The smaller ones were all cut down.
Contrary to all my experience up to that time, and to the experience of the army I was then commanding, we were on the defensive.

We were without intrenchments or defensive advantages of any sort, and more than half the army engaged the first day was without experience or even drill as soldiers.

The officers with them, except the division commanders and possibly two or three of the brigade commanders, were equally inexperienced in war.

The result was a Union victory that gave the men who achieved it great confidence in themselves ever after.
The enemy fought bravely, but they had started out to defeat and destroy an army and capture a position.

They failed in both, with very heavy loss in killed and wounded, and must have gone back discouraged and convinced that the "Yankee" was not an enemy to be despised.
After the battle I gave verbal instructions to division commanders to let the regiments send out parties to bury their own dead, and to detail parties, under commissioned officers from each division, to bury the Confederate dead in their respective fronts and to report the numbers so buried.