This was the spirit and purpose that animated the Confederate forces on Monday when they began to attack soon after daylight on that second day. To the forces of Buell, arriving during the night on transports from Savannah (on the river twenty miles below), and marching up the bank in the dim light of dawn to form a cordon around the fragments of Grant’s army, the scene was dismal and discouraging in the extreme. Making our way through the thousands of men huddled on the bank, hearing at every step the doleful prognostications of defeat, the wooded plain above presented to us visible proof of the disastrous conflict of the day before in the dead and wounded who lay unattended, and the broken and discarded arms and equipments that strewed the ground. These were the sights and sounds that greeted us as we marched to our place in line of battle on the second day; and they fully justified the compliment paid us by our brigade commander, General Lovell H. Rousseau, who says, in his official report of the battle in substance: “Seldom have men gone into battle under such discouraging circumstances, and never have they borne themselves more gallantly.” In the personal reminiscences that follow I shall speak more particularly of the part taken by Rousseau’s brigade of McCook’s division. I was personally present throughout the second day, as Adjutant of the First Battalion, Sixteenth U. S. Infantry—which, with similar battalions of the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Infantry, and the First Ohio, Fifth Indiana, and Sixth Kentucky Volunteers—constituted Rousseau’s brigade (4th) of McCook’s division (2d) of the Army of the Ohio commanded by General Buell. My position as adjutant gave me a somewhat wider range of observation than that of a line officer on duty with a company, and I retain some very distinct recollections of the battle, which I will briefly state in so far as they bear upon the movements of Rousseau’s brigade; but I shall leave others to speak of the severity of the fighting, and leave to you to estimate the quality of the service the brigade rendered the Union cause.