Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 7.djvu/534

Rh Thirty-third infantry. In Breckinridge's corps, Statham's brigade, Fifteenth and Twenty-second infantry. In Van Dorn's army, Ruggles' division, Anderson's brigade, Thirty-sixth infantry; Walker's brigade, Thirty-seventh infantry. On May 6th, General Bragg was given immediate command of the army of the Mississippi, General Beauregard retaining general command of the combined forces.

The Federals, who had been slowly advancing from Shiloh, intrenching as they came to avoid a repetition of April 6th, had been reinforced by General Pope—flushed by the appropriation of the glory which belonged to the gunboats for the capture of Island No. 10—and by fresh troops from the North, and finally massed before Corinth 110,000 fighting men, all under the command of General Halleck. The Confederate army had prepared a semi-oval fortified line, covering the town to the northeast; and in front of this, up to where the Mobile & Ohio railroad crosses the State line, Halleck erected an elaborate line of works and posted his great army.

Meanwhile the Confederates were not entirely idle. Active skirmishing had accompanied the advance of the enemy, and on May 8th Gen. Earl Van Dorn marched out of the works and formed a line north of the Memphis & Charleston railroad, On the 10th he advanced and attacked the enemy's right at Farmington; but the Federals retreated with such expedition that an engagement could not be brought on, and nothing resulted but the burning of the bridge, and the capture of a few prisoners and a considerable lot of arms and property. The Thirty-seventh Mississippi was in this action, and was commended by General Ruggles, who particularly complimented its commander, Colonel Benton, and Lieutenant Morgan, who continued to lead a company after being wounded. Gen. Patton Anderson reported of Col. D. J. Brown's regiment: "A large portion of the Thirty-sixth Mississippi regiment, although never having formed a