A modern aerial map of the battlefield at Belmont, KY
There followed days of tension and inactivity. Custer’s cavalry troop was pushed past their limits, to no avail; Forrest’s cavalry controlled the roads and the countryside, warding the movement of Beauregard’s infantry from hostile eyes with an impenetrable screen. The civilian sources of earlier warnings had dried up, also intimidated by Forrest and his men or, as Hancock thought more likely, waiting to see who would win the contest for Kentucky before exposing themselves further. Communications from Grant were short, clear and uninformative about the larger situation, but daily written reports from Major Parsons carried the background information that Hancock craved. The first regiments of FitzJohn Porter’s division had arrived in Louisville, boated up from Fort Rodgers. It was ironic, Parsons wrote, that Grant had come to Kentucky for men to support the drive on Memphis, only to find he first had to move more men to Kentucky! The thing Hancock wanted most to know - the whereabouts of Hooker’s men - seemed not to be known with any certainty. Parsons hinted that Hooker was avoiding communication with Grant, which only added to Hancock’s unease.
The calm broke in the hour before dawn on Tuesday, April 14th of 1863. Hancock’s orderly thrust his head into the tent to see his general already awake and buttoning the brass buttons of his blue tunic. “Sir! There is a report from Colonel Hardesty!” Commanding of the 3rd Creole Infantry Division, Hardesty should have worn a brigadier’s stars, but officers in the Creole Corps were usually at least a grade below the rank of men in the Volunteer Army with the same responsibilities. Hardesty had also come over from the Quartermaster’s Department. He was dry and more dogged than thoughtful, and he was famously fond of having eight hours of sleep every night. If Hardesty was up, so were the Confederates, Hancock could reason with little fear of contradiction, but he hadn’t needed his orderly to tell him that. The low rumble he heard was gunfire, not thunder, and it had brought Hancock bolt upright out of bed a quarter-hour before.
“What does the Colonel have to say, Fred?” The orderly backed away instead of answering and another shadowy figure took his place. “Beggin’ yer pardon, General, but Colonel Hardesty says the rebels have hit his position in strength. His men are holding the entrenchments on the Louisville Pike, but he is concerned about his left.”
Hardesty had been worried about his left flank since Grant’s arrival, and with good reason: Hancock’s corps didn’t have enough men to hold the entire length of Crooked Creek. Rawson’s 2nd Creole Division was in the west, on a line going south from the rough foothills, past Horsefly Hollow, across the Belmont Road, then curving east along the main run of Crooked Creek. Once across the L&N Railroad bridge and past the scattered houses and the train station that marked Belmont proper, the line of the 2nd continued easterly to a point just short of the Louisville Pike. The 3rd was responsible for the defense of the Turnpike Bridge and the hills to the east: high, steep and rugged, they sloped down to the verge of the creek with only a little strip of brushy ground at their foot. There were only three good approaches to the Union position: up the valley on the Belmont Road, along the railroad track, or via the Pike. East of the Pike the land was wooded and wild, without a road for a dozen miles. The ground south of Crooked Creek matched the terrain north and east of the Pike, being steep, hilly and thickly wooded, meaning it would be difficult for the Confederates to move men from one side of the field to the other without a long, roundabout march. Hancock’s concerns about his position were two-fold. Firstly, a prominent height south of the creek called Collings Hill overlooked the central part of his line, a commanding position for artillery if guns could be wrestled to the summit. Secondly, there was Hardesty’s concern for his left flank, which hung unsupported on the hills north of Crooked Creek. Hancock didn’t doubt that the Confederates could find a way through the ravines and gullies there, if they had time and men enough. But he thought that Beauregard would try a straight-up push first, for the sake of speed. The only question was from which direction the main attack would come: from the southwest along the Belmont Road, from the center up the railroad line, or from the south along the Pike.
“Are the horses saddled, Fred?” Hancock asked, ducking his head to clear the tent flap and donning his hat in one motion. His other hand reached for the proffered cup of coffee; his legs never ceased propelling him forward toward the campfire. “Good. Then let us go see what the rebels are about, shall we?”
Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, General of the Army of the Confederate States, Commanding General of the Western Department and victorious hero of the campaign in western Virginia, brushed his moustache with one finger. The wax was still fresh, the movement of his gloved knuckle along the glossy slope soothing, the mannerism as dandified as the sharp black color of his hair and the elegant crisp cut of his uniform. It was always important to provide an example to the officers and men, today perhaps more so than before. For today he would lead his men in battle, not a skirmish like those of last summer in western Virginia, but a clash of two armies, his own larger than Johnston’s had been at Manassas Station and the victory to be gained thus more glorious.
The march from Bowling Green had been vexing. These men had never worked beside or even seen each other before they had been pulled together from every corner of the Confederacy. Only the regiments he had brought from western Virginia had ever seen combat; most were entirely raw, without discipline or training, and he had not had the time to make up their deficiencies. The march from Bowling Green to Elizabethtown had not been especially hard: the weather fine, the roads as good as could be expected. But the men were soft, and had straggled, and so his army had not progressed as quickly as he had hoped and planned. Forrest’s cavalry were rough and unmilitary, but they were good scouts, and they had returned with good information on the enemy’s deployment. Those defenses were good but shallow; the real strength of the position lay in the surrounding terrain. Faced with a prepared enemy in entrenchments, Beauregard would have preferred to flank them, or to mask the force and swing widely around it. But to the west of Belmont lay a wilderness of rugged, wooded hills unbroken by road or track. The situation on the east was little better; turning that flank would have meant sending a detachment a dozen miles east to Bardstown, then twenty miles northwest to Shepherdsville. In the two days required for that movement the enemy might risk engagement with Beauregard’s divided force, or fall back untouched.
No; the enemy was here and must be fought here. Beauregard had put Hardee’s corps on the Turnpike and Van Dorn’s to the west, covering the railroad line and the Belmont Road. His men would go forward in a broad push, but he expected success at the Turnpike Bridge first. A push straight up that valley would isolate the enemy in Belmont town; their rout or surrender must follow.
He had left the army staff to their work and ridden forward with Hardee. Around them, the land was dark but alive with the sounds of men in motion. Beauregard hoped to achieve surprise, even at this late date; forbidding campfires had deprived his men of a hot supper and breakfast, but those fires would also have revealed their strength and position. In a few moments the dawn would be coming and the contest would begin. He had no doubt of the outcome, but prayed silently that his men would not exhaust themselves in the effort. Much remained to be done after this battle was won.
Beauregard realized they had ridden too far forward only when they came upon the main line of infantry waiting crouched in the darkness, disappearing in both directions into the gloom and brush. There seemed to be no danger, not yet; dawn was just a glow above the eastern hills. He shushed an importuning aide and rode a little farther, coming on a group of half a dozen men, all dressed in the motley browns and greys of Confederate soldiers save for one, whose face was darker than his tunic. Beauregard could see no details in the weak light but he was certain the patrol had been beating their captive, had seen the arm swings as they plied their rifle butts.
“Here, now! You men! Leave off! We do not abuse prisoners!”
The men straightened; one cursed, softly but with real anger. “This ain’t no prisoner, sir. He’s just a darky, got up in fancy dress.” The man on the ground rolled white eyes but did not open his mouth. “Gen’ral!” another soldier said, startled. “Didn’t know it was you, sir!”
“This man is a Union soldier and must be treated as such. Take him to the rear.”
“He ain’t no soldier!” It was the man who had cursed, before. “He’s just a goddamn n-“
The roar of a cannon at close hand was followed by another, and another, and another as the pieces of a battery spoke. So dark was it, and so intent had he been on the scene in the road, that Beauregard had not seen the artillery in the copse to his left. Now he concentrated on keeping his seat on the dancing, terrified horse; when he got the animal in hand he was some distance back the way he had come and the long gray lines were moving forward.
“Hardee! General Hardee!”
“Here, sir. Here!” Not Hardee’s voice, but that of an aide. Beauregard was not inclined to quibble. From the woods behind him came the rolling crash of musketry; thousands of men loosing their weapons in short order. These men had all heard newspaper accounts of the Battle of Manassas Station and had been entranced by reports of the terrifying scream first used there. The Richmond papers had tried to label it the ‘Stonewall shout’, but it was the ‘rebel yell’ in the popular mind. His western troops had taken up the idea but infused it with a twist of their own, creating a deeper, baying howl that owed more to bear than catamount. Now that unearthly howling lifted with the white powder smoke from the woods; Beauregard caught a glimpse over his shoulder but could spare no more attention from his trembling horse.
“It seems Van Dorn has been impatient.” William Hardee was not a big man, but his voice was deep and he sat his horse with confidence. It must be dawn now, for Beauregard could see the buttons shining on his tunic. The small head was shadowed under a large-brimmed hat of his own design, but the bottle-brush chin whiskers that spread over his breast were unmistakable. It was very like Hardee to censor Van Dorn for moving early; Hardee had never in his life been anything but perfectly punctual, perfectly reliable. “Once his men cut loose I told Cleburne to go ahead.”
“You were correct.” There was nothing else to say; the plans were made and the battle begun. It only remained now to see the price exacted.
“Damn them for putting colored troops in the line, anyway.” Hardee’s comment so perfectly paralleled his own thoughts that Beauregard was startled. “I served with some of those men, before…” Hardee’s voice trailed away, but Beauregard knew he meant to say, ‘before the War, before the country was torn in half, before all of this’.
“Yes. Good soldiers, then – but not enough of them here today to stop us, I think. Still, pass the word down that they are to have proper treatment as prisoners of war. I want no… incidents to stain our honor.”
Hardee shook his head, but Beauregard knew he was expressing sadness, not disagreement. “I shall, sir, but I fear it will do little good. We shall see few prisoners this day.”
Maybe the 'Director-merrick Dinner Debates'. 
