army. To take an example far from us, in time and place, when Turenne had, after months of successful manoeuvring, finally forced his enemy into a position which gave assurance of victory, and had marshaled his forces for a decisive battle, he was, when making a preliminary reconnaissance, killed by a chance shot; then his successor, instead of attacking, retreated, and all which the one had gained for France, the other lost.

To take another example, not quite so conclusive, it was epigrammatically said by Lieutenant Kingsbury, when writing of the battle of Buena Vista, that if the last shot, fired at the close of the second day's conflict, had killed General Taylor, the next morning's sun would have risen upon the strange spectacle of two armies in full retreat from each other, the field for which they had fought being in the possession of neither. What material consequences would have flowed from the supposed event-how the Mexican people would have been inspired by the retreat of our army, how far it would have brought out all their resources for war, and to what extent results might have been thereby affected-are speculative inquiries on a subject from which time and circumstance have taken the interest it once possessed.

The extracts which have been given sufficiently prove that, when General Johnston fell, the Confederate army was so fully victorious that, had the attack been vigorously pressed, General Grant and his army would before the setting of the sun have been fugitives or prisoners.

As our troops drew near to the river, the gunboats of the enemy became ineffective, because to fire over the bank required such elevation of the guns that the shot and shell passed high over the heads of our men, falling far away in the rear.

General Polk described the troops in advance for that reason as quite safe from the fire of the gunboats, though it might seem terrible to those far in the rear, and expressed the surprise and regret he felt at the order to retire.

Grant's army being beaten, the next step of General Johnston's programme should have followed, the defeat of Buell's and Mitchell's forces as they successively came up, and a return by our victorious army through Tennessee to Ken

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MUST BE MATTER OF CONJECTURE.

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tucky. The great embarrassment had been the want of good military weapons; these would have been largely supplied by the conquest hoped for, and, in the light of what had occurred, not unreasonably anticipated.

What great consequences would have ensued must be matter of conjecture, but that the people of Kentucky and Missouri generously sympathized with the South was then commonly admitted. Our known want of preparation for war and numerical inferiority may well have caused many to doubt the wisdom of our effort for independence, and to these a signal success would have been the makeweight deciding their

course.

I believe that again in the history of war the fate of an army depended on one man; and more, that the fortunes of a country hung by the single thread of the life that was yielded on the field of Shiloh. So great was my confidence in his capacity for organization and administration, that I felt, when he was assigned to the Department of the West, that the undeveloped power of that region would be made sufficient not only for its own safety, but to contribute support if need be to the more seriously threatened East.

There have been various suppositions as to the neglect of the wound which caused General Johnston's death. My own opinion, founded upon the statements of those who were near him, and upon my long acquaintance with him and close observation of him under trying circumstances, is, that his iron nerve and extraordinary concentration of mind made him regardless of his wound, in the fixed purpose to dislodge the enemy from his last position, and, while thus struggling to complete the victory within his grasp, he unheedingly allowed his life-blood to flow away.

It often happens that men do not properly value their richest gifts until taken away. Those who had erroneously and unjustly censured Johnston, convicted of their error by the grandeur of his revealed character, joined in the general lamentation over his loss, and malignity even was silenced by the devoted manner of his death. My estimation of him was based on long and intimate acquaintance; beginning in our youth, it

had grown with our growth without check or variation, and, when he first arrived in Richmond, was expressed to some friends yet living, in the wish that I had the power, by resigning, to transfer to him the Presidency of the Confederate States.

CHAPTER XIX.

Retirement of the Army.-Remnants of Grant's Army.-Its Reënforcements.Strength of our Army.-Strength of Grant's Army.-Reorganization.-Corinth. —Advance of General Halleck.—Siege of Corinth.-Evacuation.-Retreat to Tupelo.-General Beauregard retires.-General Bragg in Command.-Positions on the Mississippi River occupied by the Enemy.-New Madrid.-Island No. 10.-Fort Pillow.-Memphis.-Attack at Hatteras Inlet.-Expedition of the Enemy to Port Royal.-Expeditions from Port Royal.-System of Coast Defenses adopted by us.-Fort Pulaski.

Ar the ensuing nightfall our victorious army retired from the front and abandoned its vantage-ground on the bluffs, which had been won at such a cost of blood. The enemy thereby had room and opportunity to come out from their corner, reoccupy the strong positions from which they had been driven, and dispose their troops on much more favorable ground. Called off by staff-officers, who gave no specific instructions, our brigades, according to circumstances, bivouacked on the battle-field, marched to the rear, or made themselves comfortable on the profuse spoils of the enemy's encampments. General Buell says:

"Of the army of not less than fifty thousand effective men, which Grant had on the west bank of the Tennessee River, not more than five thousand were in ranks and available on the battlefield at nightfall on the 6th, exclusive of Lew Wallace's division, say eight thousand five hundred men that only came up during the night. The rest were either killed, wounded, captured, or scattered in inextricable and hopeless confusion for miles along the banks of the river."

In addition to the arrival of Wallace's division, the entire divisions of Nelson and Crittenden got across the river during the night, and by daylight that of McCook began to arrive;

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A SERIES OF COMBATS ENSUED.

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all but the first named belonged to Buell's army. The work of reorganization of fragments of Grant's force also occupied the night. In the morning the arrival of reënforcements to the enemy continued.

On the morning of the 7th the enemy advanced about six o'clock, and opened a heavy fire of musketry and artillery, such as gave assurance that the reënforcements had arrived, to anticipate which the battle of the 6th had been fought. A series of combats ensued, in which the Confederates showed their usual valor; but, after the junction had been effected between Grant and Buell, which Johnston's movement was made to prevent, our force was unequal to resist the combined armies, and retreat was a necessity.

The field return of the Army of Mississippi before and after the battle of Shiloh was as follows: infantry and artillery, effective before the battle, 35,953; cavalry, 4,382; total, 40,335. Infantry and artillery, effective after the battle, 25,555; cavalry, 4,081; total, 29,636. Difference, 10,699. Casualties in battle: killed, 1,728; wounded, 8,012; missing, 959.

The effective force of General Grant's army engaged in the battles of April 6th and 7th at Shiloh was 49,314; reënforcements of General Buell, 21,579; total, 70,893. The casualties in the battle of April 6th in Grant's force were as follows: killed, 1,500; wounded, 6,634; missing, 3,086; total, 11,220; leaving, for duty on the 7th, 59,673.

On April 9th Major-General H. W. Halleck left St. Louis and proceeded to Pittsburg Landing to assume command of the enemy's forces in the field. A reorganization was made, in which General Grant's divisions formed the right wing, those of General Buell the center, and those of General Pope, brought from the west side of the Mississippi, the left wing; and an advance on Corinth was commenced.

Corinth, the position from which our forces had advanced to Shiloh or Pittsburg Landing, and to which they had now retired, was a small village in the northeast corner of the State of Mississippi. It was ninety miles east of Memphis and twenty or twenty-two west of the Tennessee River. The Memphis and Charleston Railroad ran from west to east through it, and the

Mobile and Ohio road from south to north. The country between it and the Tennessee River was quite rugged, broken into ridges, and covered with a heavy forest. The position itself was flat, the water poor. Being the point at which two principal railroads crossed, it served admirably for the concentration of our forces.

Corinth was a strategic point of importance, and it was intended to be held as long as circumstances would permit; but it was untenable in the face of a largely superior force, owing to the ease with which the railroad communications in the rear could be cut by the enemy's cavalry. The small streams and contiguous flats in its front formed some obstacles which were not passed by the enemy until after the retreat of our army. The defenses were slight, consisting of rifle-pits and earthworks of little elevation or strength.

The movement of General Halleck against this position commenced from Pittsburg Landing on April 28th with a force exceeding eighty-five thousand effectives. On May 3d he had reached within eight miles of Corinth, and on the 21st his batteries were within three miles.. This slow progress was probably the result of a conviction that our force was very large, rather than of the bad state of the roads. So great were his precautions, that every night his army lay in an intrenched camp, and by day it was assailed by skirmishers from our army in more or less force.

General Sherman, in his report of May 30th, says:

"My division has constructed seven distinct intrenched camps since leaving Shiloh, the men working cheerfully and well all the time, night and day. Hardly had we finished one camp before we were called on to move forward and build another. But I have been delighted at this feature in the character of my division, and take this method of making it known. Our intrenchments near Corinth and at Russell's, each built substantially in one night, are stronger works of art than the much-boasted forts of the enemy at Corinth."

The line of railroad on the north and east had been cut by the enemy, and an attempt made on the south. But so well