To this point he called his reserves, and asked for reenforcements, which were sent; but the space was narrow, and it was not well to crowd the men, as the enemy’s artillery and musketry fire swept the approach to his position, giving him great advantage.  As soon as General Corse had made his preparations, he assaulted, and a close, severe contest ensued, which lasted more than an hour, gaining and losing ground, but never the position first obtained, from which the enemy in vain attempted to drive him.  General Morgan L. Smith kept gaining ground on the left spurs of Missionary Ridge, and Colonel Loomis got abreast of the tunnel and railroad embankment on his aide, drawing the enemy’s fire, and to that extent relieving the assaulting party on the hill-crest.  Captain Callender had four of his guns on General Ewing’s hill, and Captain Woods his Napoleon battery on General Lightburn’s; also, two guns of Dillon’s battery were with Colonel Alexander’s brigade.  All directed their fire as carefully as possible, to clear the hill to our front, without endangering our own men.  The fight raged furiously about 10 a.m., when General Corse received a severe wound, was brought off the field, and the command of the brigade and of the assault at that key-point devolved on that fine young, gallant officer, Colonel Walcutt, of the Forty-sixth Ohio, who fulfilled his part manfully.  He continued the contest, pressing forward at all points.  Colonel Loomis had made good progress to the right, and about 2 p.m., General John E. Smith, judging the battle to be most severe on the hill, and being required to support General Ewing, ordered up Colonel Raum’s and General Matthias’s brigades across the field to the summit that was being fought for.  They moved up under a heavy fire of cannon and musketry, and joined Colonel Walcutt; but the crest was so narrow that they necessarily occupied the west face of the hill.  The enemy, at the time being massed in great strength in the tunnel-gorge, moved a large force under cover of the ground and the thick bushes, and suddenly appeared on the right rear of this command.  The suddenness of the attack disconcerted the men, exposed as they were in the open field; they fell back in some disorder to the lower edge of the field, and reformed.  These two brigades were in the nature of supports, and did not constitute a part of the real attack.

The movement, seen from Chattanooga (five miles off ) with spy-glasses, gave rise to the report, which even General Meiga has repeated, that we were repulsed on the left.  It was not so.  The real attacking columns of General Corse, Colonel Loomis, and General Smith, were not repulsed.  They engaged in a close struggle all day persistently, stubbornly, and well.  When the two reserve brigades of General John E. Smith fell back as described, the enemy made a show of pursuit, but were in their turn caught in flank by the well-directed fire of our brigade on the wooded crest, and hastily sought cover behind the hill.