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Updated: August 3, 2024
Stewart's corps was at Atlanta, Lee's corps was between Atlanta and Jonesboro, and Cheatham's corps, then numbering not more than five thousand men because the woods and roads were full of straggling soldiers, who were not in the fight was face to face with the whole Yankee army, and he was compelled to flee, fight, or surrender.
In fulfillment of Bragg's original design no doubt, Cheatham's division attacked on my left, while heavy masses under Hardee, covered by batteries posted on the high ground formerly occupied by my guns, assaulted my right, the whole force advancing simultaneously.
By ten A.M., Cheatham's brigade of 2500 men, in which was my regiment, were also coming into the engagement. By eleven A.M., both armies were fully employed. In the mean time some of the guns on the fortifications at Columbus were trying their range upon the Federal gunboats, which lay about three miles distant, and replied fiercely to their challenges.
McCook, with his well closed division, McClernand and Sherman with their attenuated but persistent commands, Wallace with his fresh and compact division, with the batteries of Bouton, McAllister, Wood, Thompson, and Thurber, formed a curved line concentrating upon the convex line comprised of part of Clark's division, Wood's brigade, Trabue's brigade, Cheatham's division, and Ruggles' division, with the batteries of Ketchum, Byrne, Bankhead, and others.
Cheatham's Corps was ordered by Hood to again attack; they directed their assault this time to the front of the Fifteenth Corps, using the Decatur wagon-road and railway as a guide, and came forward in solid masses, meeting no success until they slipped through to the rear of the Fifteenth Corps by a deep cut used by the railway passing through our intrenchments.
He believed that with Bee in Cheatham's place he would have succeeded, and in view of the skill with which Lee executed the part assigned to him to hold Schofield at Duck river, it is more than probable he would have given at Spring Hill far better support than Cheatham gave. Hood led Cheatham within sight of an easy and brilliant success, and it was the hesitation displayed by Cheatham.
General Hood followed up this movement, skirmished lightly with Schofield at Columbia, began the passage of Duck River, below the town, and Cheatham's corps reached the vicinity of Spring Hill, whither General Schofield had sent General Stanley, with two of his divisions, to cover the movement of his trains.
That night we heard a volley of musketry in our immediate front, and did not know what it meant, but soon we came to where a few soldiers had lighted some candles and were holding them over the body of a dead soldier. It was Captain Allison, if I remember rightly, of General Cheatham's staff. He was very bloody, and had his clothes riddled with balls.
In calling them Cheatham's men, did the captain wish to insinuate that Cheatham's whole corps was charging on the regiment? He uses the words "withering," "destructive," and "that close range," in a way to raise the inference that the contact was very close.
The promptness with which Cleburne turned and rolled up Bradley's brigade when he was so unexpectedly assailed on his own flank, was the only energetic action on the part of any of them after they had crossed Rutherford's creek; and, no doubt, if Cleburne had not been halted by Cheatham's order, he would have gone on until he had reaped the full measure of success made so easily possible by the faulty situation of our army.
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