THE UNITED STATES SERVICE MAGAZINE. VOL. III.-JANUARY, 1865.-NO. I. THE BATTLE OF PITTSBURG LANDING. A LETTER FROM GENERAL SHERMAN. HEAD-QUARTERS MILITARY DIVISION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. PROF. HENRY COPPÉE, Philadelphia: DEAR SIR:-In the June number of the UNITED STATES SERVICE MAGAZINE I find a brief sketch of Lieutenant-General U. S. Grant, in which I see you are likely to perpetuate an error, which General Grant may not deem of sufficient importance to correct. To General Buell's noble, able, and gallant conduct you attribute the fact that the disaster of April 6th, at Pittsburg Landing, was retrieved, and made the victory of the following day. As General Taylor is said in his later days to have doubted whether he was at the battle of Buena Vista at all, on account of the many things having transpired there, according to the historians, which he did not see, so I begin to doubt whether I was at the battle of Pittsburg Landing of modern description. But I was at the battles of April 6th and 7th, 1862. General Grant visited my division in person about ten A. M., when the battle raged fiercest. I was then on the right. After some general conversation, he remarked, that I was doing right in stubbornly opposing the progress of the enemy; and, in answer to my inquiry as to cartridges, told me he had anticipated their want, and given orders accordingly he then said his presence was more needed over Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by C. B. RICHARDSON, in the Clerk's at the left. About two P. M. of the 6th, the enemy materially slackened his attack on me, and about four P. M. I deliberately made a new line behind McArthur's drill-field, placing batteries on chosen ground, repelled easily a cavalry attack, and watched the cautious approach of the enemy's infantry, that never dislodged me there. I selected that line in advance of a bridge across Snake Creek, by which we had all day been expecting the approach of Lew. Wallace's Division from Crump's Landing. About five P. M., before the sun set, General Grant came again to me, and after hearing my report of matters, explained to me the situation of affairs on the left, which were not as favorable; still, the enemy had failed to reach the landing of the boats. We agreed that the enemy had expended the furore of his attack, and we estimated our loss, and approximated our then strength, including Lew. Wallace's fresh division, expected each minute. He then ordered me to get all things ready, and at daylight the next day to assume the offensive. That was before General Buell had arrived, but he was known to be near at hand. General Buell's troops took no essential part in the first day's fight, and Grant's army, though collected together hastily, green as militia, some regiments arriving without cartridges even, and nearly all hearing the dread sound of battle for the first time, had successfully withstood and repelled the first day's terrific onset of a superior enemy, well commanded and well handled. I know I had orders from General Grant to assume the offensive before I knew General Buell was on the west side of the Tennessee. I think General Buell, Colonel Fry, and others of General Buell's staff, rode up to where I was about sunset, about the time General Grant was leaving me. General Buell asked me many questions, and got of me a small map, which I had made for my own use, and told me that by daylight he could have eighteen thousand fresh men, which I knew would settle the matter. I understood Grant's forces were to advance on the right of the Corinth Road, and Buell's on the left, and accordingly at daylight I advanced my division by the flank, the resistance being trivial, up to the very spot where the day before the battle had been most severe, and then waited till near noon for Buell's troops to get up abreast, when the entire line advanced and recovered all the ground we had ever held. I know that, with the exception of one or two severe struggles, the fighting of April 7th was easy as compared with that of April 6th. I never was disposed, nor am I now, to question any thing done by General Buell and his army, and know that approaching our field of battle from the rear, he encountered that sickening crowd of laggards and fugitives that excited his contempt, and that of his army, who never gave full credit to those in the front line, who did fight hard, and who had, at four P. M., checked the enemy, and were preparing the next day to assume the offensive. I remember the fact the better from General Grant's anecdote of his Donelson battle, which he told me then for the first time-that, at a certain period of the battle, he saw that either side was ready to give way if the other showed a bold front, and he determined to do that very thing, to advance on the enemy, when, as he prognosticated, the enemy surrendered. At four P. M.of April 6th, he thought the appearances the same, and he judged, with Lew. Wallace's fresh division and such of our startled troops as had recovered their equilibrium, he would be justified in dropping the defensive and assuming the offensive in the morning.. And, I repeat, I received such orders before I knew General Buell's troops were at the river. I admit that I was glad Buell was there, because I knew his troops were older than ours, and better systematized and drilled, and his arrival made that certain, which before was uncertain. I have heard this question much discussed, and must say, that the officers of Buell's army dwelt too much on the stampede of some of our raw troops, and gave us too little credit for the fact that for one whole day, weakened as we were by the absence of Buell's army, long expected, of Lew. Wallace's Division, only four miles off, and of the fugitives from our ranks, we had beaten off our assailants for the time. At the same time, our Army of the Tennessee have indulged in severe criticisms at the slow ap-. proach of that army which knew the danger that threatened us from the concentrated armies of Johnston, Beauregard, and Bragg, that lay at Corinth. In a war like this, where opportunities for personal prowess are as plenty as blackberries, to those who seek them at the front, all such criminations should be frowned down; and were it not for the military character of your journal, I would not venture to offer a correction to a very popular error. I will also avail myself of this occasion to correct another very common mistake in attributing to General Grant the selection of that battle-field. It was chosen by that veteran soldier, MajorGeneral Charles F. Smith, who ordered my division to disembark there, and strike for the Charleston Railroad. This order was subsequently modified, by his ordering Hurlbut's Division to disembark there, and mine higher up the Tennessee, to the mouth of Yellow Creek, to strike the railroad at Burnsville. But floods prevented our reaching the railroad, when General Smith ordered me in person also to disembark at Pittsburg Landing, and take post well out, so as to make plenty of room, with Snake and Lick Creeks the flanks of a camp for the grand army of invasion. It was General Smith who selected that field of battle, and it was well chosen. On any other we surely would have been overwhelmed, as both Lick and Snake Creeks forced the enemy to confine his movement to a direct front attack, which new troops are better qualified to resist than where the flanks are exposed to a real or chimerical danger. Even the divisions of that army were arranged in that camp by General Smith's order, my division forming, as it were, the outlying picket, whilst McClernand and Prentiss's were the real line of battle, with W. H. L. Wallace in support of the right wing, and Hurlbut of the left; Lew. Wallace's Division being detached. All these subordinate dispositions were made by the order of General Smith, before General Grant succeeded him to the command of all the forces. up the Tennessee-head-quarters, Savannah. 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 the two armies, should come off, and that was as good a place as any. It was 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. Excuse so long a letter, which is very unusual from me; but of course my life is liable to cease at any moment, and I happen to be a witness to certain truths which are now beginning to pass out of memory, and form what is called history. I also take great pleasure in adding, that nearly all the new troops that at Shiloh drew from me official censure, have more than redeemed their good name; among them, that very regiment which first broke, the 53d Ohio, Colonel Appen. Under another leader, Colonel Jones, it has shared every campaign and expedition of mine since, is with me now, and can march, and bivouac, and fight as well as the best regiment in this or any army. Its reputation now is equal to that of any from the State of Ohio. I am, with respect, Yours, truly, W. T. SHERMAN, Major-General. FARRAGUT. 99.66 } BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE RED RIVER EXPEDITION," THE MILITIA," ETC. "FEAR, Grandmother?" said little Nelson; "fear, Grandmother? I never saw fear!" And in this childish prattle sprouted the germ of Trafalgar. I begin by striking the key-note of the character of the man whose name heads this sketch. What Nelson's achievements and Collingwood's character were to England, and more, Farragut is to America. Of that large class of mankind which refuses to believe in the contemporaneous existence of greatness, in the possibility of shaking hands with genius, it is perhaps useless to request a comparison of the actual present, seen in the raw daylight, with the mythical mezzotint past of their imaginations. But to the careful reader of history, not merely of the past, but of all times, the name of our Admiral must stand out in bold relief on the roll of the great naval heroes of the world. He has carved his own name with his sword. No noble relatives pushed him forward; no influence at Court spiced commonplaces, till, in the nostrils of the people, they had the flavor of heroism. If his entry into the service now justly proud to claim him as its own was not exactly through the hawse-hole, it certainly was not through the cabin window, in the sense of the old saw. We have no moral parallax to calculate-no angle of apparent and true position to determine. We are to judge him as he is, his achievements as they were. If, in the historical perspective, the naval hero necessarily casts a shorter shadow than that of the leader of armies, the student of character may find some compensation for the absence of the bold outlines and high coloring that belong to the figures which monopolize the foreground, in the perfect details, the matchless simplicity, the delicate finish, the harmony of the accessories. The Admiral can never occupy so large a space in the public mind as the General; but he appeals more nearly to the popular heart of all maritime nations. Many of those particulars as to the Admiral's parentage and early years, which would serve so materially to illuminate his character, and to show those of us the man, who now see only the admiral, are unfortunately wanting, or at best rare or of somewhat doubtful authenticity. His father, George Farragut, a native of Citadella, the capital of the Island of Minorca, and a descendant of an ancient Catalonian house, came to this country in 1776 and entered the American army, rising, it is said, to the rank of major. After the peace, he married Miss Elizabeth Shine, of North Carolina, a member of the old Scotch family of McIven, and settled down, to fight the Indians and |