A long and furious combat ensued.

A Southern division under Cheatham rushed to the help of their fellows.

Buell's forces were driven in again and again, and only his heavy batteries enabled him to regain his lost ground.
Buell led splendid troops that he had trained long and rigidly, and they had not been in the conflict the day before.

Fresh and with unbroken ranks, not a man wounded or missing, they had entered the battle and both Grant and Buell, as well as their division commanders, expected an easy victory where the Army of the Ohio stood.
Buell, to his amazement, saw himself reduced to the defensive.

He and Grant had reckoned that the decimated brigades of the South could not stand at all before him, but just as on the first day they came on with the fierce rebel yell, hurling themselves upon superior numbers, taking the cannon of their enemy, losing them, and retaking them and losing them again, but never yielding.
The great conflict increased in violence.