Morning broke with a heavy mist over Oostenaula and Connesauga, over Rocky Face and Snake Creek Gap, over the village of Resaca, over the Western and Atlantic Railroad, over the grey army and the blue army. A keen, continual skirmishing began with the light. It extended along the whole front, but with especial sharpness upon Hardee’s line. Some blue cannon opened here, and for a time it seemed that at any moment the main bodies, blue and grey, might crash through the fog into a general and furious battle. Stevenson’s division, moving forward, reoccupied the position gained the evening before. Wrapped in the mist, wet with the morning dew, the men fell to work upon log and rail and stump defences. Hindman’s line was next to Stevenson’s, and a blue battery, well placed, was sending against Hindman, engaged in thrusting back a blue assault, a stream of grape and canister. Stevenson, ordered to help out Hindman, sent Max Van den Corput’s battery of Johnston’s battalion to a point eighty yards in front of his own line—a ragged hill, rising abruptly from the field, with a wide and deep ravine beyond. In dust and thunder the battery came to this place; the guns were run into position, the guns were served, steady, swift, and well. “But,” says Stevenson, “the battery had hardly gotten into position when the enemy hotly engaged my skirmishers, driving them in, and pushing on to the assault with great impetuosity. So quickly was all this done that it was impossible to remove the artillery before the enemy had effected a lodgment in the ravine in front of it, thus placing it in such a position that, while the enemy was entirely unable to remove it, we were equally so, without driving off the enemy massed in the ravine beyond it, which would have been attended with great loss of life. The assaults of the enemy were in heavy force and made with the utmost impetuosity, but were met with a cool, steady fire which each time mowed down their ranks and drove them back, leaving the ground thickly covered in places with their dead....” Along Hardee’s line the white puffs of cannon smoke showed all day through. In the early afternoon came a courier with a note from Walker, now at Calhoun. “No movement of the enemy observed. Think report of passage of Oostenaula unfounded.” Johnston read, then dispatched an order to Hood. “Prepare to attack enemy’s left as indicated yesterday evening. Three brigades of Polk’s and Hardee’s will support.” But later, as Hood was preparing to move forward, there came a more breathless messenger yet from Walker. “The first report was true, General! They crossed at Lay’s Ferry. Two divisions are over, and others on the way.” Johnston listened with an impassive face, then sent at once and countermanded Hood’s order. Stewart’s division only was not checked in time. It attacked, and was roughly handled before it could be recalled.