Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 2.djvu/168

 direction. This led it obliquely towards Harker's brigade and part of Buell's, the remnant of the division of General T. J. Wood to which he had returned after discovering the enemy behind him. As the advancing rebels threatened his right flank, Wood retired his command to a narrow and short spur shooting out nearly due east and west at right angles from the main Missionary Ridge. The ridge fell off abruptly to the south, thus forming a strong and commanding position. When Brannan's two brigades were driven off in confusion by Stewart's division, he managed to rally a small number of his men about half a mile to the west on the hills from which the ridge occupied by Wood's troops extended. He and his staff and other officers succeeded also, by strenuous efforts, in gathering up and getting into line some hundreds of stragglers from various organizations. Wood effected connection by his right with Brannan's left, which was barely done when the Confederates delivered the first of the vehement onslaughts upon them which they attempted one after an other in the course of the afternoon.

The heights constituting the southern outrunners of Missionary Ridge were the scene of the new conflict. They extend from a short distance west of the Lafayette road for about a mile to the Crawfish Springs road. They rise to a height of one hundred feet, and have a gentle, but irregular and spurring slope to the south and east, and were then covered with open woods. Their southeastern parts were within the boundaries of a farm belonging to one Snodgrass, and hence locally known as “Snodgrass Hill,” as which it appears in the records of both sides. The struggle now ensuing was for the possession of it, from which the enemy would have commanded the rear of Thomas's line as well as the Lafayette road, the only line of retreat left to us. The lines of Wood and Brannan on these elevations formed a curve having almost the shape of a horseshoe, which gave our troops an enfilading and plunging fire upon the assailing enemy.