one thing is certain, his arrival did put a new face upon the affair. Whatever we may have been able to effect without him, the battle of Monday as fought, and the victory of Monday as gained, were due to the fresh troops which he brought with him.

Buell's arrival, then, was most timely; his re-enforcements gave us largely preponderating numbers; his troops were handled with great coolness, judgment, and skill. He and his army deserve the greatest praise, which every military man is ready to accord; but let us not, in the glitter and glory of Monday, be so dazzled as not to estimate at its full value the severe fighting, the heroic endurance, and the unshaken purpose which were displayed in the dark hours of Sunday. Let us not forget that Grant had organized his army with great quickness; had brought them fearlessly to the front, looking for the enemy, determined to fight him wherever he could find him, and with troops, most of whom had not only never seen a battle, but hardly been drilled at the simplest company manoeuvres, had fought the best material in the Confederacy for a whole day. Nay, more than this; undismayed by ill fortune, and unappalled by the cowardly conduct of thousands of stragglers, he had formed his line at night, under cover of a line of batteries, the fire of which caused the rebel attack to melt away; he had ordered Sherman to assume the offensive in the morning, with the aid of Lewis Wallace's division of his own army; he had confidently anticipated Buell's arrival as one of the elements of the victory; and, by all these in combination, the greatest victory until then ever achieved on the American continent had been won.

To those who still think that he risked too much by placing his army on the west bank, and thus came very near total defeat, we can only quote the words of General Sherman's letter: "If there were any error in putting that army on the west side of the Tennessee, exposed to the superior force of the enemy, also assembling at Corinth, the mistake was not General Grant's; but there was no mistake. It was necessary that a combat, fierce and bitter, to test the manhood of two armies,

It was

should come off; and that was as good a place as any. not then a question of military skill and strategy, but of courage and pluck and I am convinced, that every life lost that day to us was necessary; for otherwise, at Corinth, at Memphis, at Vicksburg, we would have found harder resistance, had we not shown our enemies that, rude and untutored as we then were, we could fight as well as they."

Of the subordinates on that field, many deserve praise; but of them all, Sherman claims the greatest. He then gave splendid earnest of his future achievements., Although severely wounded in the hand on the first day, his place was never vacant. Again he was wounded. He had three horses shot under him; but he was undaunted and undismayed to the last.

Of Beauregard, the rebel commander, it is also our duty to speak. His place as a military man has not been understood. For some personal reasons, he afterwards fell into disfavor with Jefferson Davis, which impaired his services as a soldier; and his silly and wicked letters have caused him to be hated and despised by our own people. But we do not except Lee, when we express the opinion, that he had no equal among the Confederate generals.

Of strong, clear mind; thoroughly instructed in the military art; at once enthusiastic and tenacious of purpose; brave and self-reliant, he had the power to bring all he was, and all that he knew, into practical use. His plans in this battle were excellent; his generalship, admirable; his battle-tactics, sagacious and rapid; and had it not been for the skill of our chief commander, the determined valor of some of our troops, the effective management of the artillery, the accurate fire of the gunboats, and the timely arrival and admirable co-operation of Buell, he might longer have contested the field, and even defeated our army entirely.

NOTE.-The Confederate general has called this the battle of SHILOH. I have preferred the name of PITTSBURG LANDING, and hope we shall retain that name. The battle was fought by Beauregard to take the landing, and by Grant to hold it. Shiloh church was but one among the important positions on the field.

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CORINTH DESCRIBED.-SHERMAN'S RECONNOISSANCE. THE ARRIVAL OF HALLECK.POPE'S ARMY COMES UP.-BEAUREGARD'S ORDER. HIS FORCE-OURS.-POPE TAKES FARMINGTON. THE BATTLE OF FARMINGTON.-ELLIOT'S RAID.-CORINTH EVACUATED. THE OCCUPATION AND PURSUIT.-CO OPERATING MOVEMENTS.MITCHEL'S MARCH.-THE NAVY.-FIGHT AT MEMPHIS.-NEW EFFORTS OF THE ENEMY.

CORINTH was the objective point, at which Beauregard was to make his stand, and which Halleck was to capture at any cost. Specifically, the immediate matter in hand for the Union general was to cut the enemy's communication from east to west, on the new line which he had established, and the strength of which he vaunted; and thus to force him back upon the southern route from Vicksburg to Montgomery. In executing this, the commander of the land forces was to move pari passu with the naval armament, which was endeavoring to clear the Mississippi; and finally, he was either to beat Beauregard, or, if that wily commander would not stay to be beaten, he was, at the least, to compel him to abandon Corinth in a disastrous retreat.

Only a small village, not upon common maps, Corinth owes its military importance to the fact that it is at the intersection of two great arterial railroads-the "Mobile and Ohio" and the "Memphis and Charleston." The length and value of these routes are indicated by their names. Corinth is forty miles east of the Grand Junction, which it covered from Hal

leck's army, and nineteen from Pittsburg Landing, where the last great battle was fought. It is built upon a low and clayey plain, but has for natural defences ridges at some distance outside. The country beyond, to the banks of the Tennessee, is very much broken by ridges, valley streams, and marshes. The approach was rendered more difficult from the fact that, in his retreat from Pittsburg, the bridges over the creeks had been destroyed by Beauregard, and the roads heavily obstructed by timber. Farmington, on the east, and College Hill, on the north, are the highest points in the immediate vicinity of Corinth, and were occupied by the enemy as the signal-outposts of his vast intrenchments, encircling the town.

The advance of the Union army upon Corinth was determined upon by General Halleck, as soon as the battle of Pittsburg Landing had been fought. Had Beauregard won that battle, the advance would have been impossible: as Grant won it, it was the next obvious move upon the chess-board.

On the 8th of April, as we have seen, Sherman had reconnoitred the retreat of the enemy, with two brigades and a cavalry force, and had found the roads very bad. But the badness of the roads was compensated for by the signs of haste in the enemy's retreat. They were strewed with the accoutrements, wagons, ambulances, and limber-boxes of the retiring rebels; who had also, as an expedient to save time, left here and there a hospital flag flying. Sherman returned that same night to Pittsburg, to report.

On the 9th of April, Halleck left St. Louis for the scene of action. But before his arrival Grant had not been idle. He had sent an expedition under Sherman up the Tennessee, accompanied by the gunboats, as far as Eastport, to destroy the railroad-bridge over Big Bear Creek, east of Iuka. This was effectually done, and thus Corinth was cut off by that route from Richmond.

On the 22d of April, General John Pope came up to the landing, with his army, from New Madrid, twenty-five thousand strong. On the 30th, General Wallace was sent through