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enemy's main camp, where we rejoined Colonel Looney with his regiment. * * The charge made on the enemy's battery, in which the Eighteenth regiment suffered so severely, was not in accordance with my judgment. * * I was alone (in the quarter of Owl Creek), without anything to support my own rear or the left of the general line, and therefore felt it my duty to take any step with extreme caution, and to keep my force in hand to hold Owl Creek against any and every contingency.
When night came,
as he goes on to state, he found himself ‘considerably in advance of our general front, and so fell back without orders,’ be it noted, from his corps commander, and ‘slept within a mile of the river, and four hundred yards of the Federal line.’—（Ibid, page 58.)
It is to be noted that the Eighteenth Louisiana lost two hundred and seven officers and men either killed or wounded in this ill-judged charge.
This brigade was not in the quarter of the field with
General Bragg, and I refer to the reports of
Colonel Pond,
Colonel Monton,
Major Gober (Sixteenth Louisiana),
Colonel Marshall J. Smith and
Colonel Looney, Thirty-eighth Tennessee, chiefly to show that no order reached them to retire, and that, up to the very edge of night, they were being employed on the
Confederate left by orders of
General Hardee in desultory, resultless, though bloody conflicts.
Colonel Fagan, of
Gibson's brigade, writing as early as the 9th of April, states:
It was late in the afternoon when the enemy was repulsed, and was followed in the direction of the river (after the capture of Prentiss). That night we slept in the enemy's tents, worn with fatigue, decimated in numbers, but elated that such a hard-fought day had such a glorious close.
—（
Ibid, page 488.)
Evidently
Colonel Fagan had not heard of the ‘Lost opportunity’ when he wrote, nor had
Colonel H. W. Allen at the date of his report of April 10th, neither had
Captain Dubroca (of the Thirteenth Louisiana), who commanded the regiment at the close of the action.
Colonel Hodge, of the Nineteenth Louisiana (
Gibson's brigade), is thus specific as to the lateness of the hour:
After the enemy were driven from this stronghold (which Prentiss and Wallace had held), we, with several brigades, moved towards the river.
It was then nigh sunset.
In accordance with your order (Gibson's) we commenced falling back about dusk, and being separated from the brigade, I conducted the regiment to the camp of the enemy, where I had established a temporary hospital during the day.
