to their statements--four ranks deep; and on the hill, a few yards above, lay in ominous silence their death-dealing artillery. It was while we were moving steadily forward that, with one startling crash, with one simultaneous sheet of fire and flame, they hurled on our advancing lines the whole terrible force of their infantry and artillery. The powder from their musketry burned in our very faces, and the breath of their artillery was hot upon our cheeks. The 'leaden rain and iron hail' in an instant forced back the advancing lines upon those who were close to them in the rear; and before the men could be rallied to renew the charge, the lines had been hurled back by the irresistible fire of the enemy to the cover of the ravine or gully which they had just passed. The enemy swept the ground with his guns, killing and wounding many--our men in the meantime keeping up a spirited fire upon the unseen foe." [Illustration: MARCHING THROUGH TENNESSEE.] [Illustration: GENERAL GRANT DIRECTING THE DISPOSITION OF TROOPS.] CHAPTER XVIII. WAR IN THE WEST. CONSCRIPTION ACT PASSED BY CONFEDERATE CONGRESS--GENERAL BRAGGS'S OPERATIONS IN KENTUCKY AND EAST TENNESSEE--BATTLE OF PERRYVILLE--GRAPHIC DESCRIPTION OF THE CONFEDERATE CHARGE--BATTLE OF IUKA--BATTLE OF STONE RIVER, OR MURFREESBORO'--ESTRANGEMENT BETWEEN GRANT AND ROSECRANS--BATTLE OF CORINTH--CONFEDERATE RETREAT--HEAVY LOSSES ON BOTH SIDES. The Confederate Congress in 1862 passed a sweeping conscription act, forcing into the ranks every man of military age. Even boys of sixteen were taken out of school and sent to camps of instruction. This largely increased their forces in the field, and at the West especially they exhibited a corresponding activity. General Beauregard, whose health had failed, was succeeded by Gen. Braxton Bragg, a man of more energy than ability, who, with forty thousand men, marched northward into eastern Kentucky, defeating a National force near Richmond, and another at Munfordville. He then assumed that Kentucky was a State of the Confederacy, appointed a provisional governor, forced {201} Kentuckians into his army, and robbed the farmers not only of their stock and provisions, but of their wagons for carrying away the plunder, paying them in worthless Confederate money. He carried with him twenty thousand muskets, expecting to find that number of Kentuckians who would enroll themselves in his command; but he confessed afterward that he did not even secure enough recruits to take up the arms that fell from the hands of his dead and wounded. With the supplies collected by his army of "liberators," as he called them, in a wagon-train said to have been forty miles long, he was moving slowly back into Tennessee, when General Buell, with about fifty-eight thousand men (one-third of them new recruits), marched in pursuit.