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Updated: September 28, 2025
When I had climbed to the top of the bluff I was much disappointed, for I could see but little only the advanced rifle-pits across the river, and Fort Nogent beyond them, not enough, certainly, to repay a non-combatant for taking the risk of being killed.
At the foot of the ridge was the enemy's first line of rifle-pits; at a point midway up its face, another line, incomplete; and on the crest was a third line, in which Bragg had massed his artillery.
This line ran generally along the crest of high ground, but in one place crossed a ravine which opens into the river between the village and the fort. The ground inside and outside of this intrenched line was very broken and generally wooded. The trees outside of the rifle-pits had been cut down for a considerable way out, and had been felled so that their tops lay outwards from the intrenchments.
Down we wound over the road that zig-tagged through the forts, batteries and rifle-pits covering the eastern ascent to the Flap-past the wonderful Murrell Spring so-called because the robber chief had killed, as he stooped to drink of its crystal waters, a rich drover, whom he was pretending to pilot through the mountains down to where the "Virginia road" turned off sharply to the left and entered Powell's Valley.
Seeing the enemy thus strengthening himself, it was plain that we would have to act quickly if we expected to accomplish much, and I already began to doubt the feasibility of our remaining in the first line of rifle-pits when we should have carried them.
Haines' Bluff had been strongly fortified on the land side, and on all commanding points from there to the Big Black at the railroad crossing batteries had been constructed. The work of connecting by rifle-pits where this was not already done, was an easy task for the troops that were to defend them.
Having, by command, stormed the first line of rifle-pits on the ascent, upon the Confederate left, they suddenly took the control into their own hands; without orders they dashed forward, clambered upward in a sudden and resistless access of fighting fury, and in an hour, emerging above the mists which shrouded the mid-mountain from the anxious view of General Grant, they planted the stars and stripes on top of Lookout Mountain.
When I crossed the rifle-pits on the top the Confederates were still holding fast at Bragg's headquarters, and a battery located there opened fire along the crest; making things most uncomfortably hot. Seeing the danger to which I was exposed, for I was mounted, Colonel Joseph Conrad, of the Fifteenth Missouri, ran up and begged me to dismount.
"It proved impossible to dislodge those fellows from the banks," my informant said; "they had dug rifle-pits, and swarmed like hornets, and when fairly silenced in one direction they were sure to open upon us from another." All this sounded alarming, but it was nine months since the event had happened; and although nothing had gone up the river meanwhile, I counted on less resistance now.
From the war-ships came the cherry notes of bugles, and from the Plaza de Armas, in which a regiment was passing in review, swelled the inspiring music of a full military band. Beyond the city every near-by elevation was occupied by a stout block-house, each displaying the red and yellow flag of Spain, and forming the nucleus for radiating lines of rifle-pits.
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