any
force I had free to help retake the line that General John C. Brown's
Division had broken through the Fifteenth Corps. I sent Mercer's Brigade
of the Second Division, and with it sent Captain Jonas of my staff. (See
his statement copied in my address.) Logan followed with the command, and
it double-quicked the whole distance without stopping. As soon as it got
there it found Lightburn's Division drifted back, but holding their line
behind the trees, and the enemy in possession of DeGresse's Battery; and
as Mercer's Brigade went in on the front, Williamson's Brigade of Wood's
Division, which Sherman had directed to make a flank charge, was moving,
and they both reached the works together. The men of Mercer's Brigade got
hold of DeGresse's guns (see report of Eighty-first Illinois) and turned
them on the enemy. There has always been a contest between these two
Brigades as to which got there first, but that does not matter, for they
got in together and retook the line. General J. C. Brown, who commanded
the Confederate Division, was with me afterwards for many years on the
Texas and Pacific Railway, and has given me a full account of his attack,
and the fury with which he was forced out by this movement from the flank
by Wood and the direct assault by Mercer. Mercer in going in had his horse
killed under him.

Fighting along the Fifteenth Corps came late, and was all pretty much
after the fighting on my front was over, because when General Logan came
to me for aid I was intrenching the new line made by the refusal of
Blair's left, and took Mercer's Brigade right out of my front to go with
him. The fact is I did not happen to have a single man in reserve. Every
man I had on the field was in line from the commencement of the fighting.
Sweeney's Division stood right up in the road it was marching on, and the
two batteries were in the center of his division; the position was a very
strong one. If I had had plenty of time to select a position I could not
have found a stronger one. It was the first time I ever saw such execution
done by artillery. They used canister against those columns with terrible
effect.

To show you how small a thing will sometimes change the prospects in a
battle, one of Hardee's Divisions coming towards me got entangled in
something--at that time I could not tell what, but on going to the ground
afterwards I found that it was a mill-pond--that exposed the flank of
Maney's Division that was next to