Cameron came up just as Landram was striving hard to rally his men and to hold a second position in the lower skirt of the wood, to prevent the enemy from coming on across the clearing; but for this, time and numbers and elbow-room were alike wanting. Moreover, every movement of the Confederate troopers must be gaining on the flanks. Nor was Cameron's handful, barely 1,300, enough to enable the remnant of the Thirteenth Corps to hold for many minutes so weak a position against such odds. Cameron deployed his four battalions and tried hard, but the whole line soon crumbled and fell apart to the rear.
Until this moment, Banks and Franklin, as well as every officer of the staff of either, beginning with Stone, had exerted themselves to the utmost to second the efforts of Ransom and of Landram to save the day. The retreat once fairly began, all attempt to stay its course was for a time given up as idle, for every man knew just how far back he must go to find room to form a line of battle longer than the road was narrow. Green's cavalry having been for the most part dismounted and on the flanks, as well as in the forest, the pursuit was not very vigorous and was now and then retarded by the successive covering lines of Lucas and of Dudley, so that the prospect seemed fair of bringing off the remnants of the fighting force without much more loss, when about a mile behind the battle-field, at the foot of a slight descent, the retreating column came upon a knot of wagons inextricably tangled and stuck fast in a slough. This was the great cavalry train trying to escape. Instantly what had been a severe check became a serious disaster. Already, by holding so stiffly to his first position, in the front line, in the road, Nims had lost more than half his horses, and thus in quitting the field he found himself compelled to abandon three of his guns; yet not until he had inflicted vast injuries on his enemy, and to the last furnished a noble example of coolness in the performance of duty and the highest courage in the hour of trial. Now the remnant of this fine battery was swallowed up in the wreck of the wagons, and soon fourteen more guns went to swell the ruin. Thus Rails and Rottaken lost each a section, Cone and Klauss their whole batteries. In all twenty guns were lost; three on the field and seventeen at the jam. With them went 175 wagons, 11 ambulances, and 1,001 draught animals. To pass the obstruction the infantry had to turn widely out of the road and for a long distance push their way through the woods. No semblance of order survived. After this there was only one mass of men, wagons, and horses crowding to the rear.