Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 2.djvu/167

 or captured. It is easy to imagine the deep distress of mind which must have harassed them on that unlucky ride.

General Thomas was as ignorant of what had befallen his superior and his fellow corps commanders and their troops as they were of his condition at the time of and after the rout of the right. But he was made to feel the effect of it by the sudden threatening of his right rear before Breckinridge's brigades had been fully beaten back from his left rear. He states in his report that, hearing heavy firing to his right and rear at about 2 P.M. — he must have been mistaken in the hour, or it is misprinted in the Official Records, as a score of witnesses testify that the crisis occurred much earlier — he rode in that direction to ascertain the cause. On the way he met one of his staff, whom he had sent to hurry up Sheridan's brigades, who reported that, in attempting to reach them, he had met a large force moving with a line of skirmishers in front who fired on him and compelled him to return. The aide had also encountered Brigade-Commander Harker when the latter was yet uncertain whether the body in sight was a hostile or a friendly one. Thomas thereupon at once sought Harker to instruct him to fire on the approaching line if he was fired on, and was not long in verifying the portentous discovery that the enemy had gained his right rear, and was already behind Reynolds. The duty now devolved upon him to direct during the afternoon as determined a resistance to the rebel efforts to overcome his right as he had offered in the forenoon on the left. While his failure to hear anything from the Commander-in-chief and from the rest of the army made him apprehend that something serious had occurred beyond his right, hours elapsed before he clearly understood that he was fighting alone for the honor and safety of the army.

Bushrod Johnson's leading column had moved forward all but due west so fast that the division behind it under Law lost sight of it and became diverted in a