and some cannonading in that direction.  Word came back that the enemy had crossed the river in force too heavy to be successfully encountered by our reconnoitering division.  Another division followed in the path of the first, and there was more firing.  Finally, General Palmer moved his division out upon the road, and along it for some distance toward Rossville, approaching the firing down by the bridge.  Halting near the Widow Glenn’s cottage, about which were a little cloud of cavalry and many officers, we saw that Rosecrans was there, directing the movements in person.  Palmer got his orders quickly.  He was to move down the road toward Rossville to an indicated point, then form his division en echelon by brigade from the left, and move off the road to the right and attack.  When he struck the enemy’s left flank he was to envelop and crush it.  The formation en echelon was to facilitate this enveloping and crushing.

Moving off the road as ordered, the division passed through several hundred yards of forest, and came upon a wide open field of lower ground, through the centre of which ran, parallel to our front, a narrow belt of timber.  The skirmishers passed through this belt and a few yards beyond, and were then driven back by an overpowering fire from the enemy’s skirmishers.  Our main line came up to the timber and passed through it to the farther side; and then the edge of the forest beyond, in front, on the right and on the left, was suddenly fringed with a line of flashing fire, above which rose a thin white smoke.  The tremendous crash of musketry was measured by the deep thunder of artillery farther back, and soon columns of dense white smoke rising above the tree-tops indicated the positions of several swift-working batteries.  A storm of bullets whizzed through the ranks of the attacking echelons, while shrieking shells filled the air with a horrid din, and, bursting overhead, sent their ragged fragments hurtling down in every direction.  In an instant a hundred gaps were opened in the firm ranks as the men sank to the ground beneath the smiting lead and iron.  In an instant the gaps were closed, and in another a hundred more were opened.  Every yard of the advance was costing the assailants a full company of men—­every rod at least half a regiment.  They wavered, halted and fell back to the shelter of the narrow belt of timber.  The attack had failed, the flank of the enemy had not been struck.

But the other divisions of the army?  Sent in as ours had been, some one of them must surely strike the opposing flank, unless Bragg’s whole army had crossed the river and was in position before Rosecrans moved.  Palmer’s division held its place, fired its sixty rounds of cartridges into the wood where the unseen foe was, and waited for the attack of the succeeding division which should strike Bragg’s flank.  But we waited in vain.  When Rosecrans’s last division was forming its echelons it was itself enveloped on its outer flank by the active foe.  Rosecrans’s line, as he formed it a division at a time, had been constantly outflanked.