formation impossible.  The color-bearers kept well to the front with their flags, closely furled, aslant backward over their shoulders.  Displayed, they would have been torn to rags by the boughs of the trees.  Horses were all sent to the rear; the general and staff and all the field officers toiled along on foot as best they could.  “We shall halt and form when we get out of this,” said an aide-de-camp.

Suddenly there were a ringing rattle of musketry, the familiar hissing of bullets, and before us the interspaces of the forest were all blue with smoke.  Hoarse, fierce yells broke out of a thousand throats.  The forward fringe of brave and hardy assailants was arrested in its mutable extensions; the edge of our swarm grew dense and clearly defined as the foremost halted, and the rest pressed forward to align themselves beside them, all firing.  The uproar was deafening; the air was sibilant with streams and sheets of missiles.  In the steady, unvarying roar of small-arms the frequent shock of the cannon was rather felt than heard, but the gusts of grape which they blew into that populous wood were audible enough, screaming among the trees and cracking against their stems and branches.  We had, of course, no artillery to reply.

Our brave color-bearers were now all in the forefront of battle in the open, for the enemy had cleared a space in front of his breastworks.  They held the colors erect, shook out their glories, waved them forward and back to keep them spread, for there was no wind.  From where I stood, at the right of the line—­we had “halted and formed,” indeed—­I could see six of our flags at one time.  Occasionally one would go down, only to be instantly lifted by other hands.

I must here quote again from General Johnston’s account of this engagement, for nothing could more truly indicate the resolute nature of the attack than the Confederate belief that it was made by the whole Fourth Corps, instead of one weak brigade: 

“The Fourth Corps came on in deep order and assailed the Texans with great vigor, receiving their close and accurate fire with the fortitude always exhibited by General Sherman’s troops in the actions of this campaign....  The Federal troops approached within a few yards of the Confederates, but at last were forced to give way by their storm of well-directed bullets, and fell back to the shelter of a hollow near and behind them.  They left hundreds of corpses within twenty paces of the Confederate line.  When the United States troops paused in their advance within fifteen paces of the Texan front rank one of their color-bearers planted his colors eight or ten feet in front of his regiment, and was instantly shot dead.  A soldier sprang forward to his place and fell also as he grasped the color-staff.  A second and third followed successively, and each received death as speedily as his predecessors.  A fourth, however, seized and bore back the object of soldierly devotion.”