cavalry were driven off by a fire that no horsemen could withstand.
The division of Breckinridge, although fighting with furious courage,
was gradually driven back, and the day closed with the Union army in
possession of most of the territory it had lost the day before.

As they lay that night in the damp woods, Dick and his comrades, all
of whom had been fortunate enough to escape this time without injury,
discussed the battle. For a while they claimed that it was a victory,
but they finally agreed that it was a draw. The losses were enormous.
Each side had lost about one third of its force.

Rosecrans, raging like a wounded lion, talked of attacking again, but the
rains had been so heavy, the roads were so soft and deep in mud that the
cannon and the wagons could not be pushed forward.

Bragg retreated four days later from Murfreesborough, and Dick and his
comrades therefore claimed a victory, but as the winter was now shutting
down cold and hard, Rosecrans remained on the line of Murfreesborough and
Nashville.

The Winchester regiment was sent back to Nashville to recuperate and seek
recruits for its ranks. Dick and Warner and Pennington felt that their
army had done well in the west, but their hopes for the Union were
clouded by the news from the east. Lee and Jackson had triumphed again.
Burnside, in midwinter, had hurled the gallant Army of the Potomac in
vain against the heights of Fredericksburg, and twelve thousand men had
fallen for nothing.

"We need a man, a man in the east, even more than in the west," said
Warner.