Pemberton’s army had its own best weapon, and now he used it. Major General John S. Bowen (South) commanded the finest division in the Confederate force, hard-fighting Missourians and Arkansans, and Bowen threw them straight at the men who had just taken the hill. Between two and half past two in the afternoon his line slammed into Brigadier General Alvin P. Hovey’s (North) soldiers, men who had been climbing and fighting since mid-morning and had nothing left in their legs, and rolled them back.

For the men on that slope it was the third trip up the same ground in a few hours, and the worst. The Missourians and Arkansans came on through their own dead and over the crest the Federals had just bled to take, close enough that the lines fired into each other at a few paces, and drove the exhausted Union men back down the hill and nearly to the Champion house at its foot. There was no maneuver left in it and no cleverness, just two lines of worn-out men shoving each other up and down a hill of corpses for the better part of an hour. At the height of it the crest of Champion Hill and the crossroads below it were back in Confederate hands.

But Bowen had too few men to keep what his charge had taken. He had broken the Union line and seized the ground, and there was nothing behind him to hold it with. A counterattack is only as good as the reserve that follows it, and Bowen had outrun his. The crest he had retaken he could not garrison; that is, he had no fresh troops to leave on it to hold it.

Grant had what Bowen lacked: a fresh division in hand. He fed in the reserve, Brigadier General Marcellus Crocker’s (North) men, straight into the path of Bowen’s surge. The fresh Union line stopped the Missourians and Arkansans, then began to push them back up and over the same slope yet again. The Federals retook the crest and retook the crossroads, and this time they kept them. Champion Hill had changed hands three times in a few hours, Union, then Confederate under Bowen, then Union again, and the last hands on it were Grant’s.

That was the battle. With the crossroads gone for good and the army’s flank caved in, and with Major General John A. McClernand (North) at last beginning to lean on the southern end of the line, Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton (South) had no choice left but to get what remained of his army off the field before it was surrounded. The decision was forced on him by the loss of a single crest and the road junction it commanded. He ordered the retreat.

The hardest fighting of the day: a counterattack that won the ground but could not keep it.

Bowen’s charge briefly retook the crest and the crossroads in the hardest fighting of the day, but he could not hold what he had won without a reserve. Grant’s fresh division under Crocker stopped the surge and took the ground back for good; the hill and crossroads changed hands three times before settling with the Union. With his only good escape road in Federal hands, Pemberton had to abandon the field, and the field battle for Vicksburg was lost.