ederate left. This
brigade had been very little under fire during the day. The battery
attached to it, Ketchum's, was now detached to aid in the assault upon
Wallace's front. Pond, with three Louisiana regiments of his brigade,
was directed to move to the left along the deep ravine which McClernand
had crossed, and silence one of McClernand's batteries. Trabue's
brigade, which had been struggling through the tangled forest covering
rough ground, separated by a lateral ravine from the ground in rear of
Wallace and Prentiss, through the dense thickets of which ravine no
command had been able to penetrate, was just emerging from the forest,
and crossing the Brier Creek ravine toward Hurlbut's camp. Trabue's men,
catching sight of the blue uniform of Pond's Louisiana regiments, fired
upon them. This being silenced, Pond's brigade continued down the
ravine, and up a lateral ravine toward the river, Colonel Mouton's
Eighteenth Louisiana in advance. As they neared the position the battery
withdrew, unmasking a line of infantry. A murderous fire was opened by
this line. Pond's brigade faltered, recoiled, withdrew; the Eighteenth
Louisiana, according to Colonel Mouton's report, leaving 207 dead and
wounded in the ravine.

This was the final attack on the National right. But scarcely was this
over before Hurlbut's command came falling back through his camp, pushed
on by Bragg and Breckenridge. W.H.L. Wallace's regiments, finding the
force which had been contending with Sherman and McClernand closing on
their rear, faced about and fought to their rear; some regiments
succeeded in cutting their way through and streamed toward their camp.
This sudden, tumultuous uproar, far in the rear of the day's conflict,
infected McClernand's command, and a large part of it broke in disorder.
The broken line was partially rallied and moved back to what McClernand
designates as his eighth position taken in the course of the day, and
here he bivouacked for the night, his right joining the left of
Sherman's bivouac; the left swung back so as to make an acute angle with
it. Colonel Marsh formed the right of the line. His "command having been
reduced to a merely nominal one" in the afternoon, he had been sent back
across the Brier Creek ravine before the rest of the division, to form a
new line, arrest all stragglers, and detain all unattached fragments.
Colonel Davis, with the Forty-sixth Illinois, was resting in front of
their camp in Veatch's brig