Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 13.djvu/379

 378 Southern Historical Society Papers.

diately ordered to advance, and soon after it was discovered that Clayton's brigade had obliqued to the left, and was moving forward in our front. After a severe engagement of near an hour, during which he sustained a loss of nearly four hundred officers and men, General Clayton withdrew to replenish his exhausted ammunition, and his place was supplied by General Brown. This gallant officer, with his veteran command, advanced rapidly, driving the enemy be- fore them several hundred yards through a dense undergrowth and routing his first line, driving it back upon his second, which was posted on a slight ridge, and supported by artillery. Advancing upon this line, under a terrific fire from all arms, the enemy were forced from the ridge, which was occupied, but from which the brigade soon withdrew, in consequence of a force of the enemy threatening its right.

After passing the dense undergrowth mentioned, the horses were killed and gunners driven from several pieces opposite the centre and right of the brigade. Three of them, six-pounder rifled brass pieces, were brought off by Lieutenant Anderson, commanding Dawson's battery, and two others by other troops of the division. The left regiment (Twenty-sixth Tennessee) also drove the enemy from another battery, three pieces of which were left between the opposing lines, but were not brought off. The brigade sustained, during this engagement, a heavy loss in officers and men. It being necessary to relieve Brown, Bate's brigade was brought up and received by the enemy with as hot a fire as had successively greeted Clayton and Brown. Attacking, however, with their usual impetuosity, they drove the enemy back, forcing him to withdraw his batteries and to abandon one position after another, losing and recapturing a piece of artillery, and wresting from him the flag of the Fifty-first Tennessee regiment, Wright's brigade. Clayton's brigade being again brought forward as a support to Bates, the two pressed on, driving the enemy beyond the road leading to Chattanooga. Clayton's brigade, with a portion of Bate's, continued the pursuit for half a mile beyond this road, when, in consequence of threatening movements on the right and left, they fell back leisurely about sunset, reforming on the east side of the road. In these charges the Fifteenth and Thirty- seventh Tennessee regiments, Colonel Tyler commanding, captured four pieces of artillery, and Clayton's brigade, aided by the Fifty-eighth Alabama, of Bate's brigade (Colonel Bush Jones commanding), captured three pieces. During the whole of these several engage- ments the enemy's fire was very heavy and destructive, and each