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Rh some young man, only about twenty-two years of age, and his death perfectly infuriated me, as it did his other comrades.

The Federals never succeeded in recovering from the surprise of the morning ; and although they stood their ground most stubbornly in some places, their entire line was gradually driven back towards the Landing, and each succeeding hour of the fight made their total defeat more of a certainty than ever. Shortly before three o'clock in the afternoon, our commander-in-chief, General Albert Sydney Johnston, was numbered among the slain. His death, however, was carefully concealed from the army, and was known to but few until the battle was over. He was a great soldier, arid his loss was an irreparable one; for had he lived to superintend the conduct of the battle to the end, it is scarcely possible that he would have failed to push his advantages to the utmost, or that he would have committed the mistakes which turned a brilliant and decisive victory into an overwhelming and most maddening defeat. When the sun set that day the Confederates were successful at every point, and although they had suffered terribly, they had forced the enemy's lines back almost to the Landing, so that there was nothing now left them to do but to make a final successful stand, or else be crowded over the bluffs into the river, just as I had seen them crowded, six months before, at Ball's Bluff. That they could have made a final effective resistance, had the Confederates finished the day's work in the spirit they had begun it, was scarcely within the range of possibility; and I confidently expected, as the daylight declined in the sky, to witness a repetition, on a larger scale, of all the horrors of the Ball's Bluff battle. There was absolutely no escape for the Federals ; and their only hope was to hold their last rallying ground, and to gain time until the arrival of re-enforcements, which would enable them to recover their lost ground, and to assume the offensive against our victorious, but worn and shattered army. Why the Confederate advantages were not pushed that night, before General Buell could arrive with his fresh troops, and the