522

SHILOH REVIEWED.

had received some accessions from the driftings of other divisions. The esti-mate which he makes of his force is wholly fallacious. It could not havestood on the space which he occupied. There may have been two thousandmen in his line on the night of the 6th. These three divisions, if theymay be so called, and Tuttle’s command, with Birge’s sharp-shooters on theextreme right, and the reserve artillery on the left, which, according to Gen-eral Grant’s report, consisted of “four 20-pounder Parrott guns and a batteryof rifled guns,” constituted the line of battle, which extended a mile from theriver. Five thousand men occupied it. Other partially organized fragmentswere crowded together about the river and the camps on the plateau, andwith proper effort could have been fitted for good service; but no steps to*that end were taken. The defect in the command that opened the way forthe disaster, facilitated its progress at every step—the want of a strong execu-tive hand guided by a clear organizing head. Some of these fragmentary com-mands sought places for themselves in the advance next day. The remnantof the Second Division under Colonel Tuttle was one of these. Indeed, itdeserves a higher name. It presented itself to me on the field without orders,and rendered efficient service with my divisions. There may have been1500 or 2000 men of these unrecognized commands that went to the fronton Monday without instructions. Seven thousand men at the utmost, besidesLew Wallace ’s 5000, were ready Sunday night to take part in the strugglewhich was to be renewed in the morning. Of the original force, 7000 werekilled or wounded, 3000 were prisoners, at least 15,000 were absent from theranks and hopelessly disorganized, and about 30 pieces of artillery were in thehands of the enemy.

The physical condition of the army was an exact type of its moral con-dition. The ties of discipline, not yet of long enough duration or rigidlyenough enforced to be very strong, were in much the largest part of the armythoroughly severed. An unbroken tide of disaster had obliterated the dis-tance between grades, and brought all men to the standard of personalqualities. The feeble groups that still clung together were held by force ofindividual character more than by discipline, and a disbelief in the ability ofthe army unaided to extricate itself from the peril that environed it, was, Ido not hesitate to affirm, universal. In my opinion, that feeling was sharedby the commander himself. A week after the battle the army had not recov-ered from its shattered and prostrated condition. On the 14tli, three daysafter Halleck’s arrival, he instructed Grant: “ Divisions and brigades should,where necessary, be reorganized and put in position, and all stragglers re-turned to their companies and regiments. Your army is not now in conditionto resist an attack.” We are told that the enemy had stragglers too. Yes,every cause which demands effort and sacrifice will have them; but there isa difference between the straggling which is not restrained by the smile offortune, and that which tries to elude the pursuit of fate — it is the differencebetween victory and defeat. The Confederates in their official reports make noconcealment of their skeletons, but when the time for action arrived they werevital bodies, and, on Sunday, always in sufficient force to do the work at last.