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The brigade had fallen back about two hundred yards, when General Cheatham's presence reassured them, and they soon were in line and ready to follow so brave and gallant a leader, and had that order of "cease firing, you are firing on your own men," not been given, Maney's brigade would have had the honor of capturing eighteen pieces of artillery, and ten thousand prisoners.
And in a paper on this campaign by a captain of the regiment, he relates how the officers of the regiment tried to stop the flying troops, and taunted their officers with the bad example they were setting their men; how the regiment opened a rapid, withering fire from a little parapet of cartridges which the officers, breaking open boxes of ammunition, had built in front of the men, and how their fire proved so destructive at that close range that it stopped Cheatham's men who then fell back and commenced building breastworks.
Bate declined to obey Cheatham's first order because it conflicted with the order direct from Hood, under which he was acting, and Cheatham's order had to be repeated. When the second order reached Bate he was still loitering where he had encountered the 26th Ohio.
As before described, General Hood had three full corps of infantry S. D. Lee's, A. P. Stewart's, and Cheatham's, at Florence, Alabama with Forrest's corps of cavalry, numbering in the aggregate about forty-five thousand men. General Thomas was in Nashville, Tennessee, quietly engaged in reorganizing his army out of the somewhat broken forces at his disposal.
Gist's brigade led the front line of Brown's division, Cheatham's corps. It was on the left, fronting Strickland's and Moore's, on the breastworks. The Twenty-fourth South Carolina Infantry was in front of the charging lines. His horse was shot, and, dismounting, he was leading the right of the brigade when he fell, pierced through the heart.
The activity observed at Purdy and Bethel was, in fact, Cheatham's preparation for his march, Saturday, to his position in General Polk's line.
This attack failed; it was no doubt timed to occur at the same time that Cheatham's Corps attacked from the Atlanta front, which Leggett met. The brunt of Cheatham's attack was against Leggett's Hill, the key to the position of that portion of the Army of the Tennessee.
"Cease firing, cease firing," I hallooed; in fact, the whole skirmish line hallooed, and kept on telling them that they were Yankees, and to shoot; but the order was to cease firing, you are firing on your own men. Captain James, of Cheatham's staff, was sent forward and killed in his own yard.
On the left Cheatham's corps, of Cleburne, Brown, Bate, and Walker. Behind Cheatham marched Johnston's and Clayton's brigade for support, thirty thousand and more of men, in solid lines, bands playing and flags fluttering in the afternoon wind. Nor had the federals been idle.
That was Bate's division, and after driving off the 26th there was nothing whatever to prevent Bate from sweeping down the pike towards Columbia. If he had diligently obeyed that order he would have progressed so far before Cheatham's recall order reached him that he would have met Ruger coming to Spring Hill, and then the cat would have been out of the bag.
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