Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 40.djvu/83

Rh were driven in, his whole line was at once engaged furiously, but his brigade stood coolly and bravely, firing three times, until he was outflanked, when he fell back, expecting to rally behind the second line formed by the third division, but that he could not find the second line as it was abandoned before he reached it. General McLean, commanding the 2d brigade, says the two pieces of artillery with Von Gilsa's brigade fired but a few times, and then broke down the road in rear of the rifle pits: that the 75th Ohio was wheeled into column to the right and deployed, but the attack was so impetuous, the regiments in his front at once broke in great confusion, interfering with its deployment, but still it was able to form and deliver its fire until ordered to face about. General Devens commanding the division says that while it has been suggested that the 1st division was to some extent surprised, he felt it his duty to say, in riding down the entire line he found no officers or men out of their assigned positions, and all prepared to meet the attack: that the skirmishers along both brigade fronts behaved with great resolution, keeping the enemy back as long as could be expected, and that notwithstanding the confusion in which the division was forced to relinquish its first position, he thought a second line might have been formed within the lines of General Schurz had his division been able to maintain its position. Schurz in his report speaks of the difficulties of the position in changing fronts, and says he was hemmed in by a variety of obstacles in front and dense pine brush in rear, and the "command had hardly been given when almost the whole of McLean's brigade mixed up with a number of Von Gilsa's men came rushing down the road from General Devens' headquarters in wild confusion, and the battery of the 1st division broke in on his right at a full run: that the whole line deployed on the old turnpike facing south was rolled up and swept away in a moment." The panic which began with Devens' division and spread through Howard's corps carried demoralization into adjoining commands, and swept some of these into the general stampede. A small force of Confederate infantry running up against the Federal force in the neighborhood of Hazel Grove were repulshedrepulsed [sic] by the guns