The sun was not bothering General Longstreet as he sat under a large shade tree, confidently following the Confederate offensive. A courier from General Bragg’s headquarters at Jay’s Mill cantered up, prompting Longstreet to ride to Bragg to report on the fight and ask for reinforcements from General Polk to hold the ground he had taken.

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When Bragg turned down the request, Longstreet was dumbfounded. Bragg didn’t seem to comprehend how close the Confederates were to total victory. Nonetheless, Longstreet was determined to finish what he had started. “There was nothing for the left wing to do,” he wrote in his memoirs, “but work along as best it could.”

“Old Pete” may have been long on fight, but he was short on strategy. Two options other than directly assaulting Horseshoe Ridge were available to him. Either from ignorance or choice, he took neither of them.

During a reconnaissance before lunch, Longstreet came under fire from some Union pickets near the half-mile gap in the Union lines that worried Thomas. Longstreet practically rode right by it, and Maj. Gen. Alexander Stewart’s Division spent much of the afternoon ignorant of the fact that it was almost in front of it. At the very least, the presence of skirmishers there should have resulted in a reconnaissance in force to ascertain Union strength in the area.

The gap wasn’t plugged until Captain Charles Aleshire and his 18th Ohio Light Artillery limbered up and fled to the rear in the face of furious Confederate counterbattery fire. He took his guns back to the Snodgrass cabin, where Colonel James Thompson, Granger’s chief of artillery, promptly directed the battery to cover the potentially lethal break in the Union lines. Longstreet fully lost this window of opportunity late in the afternoon when the brigade of Brig. Gen. William B. Hazen moved into the gap from its original position above the Kelley farm field. Longstreet also had the option of bypassing Horseshoe Ridge altogether and moving his brigades up the Dry Valley Road to the McFarland and Rossville gaps, thus cutting off Thomas’ retreat route to Chattanooga.

While Longstreet rode back from his disappointing meeting with Bragg, Bushrod Johnson decided to renew his assault on Horseshoe Ridge at about 3:30 p.m. In his official report, he correctly deduced “that this position on the extreme left was one of the utmost importance and might determine the fate of the day.”

From a deep gorge and a nearby hill, Deas and Manigault’s Alabama regiments again surged forward with Fulton’s Tennesseans. In reserve was Colonel David Coleman’s brigade of mostly Arkansas men. Johnson rode along the line himself to position the brigades before sending them off for another crack at Steedman’s severely battered regiments.

The two sides slaughtered each other for another 30 minutes before Deas’ Brigade broke and two regiments of Manigault’s Brigade, the 28th and 34th Alabama, refused to re-form and attack again. Coleman’s brigade almost crested the summit before it too was forced to retreat. By 4 p.m., Confederate soldiers not already dead or wounded withdrew under a curtain of canister fire from their artillery batteries to quench their thirst, redistribute ammunition and perhaps marvel that Providence had spared them.

Longstreet had one more hammer to hurl at Horseshoe Ridge, and about 4 p.m. he decided to throw it. General William Preston’s Division of about 4,000 men had seen limited action and, compared to the troops opposing them, were fresh and full of fight. But the Confederates were again bedeviled by poor command and control. Preston’s largest brigade, mostly Alabama men commanded by transplanted New Yorker Brig. Gen. Archibald Gracie Jr., moved out before the rest of the division was positioned. An angry General Preston realized he could do nothing but order in his other partly formed brigades.

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