Pittsburg Landing and Vicinity.
Governor Harris of Tennessee issued a proclamation calling upon the people to enlist.
“As Governor of your State, and Commander-in-Chief of its army, I call upon every able-bodied man of the State, without regard to age, to enlist in its service. I command him who can obtain a weapon to march with our armies. I ask him who can repair or forge an arm to make it ready at once for the soldier.”
General Beauregard was sent in great haste to the West by Jeff Davis, who hoped that the fame and glory which he had won by attacking Fort Sumter and at Bull Run would rouse the people of the Southwest and save the failing fortunes of the Confederacy.
To Corinth came the flower of the Southern army. All other points were weakened to save Corinth. From Pensacola came General Bragg and ten thousand Alabamians, who had watched for many months the little frowning fortress on Santa Rosa Island. The troops which had been at Mobile to resist the landing of General Butler from Ship Island were hastened north upon the trains of the Mobile and Ohio road. General Beauregard called upon the Governors of Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana for additional troops.
General Polk, who had been a bishop before the war, sent down two divisions from Columbus on the Mississippi. General Johnston with his retreating army hastened on, and thus all the Rebel troops in the Southwestern States were mustered at Corinth.
The call to take up arms was responded to everywhere; old men and boys came trooping into the place. They came from Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri. Beauregard labored with unremitting energy to create an army which would be powerful enough to drive back the Union troops, recover Tennessee, and invade Kentucky.
General Grant, after the capture of Donelson, moved his army, on steamboats, down the Cumberland and up the Tennessee, to Pittsburg Landing. He made his head-quarters at Savannah, a small town ten miles below Pittsburg Landing, on the east side of the river.
General Buell, who had followed General Johnston through Nashville with the army of the Ohio, was slowly making his way across the country to join General Grant. The Rebel generals had the railroads, by which they could rapidly concentrate their troops, and they determined to attack General Grant at Pittsburg, with their superior force, before General Buell could join him. Beauregard had his pickets within four miles of General Grant’s force, and he could move his entire army within striking distance before General Grant would know of his danger. He calculated that he could annihilate General Grant, drive him into the river, or force him to surrender, capture all of his cannon, wagons, ammunition, provisions, steamboats,—everything,—by a sudden stroke. If he succeeded, he could then move against General Buell, destroy his army, and not only recover all that had been lost, but he would also redeem Kentucky and invade Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.
All but one division of General Grant’s army was at Pittsburg. Two miles above the Landing the river begins to make its great eastern bend. Lick Creek comes in from the west, at the bend. Three miles below Pittsburg is Snake Creek, which also comes in from the west. Five miles further down is Crump’s Landing. General Lewis Wallace’s division was near Crump’s, but the other divisions were between the two creeks. The banks of the river are seventy-five feet high, and the country is a succession of wooded hills, with numerous ravines. There are a few clearings and farm-houses, but it is nearly all forest,—tall oak-trees, with here and there thickets of underbrush. The farmers cultivate a little corn, cotton, and tobacco. The country has been settled many years, but is almost as wild as when the Indians possessed the land.