THE CAMPAIGN OF SHILOH.

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victory by the corps commanders. In fact the troops had got out of thehands either of corps, divisional, or brigade commanders, and for the mostpart, moreover, at the front, were out of ammunition. Several most gallantuncombined efforts (notably by Chalmers) were made to reach and carry theFederal battery, but in every instance the effort failed.

Comprehending the situation as it was, at six p. m. I dispatched staff-offi-cers with orders to cease hostilities, withdraw the troops from under fire ofthe Federal gun-boats, and to sleep on their arms. However, before theorder was received many of the regiments had already been withdrawn outof action, and really the attack had practically ceased at every point. ☆

My headquarters for the night were established at the Shiloh MeetingHouse, in the tent that General Sherman had occupied. There several ofthe corps and division commanders called for orders, and all evinced andexpressed much satisfaction with the results, while no one was heard toexpress or suggest that more might have been achieved had the battlebeen prolonged. All seemed to believe that our troops had accomplishedas much as could have been hoped for.

Of the second day’s battle my sketch shall be very brief. It began withdaylight, and this time Buell’s army was the attacking force.

Our widely scattered forces, which it had been impossible to organize in thenight after the late hour at which they were drawn out of action, were gath-ered in hand for the exigency as quickly as possible. Generals Bragg, Hardee,and Breckinridge hurried to their assigned positions,— Hardee now to theextreme right, where were Chalmers’s and Jackson’s brigades of Bragg’s corps;General Bragg to the left, where were assembled brigades and fragments ofhis own troops, as also of Clark’s division, Polk’s corps, with Trabue’s brigadeof Kentuckians ; Breckinridge was on the left of Hardee. This left a vacantspace to be occupied by General Polk, who during the night had gone withCheatham’s division back nearly to Hardee’s position on the night of the5th of April. But just at the critical time, to my great pleasure, GeneralPolk came upon the field with that essential division.

By 7 p. m. the night before, all of Nelson’s division had been thrown acrossthe Tennessee , and during the night had been put in position between GeneralGrant’s disarrayed forces and our own; Crittenden’s division, carried fromSavannah by water and disembarked at midnight, was forced through themob of demoralized soldiers that thronged the river-side and established halfa mile in advance, to the left of Nelson. Lew Wallace ’s division of GeneralGrant’s army also had found its way after dark on the 6th across SnakeCreek from Crump’s Landing to the point near the bridge where General Sher-man had rallied the remains of two of his brigades. Eousseau reached thefield by water, at daylight, while two other brigades of the same division

■fe Colonel William Preston Johnston has in position, a statement that flies in the face ofeffect asserted [see page 567] that my order to all the reports of the division, brigade, and regi-retire out of action prevented a concentrated mental commanders but one (Withers), as mayorganized operation on the part of the corps be readily seen from the official documentary his-commanders about to be launched at the Federal tory of the battle.— G. T. B.