94
troops, on right and left, when they were not hotly engagedin front, was turned upon Cheatham’s men, but it was nineo’clock before they gave up the contest, and those that wereleft were reformed on the line occupied by Stewart andLee, though for more than an hour occasional volleys wereexchanged. At eleven o’clock, the whole front being quiet,Schofield ordered the withdrawal of our troops to the northside of the river, but an accidental fire broke out in the vil-lage, making a bright background on which our linescould be too plainly seen by the enemy, and it was neces-sary to wait an hour till the fire was extinguished. Kim-ball’s division then marched by the rear to the wagonbridge, Ruger’s passed behind the lines to the railroadbridge, Opdycke’s brigade was sent to follow Kimball, andReilly’s division crossed behind Ruger, a line of skirmishers,under command of Major Dow, Inspector-General, remain-ing in the trenches till all the rest were over and the planktaken from the wagon bridge, when these also crossed atthe railway. The dead could not be removed, but the welldisciplined ambulance corps, under Surgeon Frink, hadtaken off all the wounded who could endure transportation,except some who had crawled away into buildings and shedsand were not found in the darkness. Reilly’s division car-ried off as trophies twenty-two battle flags of the enemy,and Opdycke’s brigade ten . 1
The battle had been peculiar, partly by reason of the latehour in the day at which it began, which prolonged thehard fighting far into the night, and partly from the char-acter of the weather. A day or two of sunshine had fol-lowed the continuous storms of the preceding fortnight,
1 Hood says that thirteen was the number of flags he lost, but the numberstated above was officially reported by our division and brigade commanders andverified at the time.