During a Civil War fight at McFadden's Ford, the sound judgment of Major John Mendenhall, chief of artillery, enabled Thomas Crittenden's Left Wing to open 58 guns almost simultaneously, turning a dashing Confederate charge into a sudden retreat and rout in which the enemy lost 1800 men in a few moments. Participants recalled that the very forest seemed to fall and that not a Confederate reached the river. John Nourse of the Chicago Board of Trade Independent Battery remembered that a lively fire quickly stopped the Butternuts, who fled while throwing away whatever impeded them, and that the dead lay so thick on the ground that cannon could not be drawn across the field until the bodies had been removed. A line of cannon stretched south from this place the length of seven football fields end to end, an extremely rare concentration of artillery firepower in the Civil War that veterans of the fight never forgot.