The attack, it was understood, was to be made in column of brigades, Hazen’s brigade of Wood’s division leading.  That such was at least Hazen’s understanding I learned from his own lips during the movement, as I was an officer of his staff.  But after a march of less than a mile an hour and a further delay of three hours at the end of it to acquaint the enemy of our intention to surprise him, our single shrunken brigade of fifteen hundred men was sent forward without support to double up the army of General Johnston.  “We will put in Hazen and see what success he has.”  In these words of General Wood to General Howard we were first apprised of the true nature of the distinction about to be conferred upon us.

General W.B.  Hazen, a born fighter, an educated soldier, after the war Chief Signal Officer of the Army and now long dead, was the best hated man that I ever knew, and his very memory is a terror to every unworthy soul in the service.  His was a stormy life:  he was in trouble all round.  Grant, Sherman, Sheridan and a countless multitude of the less eminent luckless had the misfortune, at one time and another, to incur his disfavor, and he tried to punish them all.  He was always—­after the war—­the central figure of a court-martial or a Congressional inquiry, was accused of everything, from stealing to cowardice, was banished to obscure posts, “jumped on” by the press, traduced in public and in private, and always emerged triumphant.  While Signal Officer, he went up against the Secretary of War and put him to the controversial sword.  He convicted Sheridan of falsehood, Sherman of barbarism, Grant of inefficiency.  He was aggressive, arrogant, tyrannical, honorable, truthful, courageous—­skillful soldier, a faithful friend and one of the most exasperating of men Duty was his religion, and like the Moslem he proselyted with the sword.  His missionary efforts were directed chiefly against the spiritual darkness of his superiors in rank, though he would turn aside from pursuit of his erring commander to set a chicken-thieving orderly astride a wooden horse, with a heavy stone attached to each foot.  “Hazen,” said a brother brigadier, “is a synonym of insubordination.”  For my commander and my friend, my master in the art of war, now unable to answer for himself, let this fact answer:  when he heard Wood say they would put him in and see what success he would have in defeating an army—­when he saw Howard assent—­he uttered never a word, rode to the head of his feeble brigade and patiently awaited the command to go.  Only by a look which I knew how to read did he betray his sense of the criminal blunder.

The enemy had now had seven hours in which to learn of the movement and prepare to meet it.  General Johnston says: 

“The Federal troops extended their intrenched line [we did not intrench] so rapidly to their left that it was found necessary to transfer Cleburne’s division to Hardee’s corps to our right, where it was formed on the prolongation of Polk’s line.”