marching after breakfast from the boats to the fort, met General Grant
with some of his staff riding down the river road to where the boats
lay. The sally had been made and the attack begun; but there was nothing
in the sound that came through several miles of intervening forest to
indicate anything more serious than McClernand's previous assaults.

Baldwin's brigade, leaving the intrenchments at 6 A.M., marched by the
right flank out a narrow and obstructed byroad, crossed the valley in
front of the works, and, while ascending the slope beyond, encountered
what they supposed to be a line of pickets. But Oglesby's hungry men had
slept little that cold night, and by simply rising to their feet were in
line of battle. Baldwin's brigade, in attempting to deploy, was thrown
into confusion, repeatedly rallied, and was thrown into disorder and
pushed back before its line was established. Colonel Baldwin, in his
report, says that deployment forward into line would have brought his
men into such an exposed situation that he threw his regiment first into
column of company, then deployed on the right into line, and admits that
practising tactics with new troops under fire is a different thing from
practice on the drill-ground. The movement that Colonel Baldwin
attempted with his leading regiment, the Twenty-sixth Mississippi, is
the same that General Sigel accomplished at Pea Ridge with such
brilliant effect, where he had by artillery fire to drive back the
enemy's line to gain room for each successive deployment.

The firing sufficiently notified General McArthur where he was, and,
without waiting for orders, he formed his brigade into line on Oglesby's
right. Pillow's division, continually filing out from the intrenchments,
continually extended his line to his left. McArthur, to gain distance to
his right, widened the intervals between his regiments, refused his
right, and prolonged it by a skirmish line. Oglesby brought into action
Schwartz's battery, then commanded by Lieutenant Gumbart, and the
batteries in position in the besieged intrenchments joined in the
combat. A tenacious fight, face to face, ensued--so stationary that its
termination seemed to be a mere question of endurance and ammunition.
General Pillow moved the Twentieth Mississippi by wheeling its left to
the front. In this position the regiment suffered so severely that it
withdrew and took shelter behind a rising ground. A depression was found
by which Genera