who held the rifles were perfectly
accustomed to their use.

328

After four hours of constant and desperate fighting there was a
noticeable fading in the vim of the Confederate assaults and diminishing
stubbornness of resistance to the Union blows. When the Union soldiers
pushed on through the woods after their enemies they found them falling
back across the fields beyond in great disorder. A few shells from the
Union guns frustrated all attempts to rally them. Osterhaus and Davis
pushed their skirmishers through the woods for a mile, and the cavalry
went still further, finding the three guns of the flying battery with
the carriages burned off, and reporting back that everything seemed to
be in full retreat for Bentonville.

One squad of cavalry came back with Col. Hebert, the next in command to
Gen. Mcintosh; Col. Mitchell and Maj. W. F. Tunnard, of the 3d La., of
the same division; a Major, two Captains and 33 privates, all having
been separated from their commands in the rush through the woods, and
unable to regain them.

After the fall of Gens. McCulloch and Mcintosh the command in that part
of the field devolved upon Gen. Albert Pike, and it is rare that so
great a responsibility falls upon one so unfit. Something of a poet Pike
certainly was; much more of a successful politician and place-hunter,
but nothing of a leader of men upon the battlefield. His soldiership
became sicklied o'er when he went beyond the parade ground. Apparently
he did not know what to do, nor, if he did, how to do it.

Regimental commanders reported that they were unable to find him.

329

His own verbose report, made six days after the battle, is quite full of
unintentional humor. He says that after the first charge the field was
"a mass of the utmost confusion, all talking, riding this way and that,
and listening to no orders from any one." He could get no one to pay any
attention to what he said. His Indians, who had stopped in the charge to
scalp the dead and wounded, would at once stampede whenever a shell was
thrown in their direction. He devoted himself for a couple of hours to
what has been described as "heavy standing around."

Then he fell back with some of the troops a short distance and did some
more standing around, until a Union artillerist noticed him and threw a
shell in his direction, when he fell back out of range, and again stood
around until some one informed him that a body of 7,000 Federals was
moving aro