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they’re coming! mccown opens the attack The troops of Johnson’s division began to quietly stir at 4:00 on the cold, misty, overcast morning of December 31. An order came down from division to build fires and make co≠ee. “I could do nothing but obey,” lamented Colonel Wallace, who remained apprehensive. At first light the men began to scan their surroundings. An eight-yard-wide wagon road known locally as Gresham Lane, which connected with the Wilkinson Pike one-andone -third miles distant, ran perpendicular to the Franklin Road. In 1855, Amossa and Jane Gresham built their log cabin near the turnpike. Open and gently sloping ground characterized the terrain south of the Franklin Road.1 Kirk deployed his brigade, absent the 79th Indiana guarding the ammunition train, in the woods (described variously as a “cedar thicket” and a “dense cedar grove”) 230 yards east of Gresham Lane, in a line running northeast to southwest. The 77th Pennsylvania anchored the left, with the 30th and 29th Indiana in the center, with pickets extending 150–200 yards. The 34th Illinois, which fronted open ground, arrayed on the far right facing due east, forming an angle with the balance of the brigade. The six guns of Warren P. Edgarton’s Battery E, 1st Ohio Light Artillery, camped in the left rear of the 34th Illinois. With the exception of the 34th, the troops had no clear field of fire. Why Kirk settled on such a seemingly flawed deployment is not known; he never addressed the issue in his after-action report. He apparently believed that advancing his right two regiments the additional 270 yards necessary to get them out of the cedars would expose his left flank unless Sheridan, on his left, did the same.2 Willich deployed three regiments facing south behind the rail fence of the Franklin Road—the 49th Ohio a hundred yards west of Gresham Lane they’re coming! 73 in a wooded field, and the 32nd and 39th Indiana east of the lane, with pickets extended 700 yards. Willich refused his line on the right of the 49th Ohio, posting the six guns of Battery A, 1st Ohio Light Artillery, facing west, and to their right the Buckeyes of the 15th Ohio, which “curled around like a dog’s tail until some of us fronted to the rear (north),” described R. B. Stewart. The 89th Illinois camped in a double column in the woods behind the 15th Ohio. “I think the general understanding among our soldiers was that the most of the rebel army was in front of our [brigade] left,” Lieutenant Morris Cope remembered—a correct assumption, but the enemy line lay oblique to the Franklin Road, not parallel. The right angle of the two brigades (the 39th Indiana and 34th Illinois) remained vulnerable.3 A remarkable passivity permeated Johnson’s division. Soldiers stacked arms and cooked breakfast, and the horses of both batteries had been sent to the rear for watering. Although perfunctorily sending a message to Johnson to be vigilant and have his men under arms, McCook, back at corps headquarters , proceeded to leisurely shave. Willich confided to Wallace that he believed that the Rebels had fled. Surgeon Solon Marks, the division medical director, worried that the hospital at the Smith House was too far beyond the right of the Union lines, but the abundant water of Overall Creek and the size of the house, with numerous log cabins (slave quarters), made it the logical choice. When advised of the situation, Johnson expressed no concern. Captain Edgarton also rode to Johnson’s headquarters that night, suggesting that his guns be placed action-front with double-shots of canister . “Never mind, you won’t be attacked,” the division commander answered.4 The o∞cers commanding the two front-line brigades were a study in contrast. Thirty-four-year-old Kirk had been a schoolteacher and Illinois lawyer prior to the war. Having fought at Shiloh, where he fell wounded, he proved able, if not stellar. Fifty-two-year-old Willich, on the other hand, was a hardened veteran and fierce fighter. Born to Prussian aristocracy (a rumor wrongly labeled him “the illegitimate son of the King of Prussia”), he quit the Prussian Army and sided with the revolutionists in an 1848 uprising. After the defeat at the Battle of Candarn, he fled to Switzerland and, in 1853, to the United States. He ultimately became the editor of a communist newspaper and a...

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