Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 08.djvu/423

Rh defeat decisively disastrous; that the character of the country also made it altogether practicable for us to steal upon and surprise our enemy, and your proposition was based on the practicability of such a surprise, with the conviction that we should find the Federal army entirely unprotected by entrenchments.

These views seemed to satisfy General Johnston, and he authorized me to give at once the preparatory orders for the movement. Those orders I wrote in General Bragg's room, in the form of a circular letter to Generals Bragg, Polk and Hardee, respectively, directing them to hold their several corps in condition to move at a moment's notice, with forty rounds of ammunition in their cartridge boxes and three days' cooked rations in their haversacks, with sixty rounds of ammunition and, I think, three days' rations per man in wagons, together with certain other details affecting reserve supplies and their transportation.

Couriers from General Bragg's headquarters carried these orders to Generals Polk and Hardee, who received them, as well as I now remember, at precisely 1.40 A. M., as stated in the receipts signed by those officers respectively at the time.

Having dispatched directly the orders in question, I then repaired to your headquarters, roused Captain A. R. Chisolm, of your personal staff, and told him to awake you at five A. M. and acquaint you that the movement you had proposed had been ordered as I have related.

About seven o'clock in the morning of the 3d of April you sent for me. Having gone to your apartment, I found that you had already drawn up the notes of a general order, presenting the manner and method of the movement from Corinth upon Pittsburg landing with peculiar minuteness, as from the nature of the country to be traversed it would be a most difficult matter to move so large a body of men with the requisite celerity and mass for the contemplated stroke. These notes you gave me as the basis for the proper general order to be issued directing and regulating the march coupled with the order in which the enemy was to be attacked. And from those notes I drew up the order of march and battle, which, issued in the name of General Johnston, was signed by me without any modification of their substance after I had made it fuller with details in respect to staff services, which details you left habitually to me, holding me responsible of course that they should be clear and comprehensive so as to insure the execution of your general plan of operations.