Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 08.djvu/377

Rh And General Wheeler says of this:

I will not attempt a description of the operations of Hardee's corps that day. Lack of space and lack of materials alike prevent. I have access to but two official reports of Confederate officers of that action, and they were brigade commanders; and I have been obliged, at the risk of doing much less than justice to Hardee's troops, to quote from Federal writers, who can speak only from their own standpoint.

The detour from the positions which the troops occupied on the outer lines of Atlanta to the point where they struck the enemy, involved a march of some fourteen or fifteen miles. Portions of the command were depleted by the heavy skirmish lines left out to hold the positions thus vacated, and by the loss of many good men who fell in their tracks from exhaustion. The night march, always tedious, was additionally harassing from the fact that a considerable body of cavalry coming up in rear on the same road cut through the entire column, impeding and delaying the infantry and artillery; and from the point where the turn was made the advance in line of battle and over the ground and through the undergrowth above described, was unavoidably slow.

Hardee, with four small divisions, encountered the Sixteenth and Seventeenth corps, and they were from time to time during the day reinforced from the other commands. The Seventeenth corps, as General Blair's letter shows, though turned and taken in reverse, fought all the time behind entrenchments. The day here and elsewhere, was characterized by varying fortunes—brilliant and successful charges at some points and bloody repulses at others. During the day, however, as General Blair's letter and Federal