Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/244

230 Johnston, could only take his army unopposed back to Corinth, and Grant could only pause on the battlefield where the fierce fight had raged and inform Halleck, "It is unsafe to remain many weeks without reinforcements." Halleck arrived on the ground ten days after the battle and said to Grant, "Your army is not now in condition to resist attack."

Beauregard's army was strengthened at Corinth by reinforcements from Trans-Mississippi, but it was again rapidly reduced by sickness. Unable to stand against the reinforced armies which Halleck at length brought against him, he retreated safely to Tupelo, where on June 17th his own sickness caused him to turn over the command to Gen. Braxton Bragg.

During the first months of 1862 the entire area of the Confederacy appears as a great field of general battle. In Arkansas the State military were contending against the raids of the Federal General Curtis. John Morgan, with his cavalry, was endeavoring to open the way for the recovery of Kentucky by the Confederates. New Orleans had been forced to surrender to Farragut, and was placed under the military command of Gen. Benjamin F. Butler. Memphis also was captured by the Federals, and the control of the Mississippi river was divided. Fort Pulaski, near the mouth of the Savannah river, was taken in April. Numerous incursions, raids and skirmishes, occurring in all directions, accompanied the more massive operations of the great armies. General McClellan's plan of campaign was to enlarge and equip an army for an advance against Richmond which would be so powerful as to be unaffected in its movements by any diversion the Confederate government could make, but the operations of Stonewall Jackson in the Valley of Virginia became an interference at the beginning and an obstacle in the end, which contrib-