about 3:30 p. m., when,
evidently after a lull, an extraordinary effort was made by the rebels to
wipe out Giles A. Smith's Division and capture Leggett's Hill, the enemy
approaching under cover of the woods until they were within fifty yards of
Smith's temporary position, when they pressed forward until the fight
became a hand-to-hand conflict across the trenches occupied by Smith,