THE CAMPAIGN OF SHILOH.

59°

avoid being surrounded, gave orders for it to retire, and soon fell mortallywounded; but a part of his division remained with Prentiss.

Sometime previously I had ordered General Hardee to gather all the forceshe could and press the enemy on our own left. Stragglers that had beencollected by Colonels Brent and Chisolm and others of my staff, were also sentforward extemporized into battalions, and Colonel Marshall J. Smith with theNew Orleans Crescent Regiment was added, with orders to “ Drive the enemyinto the Tennessee .”

Meantime, or shortly after 3 p. m., Governor Harris and Captain Wickliffe,both of General Johnston’s staff, had reached me with information of hisdeath. Staff-officers were immediately dispatched to acquaint the corps com-manders of this deplorable casualty, with a caution, however, against other-wise promulgating the fact. They were also urged to push the battle withrenewed vigor and, if possible, to force a speedy close, to which end my staffwere energetically employed in pushing up the stragglers or regiments orparts of regiments that had become casually separated from their organiza-tions because of the nature of the battle-field.

As I have said, by five o’clock the whole Federal army except Prentiss’sdivision, with a part of Wallace’s, had receded to the river-bank, and the indom-itable force which under Prentiss still contested the field was being environedon its left by brigades from the divisions of Breckinridge, Cheatham, andWithers in that quarter. It remains to be said that Prentiss was equallyencompassed on the other flank by a part of Ruggles’s division, togetherwith some of General Polk’s corps. Thus surrounded on all sides, thatofficer, whose division had been the first to come into collision with us thatmorning, stoutly keeping the field to the last, was now forced to surrender inperson, just after 5:30 p. m., with some 2200 officers and men.

We had now had more than eleven hours of continuous fighting, fightingwithout food except that hastily snatched up in the abandoned Federalencampments. In the meantime Colonel J. D. Webster, the Federal chief ofstaff, had massed his reserve artillery, some sixty guns, on a ridge aboutthree hundred yards in advance of the landing which commanded all theapproaches thereto from the landward, with a deep ravine on the side facingthe Confederates. Moreover, much of the ground in front of this positionwas swept by the guns of the steamers Lexington and Tyler , properly postedfor that purpose. Near by had gathered the remnants of Wallace’s, Hurlbut’s,and McClernand ’s divisions, from which gunners had been taken to man theartillery. At this critical instant, Colonel Ammen’s brigade of Nelson’s divi-sion of Buell’s army was brought across the Tennessee and placed as a support,on the ridge, in a position selected by General Buell himself, just at theinstant that the Confederates attempted to storm this last foothold to whichthey had finally driven their adversary after eleven hours of unceasing battle.

This was the situation at 6 p. m., and that the Confederate troops werenot in a condition to carry such a position as that which confronted themat that late hour becomes clearly apparent from the official reports. Af terthe capture of General Prentiss no serious effort was made to press the