a reserve division into
the line to take his place; how Wood withdrew from the line, as ordered,
at the fatal moment when the enemy was preparing to attack; how the
furious foe pressed through the gap, cut the army in two, struck the
lines to right and left in flank and rear, swept the centre, the right
wing and the reserves off the field, and doubled up and crushed the left
wing as far as Reynolds's division, whose fortune has been told. All
this is familiar enough now, but those who remained on the field in the
four divisions of the left knew nothing of it then. They only knew that
the line was broken beyond Reynolds, and that, although somewhere in the
distance was a force which had not yet fled nor surrendered, they were
left to bear alone the battle against Bragg's victorious army. The odds
were five or six to one--perhaps more, maybe less. It did not matter to
be precise: Bragg had men enough to put a double line of troops entirely
around the four divisions. That was enough.

It was after midday when the disaster was complete and the divisions of
Baird, Johnson, Palmer and Reynolds were able to understand the
situation. I need not recount in detail the repeated attempts of the
enemy to crush the line of the four divisions at one point and another.
If the reader can recall the description of the first attack on Palmer's
division, he will have a very fair example of the work which busied us
at intervals during those long hours. The enemy was, of course, not
unaware of his great success in dividing the army and driving off the
greater part of it; nor was he lacking in efforts to improve the
advantage by destroying the divisions which yet confronted him. Every
attack, however, resulted in failure, and the assailants retired each
time with heavy losses. At length it was evident to us that it had
become difficult to bring even Longstreet's boasted troops up to attacks
which met such sure and bloody repulses. There were but four divisions
against an army, but the four would not be taken or driven.

With hands and faces blackened by the smoke and dust of battle those men
stood devotedly to their posts, their ranks thinned by every assault,
but their aim as fatal as ever. But one dread possessed them: ammunition
ran short, and there were no supplies. In the intervals between the
enemy's assaults the cartridge-boxes of dead comrades along the line and
in the open field, where were the fierce struggles of the morning, were