g men, in obedience to their officers,
their courage and their instinct of self-preservation, had formed along
the fence and opened fire. The apparently slight advantage of the
imperfect cover and the open range worked its customary miracle: the
assault, a singularly spiritless one, considering the advantages it
promised and that it was made by an organized and victorious force against
a broken and retreating one, was checked. The assailants actually retired,
and if they afterward renewed the movement they encountered none but our
dead and wounded.

The battle, as a battle, was at an end, but there was still some
slaughtering that it was possible to incur before nightfall; and as the
wreck of our brigade drifted back through the forest we met the brigade
(Gibson's) which, had the attack been made in column, as it should have
been, would have been but five minutes behind our heels, with another five
minutes behind its own. As it was, just forty-five minutes had elapsed,
during which the enemy had destroyed us and was now ready to perform the
same kindly office for our successors. Neither Gibson nor the brigade
which was sent to his "relief" as tardily as he to ours accomplished, or
could have hoped to accomplish, anything whatever. I did not note their
movements, having other duties, but Hazen in his "Narrative of Military
Service" says:

"I witnessed the attack of the two brigades following my own, and none of
these (troops) advanced nearer than one hundred yards of the enemy's
works. They went in at a run, and as organizations were broken in less
than a minute."

Nevertheless their losses were considerable, including several hundred
prisoners taken from a sheltered place whence they did not care to rise
and run. The entire loss was about fourteen hundred men, of whom nearly
one-half fell killed and wounded in Hazen's brigade in less than thirty
minutes of actual fighting.

General Johnston says:

"The Federal dead lying near our line were counted by many persons,
officers and soldiers. According to these counts there were seven hundred
of them."

This is obviously erroneous, though I have not the means at hand to
ascertain the true number. I remember that we were all astonished at the
uncommonly large proportion of dead to wounded--a consequence of the
uncommonly close range at which most of the fighting was done.

The action took its name from a water-power mill near by. This was on a
branch of a stream havin