ome protection to the troops
on both sides. There was also considerable underbrush. A number of
attempts were made by the enemy to turn our right flank, where Sherman
was posted, but every effort was repulsed with heavy loss. But the
front attack was kept up so vigorously that, to prevent the success of
these attempts to get on our flanks, the National troops were compelled,
several times, to take positions to the rear nearer Pittsburg landing.
When the firing ceased at night the National line was all of a mile in
rear of the position it had occupied in the morning.

In one of the backward moves, on the 6th, the division commanded by
General Prentiss did not fall back with the others. This left his
flanks exposed and enabled the enemy to capture him with about 2,200 of
his officers and men. General Badeau gives four o'clock of the 6th as
about the time this capture took place. He may be right as to the time,
but my recollection is that the hour was later. General Prentiss
himself gave the hour as half-past five. I was with him, as I was with
each of the division commanders that day, several times, and my
recollection is that the last time I was with him was about half-past
four, when his division was standing up firmly and the General was as
cool as if expecting victory. But no matter whether it was four or
later, the story that he and his command were surprised and captured in
their camps is without any foundation whatever. If it had been true, as
currently reported at the time and yet believed by thousands of people,
that Prentiss and his division had been captured in their beds, there
would not have been an all-day struggle, with the loss of thousands
killed and wounded on the Confederate side.

With the single exception of a few minutes after the capture of
Prentiss, a continuous and unbroken line was maintained all day from
Snake Creek or its tributaries on the right to Lick Creek or the
Tennessee on the left above Pittsburg.

There was no hour during the day when there was not heavy firing and
generally hard fighting at some point on the line, but seldom at all
points at the same time. It was a case of Southern dash against
Northern pluck and endurance. Three of the five divisions engaged on
Sunday were entirely raw, and many of the men had only received their
arms on the way from their States to the field. Many of them had
arrived but a day or two before and were hardly able to load their
muskets a