A "Soldiers' Battle" in the Underbrush

Confederate and Union soldiers fought through the creek’s thick underbrush at the far right of the Confederate line, where Col. Hiram Granbury’s 7th Texas regiment, CSA, charged into the thickets and met Ohio and Illinois troops, USA, who had already reached the deep-banked creek and occupied it as a fortification. With no hope of dislodging entrenched troops, the Texans’ charge broke and hand-to-hand fighting began. Haze in the valley that Tuesday and the dense underbrush kept commanders from seeing what was happening, causing a breakdown in communication that turned the fight into a “soldiers’ battle,” in which commanders lost control and field officers or individual soldiers directed their own actions. Lt. Henry O. Dwight of the 20th Ohio recalled that when his men rushed through the brook they found the enemy upon them but also found the bank sloped off with a kind of beach at its farther edge that made excellent shelter, so they dropped there and fired their Enfields until the guns grew hot. Mississippi native Col. Hiram Granbury had lived in Hinds County before moving to Texas in 1850, where a town was later named for him.

Mississippi · United States