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During the next few days Pvt. Baxter suffered the greatest hardships of his career as a soldier. Pickets were not allowed fires, and he would return from his watch half frozen and close to frostbite. Even back within his own defensive lines with campfires blazing, this teenage soldier from the Gulf Coast of Mississippi faced discomforts that would have defeated a lesser will to survive. Little sleep and less food was the order of the day, and when the thaw started on December 12, Baxter welcomed it, though he knew it would bring on the inevitable Federal attack.
The battle got under way on the 15th, and the outcome was never in doubt. On the first day, Thomas, in a wide flanking move, rolled up the Confederate left, and Hood was forced back to a defensive position at the foot of Brentwood Hills. Next day in the afternoon, after much hard fighting, Union infantry and cavalry combined to rout the Confederate forces, and the battle was over.
In the withdrawal that followed, Baxter engaged in heavy fighting in rearguard action on the Granny White Pike south of Nashville, but there was no stopping the Federals, and soon the withdrawal became a retreat, and the retreat a rout. In one more day Hood?s army of 30,000 by casualty, capture, and disbursal became a footsore band of less than 20,000. On December 26-27 they crossed the Tennessee River, and early in January reached Tupelo, Mississippi, where a headquarters of sorts was established. Hood resigned his command, and Baxter, given a ten-day furlough, heads for Handsboro and a reunion with his loved ones.
The reunion must have been bittersweet. By now they all knew the cause was lost, even though they did not voice it openly, and there was amid the Christmas and New Year celebration a feeling of depression that could not be stifled.
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