Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 35.djvu/225

Rh men not a little by their example, but at the same time lost sight of the mass of their commands, which were thus not infrequently left at a halt without orders and uncertain what to do.

And this was the case with batteries also, which, moreover, were too often employed singly. (General Beauregard, through the writer, had given special orders to chiefs of artillery to mass their batteries in action and fight them twelve guns on a point.)

General Johnston, the Confederate commander-in-chief, was now in the very front of the battle.

Assured of a great victory after the marvelous success of his well-planned surprise, he now stimulated the onslaught by his personal presence on the right, where the press was fiercest, the resistance the most effective. More than once brigades that faltered, under the inspiration of his leading bore back the enemy and wrested from the foe the position fought for.

As far as can be ascertained, General Grant was not upon the immediate field earlier than midday. On Saturday afternoon he had gone to Savannah and slept there. The sound of many cannon at Shiloh was his first tidings of a hostile junction at Pittsburg Landing; but even that was scarcely regarded as the announcement of a serious battle, for one of Buell's Divisions (Nelson's) lay at Savannah, and as he was leaving for Pittsburg, General Grant merely ordered that division to march thither by the nearest road.

However, as the Federal general steamed toward the scene, the banks of the river were soon found alive with his men, fleeing from the danger which so early that morning had routed them from their comfortable beds.

When, too, he reached Pittsburg, it was to find his whole front line surprised, overwhelmed, routed and the ravines and river bank adjacent packed with thousands of crouching fugitives. These were not to be rallied nor reorganized, not to be incited to return to the side of their imperiled comrades, who still battled manfully, and by co-operation make an effort to recover the fortunes of the day.

Within the hollows and on the slopes and flat ridges of that circumscribed Tennessee woodland at least 60,000 muskets and rifles were now at the dire work of carnage in the hands of 60,000 men, in whom burned all the