The Tigers Attack

The Tigers Attack. "Men Ceased to Be Men". , Morning, When Gen. Richard Taylor shouted, "Charge the battery and take it!", 1,700 Louisianans burst out of the woods across from you, shrieking the Rebel yell. The Confederates - including Wheat's Battalion, the fierce Louisiana Tigers - poured into the ravine below and then surged up the slope towards you., Initially surprised, the Union gunners quickly recovered and unleashed a storm of shot and shell that tore into the southerners. A Confederate on the river plain saw "a wave crested with shining steel rush toward the fatal coaling... giving the Rebel yell like mad demons. The crest of the Coaling was one sheet of fire as the Federal batteries poured round after round of grape and canister into the faces of the charging Louisianans." The artillerymen loaded the cannon with "canister, stones, chains, and everything they could put in.", Snarling, shouting, cursing, the Confederates swarmed over the guns, and the fighting turned into a horrific hand-to-hand brawl, the northern gunners battling with their iron-tipped ramrods against the bayonets and clubbed muskets of the attackers. The ground around you became a chaotic, hellish madhouse. "Men ceased to be men," one Confederate recalled, "They cheered and screamed like lunatics - they fought like demons - they died like fanatics... It was a pandemonium of cheers, shouts, shrieks, and groans.", After 15 minutes of the whirlwind of blood and death, the Confederates drove the Federals off the height, and above the thunder of battle came a long triumphant yell. But as the groans of the dying mingled with the shouts of the victors, the Federals were already massing for a counterattack., (Captions):, This image shows the Louisiana Tigers in New Orleans in 1861. , Library of Congress, Maj. Chatham Roberdeau Wheat, commander of the Louisiana Tigers. Wheat's battalion of "thieves and cutthroats" as a fellow Confederate called them) was in the thick of the fighting at the Coaling.