HE REBEL CHARGE AT CORINTH.]

General Van Dorn gave Price's Division the honor of assaulting these
works. The division was composed of Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas
regiments, and estimated at eight thousand strong. Price directed the
movement in person, and briefly told his men that the position must be
taken at all hazards. The line was formed on the wooded ground at
the base of the hills on which our batteries stood. The advance was
commenced simultaneously along the line.

As the Rebels emerged from the forest, our guns were opened. Officers
who were in Battery Williams at the time of the assault, say the
Rebels moved in splendid order. Grape and shell made frequent and wide
gaps through their ranks, but the line did not break nor waver. The
men moved directly forward, over the fallen timber that covered the
ground, and at length came within range of our infantry, which had
been placed in the forts to support the gunners. Our artillery had
made fearful havoc among the Rebels from the moment they left the
protection of the forest. Our infantry was waiting with impatience to
play its part.

When the Rebels were fairly within range of our small-arms, the order
was given for a simultaneous volley along our whole line. As the
shower of bullets struck the Rebel front, hundreds of men went down.
Many flags fell as the color-bearers were killed, but they were
instantly seized and defiantly waved. With a wild cheer the Rebels
dashed forward up to the very front of the forts, receiving without
recoil a most deadly fire. They leaped the ditch and gained the
parapet. They entered a bastion of Battery Williams, and for a minute
held possession of one of our guns.

Of the dozen or more that gained the interior of the bastion, very few
escaped. Nearly all were shot down while fighting for possession
of the gun, or surrendered when the parapet was cleared of those
ascending it. The retreat of the Rebels was hasty, but it was orderly.
Even in a repulse their coolness did not forsake them. They left their
dead scattered thickly in our front. In one group of seventeen, they
lay so closely together that their bodies touched each other. An
officer told me he could have walked along the entire front of Battery
Williams, touching a dead or wounded Rebel at nearly every step. Two
Rebel colonels were killed side by side, one of them falling with his
hand over the edge of the ditch. They were buried where they died.
In the attack in whi