Longstreet was hurling 17 brigades of infantry, supported by artillery, at the remaining third of the Army of the Cumberland. He knew that victory would depend upon slashing through the broken line and coming in on the flank and rear of Thomas. If the Confederates could break through on the southwestern slope of Snodgrass Hill, they would be in Thomas’s rear and directly across his line of retreat-a situation no Civil War army could stand without dissolving. Rebel soldiers were within an eyelash of doing just this when the 21st Ohio arrived on the scene.

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Acting instinctively, the Ohioans threw themselves to the ground and opened fire on the charging Confederates. A solid sheet of flame leaped from the repeating Colts. The sheer firepower of the defense appeared to stun the enemy. They were expecting musketry-a volley, followed by ragged shots. Instead they ran head-on into an unbroken wall of blazing bullets that offered no pause and no intervals. The Rebel line slammed against that wall, wavered, broke, and fell back. The 21st used the breathing space gained to back up the hill and form a firm line behind the hillocks of the ridge. Almost simultaneously, the gray lines again swept up the hill, and again the Colts’ staccato bursts threw them back. The Ohioans lay close to the ground, making difficult targets for their attackers, and poured the rapid fire of the repeaters into the assaulting ranks.

Yet even while the men of the 21st prayerfully gave thanks for the power of their guns, an uneasy, silent chill swept the regiment. For much as they respected the ‘Five-Shooters,’ they knew their fatal weakness was ammunition. From the day they had begun to carry the Colts they had refused to rely on routine ammunition procurement. Ordnance Sergeant John Bolton had been detailed to personally obtain cartridges for the repeaters. It was never an easy job, and when the army was deep in enemy territory and dependent on a precarious supply train from the North it became even harder. Yet a sufficient supply of .56-caliber cartridges was literally the lifeblood of the 21st OVI.

Early on this Sunday morning, Bolton had scoured the ordnance train to gather every Colt Repeater cartridge he could find. He had seen to it that every round had reached the regiment. The 21st had in supply about 25 rounds per man. Bolton had issued 70 rounds more, which gave each soldier 95 rounds. At dawn, this had seemed adequate, but no one had foreseen the disaster of Chickamauga or the role the 21st would be called to play.

After the regiment had single-handedly beaten back the first great charge of Longstreet’s men, the attack became a steady pressure. Some of Brannan’s regiments fell into the right and left of them, and later, Granger’s providential arrival reinforced the hill’s defenders. But they were still dangerously few, and the Confederates continued to mount massive assaults. The steady, unbroken fire of the Colts kept lancing down the hill, taking a tremendous toll. But the 95 rounds were dwindling alarmingly, even as the ranks of the 21st were thinning from the constant barrage of artillery and rifle fire.

By 2:00 in the afternoon, the indefatigable Bolton was pulling men out of line under cover of the fire and sending them out to retrieve cartridges from the regiment’s dead. Runners were sent to the field hospital at the Snodgrass house to strip the 21st’s wounded of their unused rounds. By using these gleanings and making every shot count, they held their vital part of the hill all during that fiery afternoon, against the strongest assaults the enemy could mount.

How successfully they did so was illustrated by the stunned surprise of a Confederate soldier captured in one of the last Rebel charges. He looked dazedly around him at the thin ranks and blurted, ‘My God, we thought you had a division here!’ But as the shadows lengthened on the hill, disaster was building for the 21st Ohio. The Colts were running out of ammunition, and for them there could be no more. Although every man knew how to load his gun with loose powder and ball in place of factory-made cartridges, the balls had to be .56-caliber. Like castaways on the ocean, surrounded by water and dying of thirst, they were surrounded with ammunition they couldn’t use. Everywhere on the hill lay abandoned stores of mini balls-.58-caliber, and useless for the repeaters.

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