Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 4.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

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[221] road his third division under Steinwehr. It unexpectedly encounters Law's scouts near the very road followed a few moments before by Schurz. The division comes to a halt, and Orland Smith's brigade, guiding itself by the fire of the enemy, endeavors to ascend the steep slopes crowned with the Confederates. In another direction Tyndale most gallantly engages the enemy. The fight is waged all along the line. The rising moon allows the soldiers to direct their movements, without, however, revealing to them the horrors and perils of the battlefield: the shadows of night cover the dead and the wounded, conceal many an obstacle, and thus favor the obstinacy of the combatants.

This obstinacy is all the greater because on each side the combatants have promptly recognized their opponents. By a singular chance, the first adversaries whom the Unionists of the Army of the Potomac encounter in that distant section of country are Robert E. Lee's old soldiers, whose arrival one month before gave the victory to Bragg, and with whom the Federals have come across the continent to dispute the fruit of that victory. At first the advantage is with the Southerners. Geary, whom Schurz has not known how to rejoin with his second brigade, resists with difficulty. The Confederates disperse his train of wagons, but the frightened animals plunge into their ranks and delay their movements. The first regiments sent by Smith against Law are repulsed with bloody losses. However, he brings all his brigade to the onset, and finally takes possession of the crest. Once dislodged from this point, Law's soldiers are thrown back as far as the base of the opposite slope, and they leave behind them some forty prisoners. Their repulse causes the retreat of all the rest of the division. Jenkins, seeing that the enemy is master of the heights, apprehends being enveloped, and toward five o'clock in the morning he precipitately recrosses Lookout Creek. The fight at Wauhlatchie has cost four hundred and sixteen men to the Federals, and probably more than twice that number to the Confederates, Jenkins' brigade alone having sustained a loss of three hundred and sixty-one men out of condition to fight.¹ At the break