breakthroughs of the entire war. An
unread letter from Lily was stuffed into
Lytle’s coat pocket. His orderly, Joseph
Guthrie, the son of Cincinnati lawyer
James Guthrie, urged the general to keep
out of the fight the next day. “No, Guthrie,
I never shrink from my duty,” said Lytle,
“but if I fall I want you to carry me off the
field—and take care of my poor horse.”
The long night dragged on.
The next morning the battle resumed
with a vengeance, the Confederates
mounting a series of rolling attacks on the
Union line from north to south. Rosecrans,
frantic and exhausted, issued a burst of
panicky orders to reinforce the Union left
and began shifting troops in that direction.
Brig. Gen. Thomas Wood’s division, to the
immediate left of Lytle’s brigade, had just
pulled out of line to obey Rosecrans’ lat-
est directive when, more or less by coinci-
dence, Longstreet launched an attack on
the just vacated position. Screaming the
Rebel yell at the top of their lungs, the first
of 11,000 battle-hardened Confederates
surged through the gap, instantly cutting
the Union army in two and threatening to
annihilate all opposition. Lytle was at
Union headquarters talking to his divi-
sional commander, Phil Sheridan, when
the breakthrough occurred. Sheridan
immediately ordered him to move his men
into line from their sheltered position on a
dirt road behind the hill below the Widow
Glenn’s. Lytle obeyed at once, calling to his
lead regiment, the 88th Illinois, “Forward
into line!” He pulled on a pair of dark kid
gloves and murmured, perhaps to himself,
“If I must die, I will die as a gentleman.”
Already, as Lytle brought his troops up
the slope of what would become known
as Lytle Hill, the far side of the heavily
forested crest was boiling with Confeder-
ates. Brig. Gen. Zacharias Deas’ Alabama
brigade was in the lead, firing devastating
point-blank volleys into the backs of
retreating Union soldiers and stopping to
reload a few hundred feet from Lytle’s
hastily improvised position. Pirtle, riding
back to join Lytle after carrying a message
to a nearby artillery battery, saw the gen-
eral exhorting his men with emphatic ges-tures of his saber. “Boys,” said Lytle, “if
we whip them today we will all eat our
Christmas dinner at home.” Distractedly,
he twisted his mustache with the fingers of
his left hand.
Lytle had no way of knowing it, but the
Rebels coming ominously toward him
were commanded by an old friend, Ten-
nessee-born Brig. Gen. Patton Anderson.
As Democrats, the two had shared a com-
mon political bond, and they had also
served together in Mexico. A few months
before the Civil War, they had last seen
each other in Charleston, South Carolina,
and Anderson recalled that when they
parted, “they promised that nothing
should ever interfere with their friendship,
and if either should ever be in trouble the
other was to assist him in every way prac-
ticable.” There was nothing Anderson
could do for Lytle now; his Mississippi
troops were firing as quickly as they could
at anything blue, and the mounted Lytle,
silhouetted against the green-brown hill-
side, was too easy a target to miss.
Pirtle, who had rejoined Lytle, leaned
over to hear what the general was saying
above the din of battle. “I bend to catch
what he is saying,” Pirtle recalled years
later, the battle still a present-tense mem-
ory. “He calmly says with a firm voice ‘Pir-
tle, I am hit.’ For an instant I cannot speak;
my heart almost ceases to beat, but I say‘Are you hit hard, General?’ ‘In the spine—
if I have to leave the field you stay here and
see that all goes right.’ ‘I will, General.’” A
moment later, Lytle sent Pirtle dashing off
to bring up a lagging regiment. Another
aide, Captain Howard Green of the 24th
Wisconsin, moved to his side. Lytle turned
to say something to Green. At that instant,
a bullet struck Lytle squarely in the face,
entering at the left corner of his mouth and
exiting through his right temple. He reeled
in the saddle; Green caught him as he fell.
A passing sergeant of the 24th Wisconsin,
Thomas J. Ford, heard Lytle gasp his last
words: “Brave boys, brave boys.”
Green lowered Lytle to the ground. The
stricken general tried to say something else,
but his mouth was full of blood. Bullets
were whizzing everywhere. Colonel
Thomas Harrison of the 39th Indiana
Mounted Infantry rode up, dismounted,
and attempted to help Green and a couple
of orderlies carry Lytle away, but an
exploding shell wounded one of the order-
lies. Green was fumbling his hold when
Lytle gave a sudden convulsive tug of
Green’s knees and relaxed into death. Har-
rison remounted his horse and rode away;
Green ran for the opposite side of the hill.
Confederates swarmed onto the crest,
yelling with exultation. The ever-loyal Pir-
tle was headed back up the other side of
the hill when a riderless horse careened
past him—it was Lytle’s. He turned and
ran the other way, tears blinding his steps.Library of CongressBattle-hardened troops of the 21st Michigan, part of
Lytle’s brigade at Chickamauga, pose after the battle.
All the men in his command were Midwesterners.Continued on page 98CWQ-EW16 William Lytle_Layout 1 10/22/15 2:43 PM Page 79