The sun of the eighteenth of September sank behind the mountains. A cool night wind sprang up, sighing through the bronzing wood and rippling the surface of the Chickamauga. Three brigades of Hood’s division, marching rapidly from Dalton, had come upon the field; with them Hood himself, with his splendid personal reputation, his blue eyes and yellow hair and headlong courage. He had now his three brigades and three of Bushrod Johnson’s. That churchman militant, Leonidas Polk, held the centre at Lee and Gordon’s Mills, and D.H. Hill the left. Joseph Wheeler and his cavalry watched the left flank, Forrest and his cavalry the right. The country was rough, the roads few and poor, the fords of the Chickamauga in the same category. Dusk of the eighteenth found Hood and Walker across the stream, but other divisions with the fords yet to make. At dawn of the nineteenth, the Army of the Cumberland began to put itself into position. In the faint light the outposts of the blue caught sight of Buckner’s division fording the Chickamauga at Tedford’s. In the mist and dimness they thought they saw only a small detached grey force. Three brigades of Brannan’s division were at once put forward. In the first pink light Buckner’s advanced brigade clashed with Croxton’s. With a burst of sound like an explosion in the dim wood began the battle of Chickamauga—one of the worst in history, twice bloodier than Wagram, than Marengo, than Austerlitz, higher in its two days’ fallen than Sharpsburg, a terrible, piteous fight. Forrest, on the right, was immediately engaged. “We’ve stirred up a yaller-jacket’s nest,” he said, and sent to General Polk a request for Armstrong’s division of his own corps. The centre needing cavalry, too, there was returned only Dibbrell’s brigade. Dibbrell’s men were dismounted, and together with John Pegram’s division—also, in this battle, acting foot soldiers—began a bloody, continued struggle. The point of the blue wedge had been four infantry brigades and one of cavalry, but now the thickness was disclosed, and it fairly proved to be Rosecrans in position. While the grey had moved up the Chickamauga, that able blue strategist, under the cover of night, had moved down the opposite bank. The grey crossed—and found their right enveloped! The Fourteenth Army Corps, George H. Thomas commanding, was here, and later there were reinforcements from the Twenty-first, Crittenden’s corps. The storm, beginning with no great fury, promptly swelled until it attained the terrific. Forrest sent again for infantry support. None came, the centre having its own anxieties. “If you want to git a thing done, do it yourself,” quoth Forrest, and rode up to John Pegram. “We’ve got to have more fighters and I’m going to fetch them. Hold your ground, General Pegram, I don’t care what happens!”