We have been badly used during the day; but it does not occur to us that our army has been whipped. We start together to find Negley. We have had nothing to eat since early morning, and so, passing a corn-field, we stop for a moment to fill our pockets with corn; then, proceeding on our way, we pass through an unused field, grown up with brush, and here meet a man coming toward us on horseback. I said to him, "Are those our troops?" pointing in the direction of the line of fires. He answered, "Yes; our troops are on the road and just beyond it." Pretty soon we emerged from the brushy woods and entered an open field; just before us was a long line of fires, and soldiers busily engaged preparing supper. We had approached to within two hundred feet of them, and could hear the soldiers talk and laugh, as soldiers will, over the incidents of the day, when we discerned that we were riding straight into the enemy's line. Instantly wheeling our horses, we drove the spurs into them and lay down on their backs. We had been discovered, and a dozen or more shots were sent after us; but we escaped unharmed. The man we met in the unused field had mistaken us for Confederate officers. Two or three shots were fired at us as we approached our own line, but the darkness saved us.
Near eight o'clock in the evening I ascertained, from General Wood, that the army had been ordered to fall back to Rossville, and I started at once to inform Colonel Stoughton and others on the ridge; but I found that they had been apprised of the movement, and were then on the road to the rear.
The march to Rossville was a melancholy one. All along the road, for miles, wounded men were lying. They had crawled or hobbled slowly away from the fury of the battle, become exhausted, and lay down by the roadside to die. Some were calling the names and numbers of their regiments, but many had become too weak to do this; by midnight the column had passed by. What must have been their agony, mental and physical, as they lay in the dreary woods, sensible that there was no one to comfort or to care for them, and that in a few hours more their career on earth would be ended.
At a little brook, which crossed the road, Wilson and I stopped to water our horses. The remains of a fire, which some soldiers had kindled, were raked together, and laying a couple of ears of corn on the coals for our own use, we gave the remainder of what we had in our pockets to the poor beasts; they, also, had fasted since early morning.