334

THE PEA RIDGE CAMPAIGN.

The movement of Van Dorn during the night of the 6th was bold, wellconceived, and would probably have been more successful if it had notbeen pushed too far out. If Van Dorn had formed his line with the left ofPrice’s forces resting on the heights, west of Elkhorn Tavern, and McCul-loch’s immediately on its right, he would have gained three or four hours’time, and could have swept down upon us before 8 o’clock in the morning,when no preparations had been made to receive him ; his two wings (Price’sand McCulloch’s) would not have been separated from each other by aninterval of several miles, and his communications between Bentonville and hisposition would have been protected. Instead of following this course of actiondemanded by the unforeseen impediment on the road, he passed several milesfarther to the north-east, and after gaining the Springfield road, he shifted thewhole of Price’s forces around to the south-east (toward the Huntsville road),consuming again much valuable time. In fact, instead of commencing his attackby the left at daylight on the 7th, as he expected to do, he did not commenceit earnestly before 2 p. m., and instead of gaining the desirable position on theheights and fields which my divisions occupied the next day, he made hisattack in Cross Timber Hollow, where our inferior forces had the advantageof defense and of concealing their weakness in the woods, ravines, and gulliesof that wilderness. Price’s troops fought very bravely, but so did ours; ittherefore happened that when Carr’s division had been forced back, even halfa mile beyond Elkhorn Tavern, the assailants had spent so much of theirforce and sustained so great a loss, that they were unable to follow up theirsuccess by a last assault on our reduced and contracted line. Price’s 6500men with 38 guns could not overwhelm about 4500 with 23 guns (including thereenforcements from the First and Second Divisions). The fight on this partof the field was, at the beginning, a wild, isolated, irregular struggle of singlebatteries and their supports, sometimes almost hand to hand, instead of in ser-ried and well-defined lines;—this accounts for the great losses on both sides.It was here that the two brigades of Yandever and Dodge, with the 9th and4th Iowa, the 35th Illinois, the 24th and Phelps’s Missouri regiment, Hayden’sand Jones’s batteries, and two mountain howitzers of Bowen’s battalion,assisted by a part of the 1st Missouri and 3d Illinois Cavalry, withstood theincessant onslaught of the two Confederate brigades of Colonel Little andGeneral Slack and the Missouri State Guards with the greatest tenacity, yield-ing only step by step, when exhausted by losses and without ammunition.

The death of McCulloch was not only fatal to his troops, but also a mostserious blow to Yan Dorn. Until 2 o’clock on the 7th, the latter had confidentlyexpected to hear of successful action against our left wing; but he receivedno answer to the dispatch he had sent, and began to push forward his ownwing. He succeeded, and when night fell made his headquarters at ElkhornTavern, where Carr and Major Weston of our army had been in the morning.But here he stopped. He says that by some misunderstanding the troops inthe advance were called back (as they were at Shiloh); the true reason fortheir withdrawal, however, seems to have been their satisfaction with whatthey had done, and the assurance of completing the work in the morning.