266

STORMING THE WORKS.

The regiments that were retiring for ammunition, halted, and the soldiers coolly filled their cartridges under the ene my's fire. Scarcely was the formation completed, when the enemy was seen coming swiftly up the road and through the oak bushes and trees on either side, making straight for the battery, and the first Nebraska supporting it. But Wood's battery, served with great rapidity, mowed them down as they advanced, while the fire of the Nebraska regiment was most terrific and deadly. The rebels bore up firmly for a while against it, but at length, unable to breast the fiery sleet fell back in confusion. Wallace then dashed over the broken country to ascertain the condition of his other brigade under Cruft. Finding it standing in perfect order he immediately connected it with Thayer's by a line of skir mishers, and waited for the enemy to advance. His punishment, however, had been too severe, and he fell back to the ground he had won from McClernand in the morning.

About three o'clock, Grant rode on to the field, and fired at this attempt of the rebels to force his lines and their well nigh success, determined at once to move with his entire army on their works. McClernand was directed to storm them on the right up the river, and Colonel Smith of the regular army on the left below. McClernand asked Wallace to lead the assault with his division. He consented, and immediately formed his plan of attack. Selecting two brigades, Cruft's and one composed of two regiments under Colonel Smith of the eighth Missouri, and giving them the simple directions to march up the hill in columns of regiments, and act as circumstances should suggest, he set the columns in motion. Knowing well it was a desperate mission on which these brave troops were going, he showed his confidence in them by telling them so. But this announcement, which was made to the regiments as they moved past him, instead of discour aging them, filled them with delight,-they answered with

A GALLANT CHARGE.

267

"For

deafening cheers, shouting "FORWARD, FORWARD!" ward, then, it is, " cried Wallace, rising in his stirrups. The two brigades then moved swiftly forward till they came to the foot of the hill, on the summit of which the enemy stood in strong force. It was full three hundred steps from here to the top, yet Smith as he reached it never waited for Cruft, but boldly began the ascent,-the eighth Missouri leading. The hill was bare in front, though rough with out-cropping ledges of rocks, but farther on, where Cruft was to mount, it was covered with trees, with here and there openings of oak bushes. Here took place the most terrible fighting around fort Donelson. The men, aware of the desperate undertaking before them, nerved themselves to it, and it was evident at a glance, that nothing but annihilation would keep them from reaching the summit of that hill. When about a quarter of the way up, a line of fire ran along its crest, and the plunging volleys tore through their ranks with frightful mortality. But the living stepped into the places of the dead and pressed fiercely on and up. At times, when the deluge of fire rolled in an unbroken sheet down the slope, they fell on their faces, and then as it subsided, rose, clearing large intervals in their rush.

Cruft's division in the woods advanced more like Indians, dodging from tree to tree-the combatants often fighting for the same cover. The woods crackled with the musketry as though a fire was raging amid the withered branches.

But nothing could stop the resolute advance of Smith, and closing nearer and nearer on the enemy, his two regiments finally cleared the hill with a shout, and charging after the discomfited rebels chased them to within a hundred and fifty yards of their intrenchments.

This was the ground that had been occupied by McClernand in the morning, and from which his division had been driven by the fierce onslaught of Pillow. It was covered

268

A BRILLIANT EXPLOIT.

with the dead and wounded who had fallen there in the vain attempt to stem the overpowering tide, and amid them stood our captured guns.

Darkness was now settling over the mournful field, and the fighting ceased. The night was bitter cold, yet those brave men, though hungry and exhausted, spent it in bringing in the wounded and in ministering to their wants.

While this success was being gained on our right, Smith, on the left, performed a still more brilliant exploit. A little after three o'clock he was ready to storm the enemy's works at that point. The hill on which they stood was high and very precipitous and strongly defended. Sending Cook's and Lauman's brigade to the right, as if about to move in force on them from that point, he took three picked regiments, the second and seventh Iowa and the fifty-seventh Indiana, as the storming force, and riding at their head, led them round to the left, and began swiftly to ascend the steep sides of the hill. The enemy seeing the storm that was ready to burst upon them, opened a terrible fire on the advancing regiments. But not a shot was returned—the gaps made by it were instantly closed, and shoulder to shoulder, like a dark, resistless wave, the undaunted column swept upward. Their march was silent and terrible as death, and the solid earth shook under their measured tread. In front, towering unhurt amid the tempest of balls, rode Smith-his cap on the point of his sword, guiding them to victory. Breasting the descending torrent of fire that drifted like wintry hail adown their ranks, they kept their eye on that strange pennon, and with unfaltering step, and waving banners, climbed higher and higher. Not when the chivalry of France pressed after the white plume of Henry of Navarre, tossing "amid the ranks of war," did braver hearts crowd to the portals of death, than there on that wintry evening, strained up the slippery hights. Inch by inch they won