This swarthy general, volatile
and dramatic, nevertheless had great penetration. He understood on
the instant a fact that his soldiers did not comprehend until later.
He knew that the whole army of Buell was now before him.
For the moment it was Beauregard and Buell who were the protagonists,
instead of Grant and Johnston as on the day before. The Southern leader
gathered all his forces and hurled them upon Nelson. Weary though the
Southern soldiers were, their attack was made with utmost fire and
vigor. A long and furious combat ensued. A Southern division under
Cheatham rushed to the help of their fellows. Buell's forces were
driven in again and again, and only his heavy batteries enabled him to
regain his lost ground.
Buell led splendid troops that he had trained long and rigidly, and they
had not been in the conflict the day before. Fresh and with unbroken
ranks, not a man wounded or missing, they had entered the battle and
both Grant and Buell, as well as their division commanders, expected an
easy victory where the Army of the Ohio stood.
Buell, to his amazement, saw himself reduced to the defensive. He and
Grant had reckoned that the decimated brigades of the South could not
stand at all before him, but just as on the first day they came on with
the fierce rebel yell, hurling themselves upon superior numbers, taking
the cannon of their enemy, losing them, and retaking them and losing
them again, but never yielding.
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