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two of Captain Cobb's three guns rendered for the time useless.
The enemy thus aroused, awaited attack in two lines.
Our troops advanced in single line with strong reserves at intervals.
The Second division, General Ruggles, advanced to the attack on the left with impetuosity, cheering and driving the enemy before it. General Preston having been left sick at Vicksburg, Col. A. P. Thompson led the First brigade of the division, and was seriously wounded in the charge.
The First division, General Clark, composed of one brigade under Col. Thomas H. Hunt and one under Col. T. B. Smith, Twentieth Tennessee, drove the enemy on the right until after several hours' fighting he had fallen back to a grove just back of the penitentiary.
The fight was hot and stubborn, and here the division met the greatest loss.
Colonel Hunt was shot down, and at the suggestion of General Clark, Capt. John A. Buckner, General Breckinridge's adjutant-general, was placed in command of the brigade.
Shortly afterward General Clark received a wound thought to be mortal, when under some misapprehension the First brigade of his division began to fall back, but rallied, and in a renewed attack the enemy was driven back and disappeared in the town.
Maj. J. C. Wickliffe commanded the Ninth regiment, Col. J. W. Caldwell having been injured in the accident of the early morning and obliged to retire.
Here the Confederates suffered from the fire of the fleet, but in the end the enemy were completely routed and did not again appear during the day. It was now 10 o'clock, and they had listened in vain for the guns of the ram Arkansas, which, it proved, had disabled her machinery when four miles above Baton Rouge, and, to prevent her falling into the hands of the Federal fleet near by, had been abandoned and set on fire by her officers.
General Breckinridge, in view of this failure of co-operation, suspended further attack, and being wholly unmolested, withdrew to his camp at Comite river.
His total loss was 467 killed,
Atlanta, Ga. 1899.
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