Fortunately all of Wallace’s batteries pulled out before the collapse, and they escaped to the Landing area. Prentiss’ division fared little better than Wallace’s in its attempt to fall back from the Hornet’s Nest. Troops from Withers’ Division were all over the rear area, while the Thirty-third Tennessee charged directly behind the retreating Federals.⁶⁹ Prentiss’ and Withers’ men be came so thoroughly mixed up that some of the Federals simply surrendered while others found or blasted gaps through the badly scattered Mississippians and Alabamans. The men of Chalmers’ Mississippi brigade managed to round up Lieutenant Colonel Isaac V. Pratt and more than a hundred members of his Eighteenth Missouri Regiment, plus some stragglers from Hurlbut’s Twenty-eighth Illinois, who failed to fall back with their division.⁷⁰

The Eighth Iowa met an even more stringent fate. A few of the men managed to slip through to the Landing, but the wounded Colonel Geddes and 335 of his men were cut off and taken prisoners.⁷¹ Some of the Iowans were reluctant to quit, and they kept firing at anyone wearing the wrong color uniform, even after Geddes surrendered and white flags were up. A Confederate officer rode over to try and stop the senseless killing. He yelled to the Iowans, “My God! lay down your arms; you will all be killed.” The Federals shot him down. Finally the firing eased, and the last die-hard surrendered.⁷²

The Sixty-first Illinois got out before the Confederates were able to surround it, and it lost only a few captured stragglers. But Prentiss’ other regiments took a pretty bad beating in terms of prisoners. The Rebels grabbed up some four hundred members of the Twenty-third Missouri, including its commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Quin Morton. His First Brigade, so badly mauled in the early morning’s fight, lost two hundred or more men captured and temporarily ceased to exist as a unit.⁷³

And what of the Sixth Division’s commander? He wound up a prisoner. A number of different Confederate units claimed to have captured the general.⁷⁴

As Prentiss rode around the field with a white flag, trying to prevent any more of his men from being shot, the Thirty-third Tennessee came up screaming and yelling in triumph at the sight of hundreds of Union soldiers standing or walking around, their hands in the air. Still defiant, Prentiss reined in his horse, raised himself in his stirrups, and said, “Yell, boys, you have a right to shout for you have captured the bravest brigade [division] in the U. S. Army.”⁷⁵

Most of the Confederate officers tried to reorganize their men and pursue the fleeing Federals. Many Confederates, however, considered the battle over and began drifting to the rear to find something to eat or drink. Several minutes of fighting followed as the Southerners haphazardly fanned out after retreating Union soldiers. One Rebel gun crew managed to get ahead of Tuttle’s men. Some hundreds of yards from the Landing, this Confederate unit dashed through the ranks of the rapidly moving Federals. In the excitement no one seemed to notice that their uniforms were the wrong color. Unlimbering their pieces, the Rebels poured round after round into the Second Iowa, speeding it on its way toward the Landing.⁷⁶

With the Peach Orchard-Hornet’s Nest position at last overwhelmed, it seemed as though Beauregard was about to achieve the decisive victory so many of his soldiers had died for since early that morning. Just one more push would be necessary to sweep over and overwhelm the final remaining Federal line of resistance at the Landing and complete the annihilation of General Grant’s army.