h the
two lines fought. It was dim with smoke, but not greatly obscured: the
smoke rose and spread in sheets among the branches of the trees. Most of
our men fought kneeling as they fired, many of them behind trees, stones
and whatever cover they could get, but there were considerable groups that
stood. Occasionally one of these groups, which had endured the storm of
missiles for moments without perceptible reduction, would push forward,
moved by a common despair, and wholly detach itself from the line. In a
second every man of the group would be down. There had been no visible
movement of the enemy, no audible change in the awful, even roar of the
firing--yet all were down. Frequently the dim figure of an individual
soldier would be seen to spring away from his comrades, advancing alone
toward that fateful interspace, with leveled bayonet. He got no farther
than the farthest of his predecessors. Of the "hundreds of corpses within
twenty paces of the Confederate line," I venture to say that a third were
within fifteen paces, and not one within ten.

It is the perception--perhaps unconscious--of this inexplicable phenomenon
that causes the still unharmed, still vigorous and still courageous
soldier to retire without having come into actual contact with his foe. He
sees, or feels, that he _cannot_. His bayonet is a useless weapon for
slaughter; its purpose is a moral one. Its mandate exhausted, he sheathes
it and trusts to the bullet. That failing, he retreats. He has done all
that he could do with such appliances as he has.

No command to fall back was given, none could have been heard. Man by man,
the survivors withdrew at will, sifting through the trees into the cover
of the ravines, among the wounded who could drag themselves back; among
the skulkers whom nothing could have dragged forward. The left of our
short line had fought at the corner of a cornfield, the fence along the
right side of which was parallel to the direction of our retreat. As the
disorganized groups fell back along this fence on the wooded side, they
were attacked by a flanking force of the enemy moving through the field in
a direction nearly parallel with what had been our front. This force, I
infer from General Johnston's account, consisted of the brigade of General
Lowry, or two Arkansas regiments under Colonel Baucum. I had been sent by
General Hazen to that point and arrived in time to witness this formidable
movement. But already our retreatin