The waverer, paltering with the chance sublime
Dwarfs it to peril. * * *"
—Lowell.
The severe losses at Shiloh resulted in a reorganization of a considerable portion of our army. Many fragmentary regiments were consolidated in order to make full ones. Much time was consumed in this process and we remained at Pittsburg Landing until its completion.
On the eleventh of April, four days after the battle, Major General Henry Wagner Halleck appeared and assumed command in person. This was the beginning of a campaign in extraordinary contrast to that which had been so brilliantly prosecuted by Grant, whose methods and plans were held in contempt by his superior.
Halleck was a man from whom the people had expected much. They believed, largely upon his own authority, that he was a great general, for his unqualified statement about anything was presumed to close discussion.
Halleck had written a book upon military science which was generally supposed to contain the last word upon that subject. He was self-centered and opinionated to a degree and his arrogance was only equaled by his excessive caution, which nobody at that time was presumptuous enough to hint might have been called by another name. This general's policy, constantly impressed upon his officers, was to "do nothing to bring on an engagement." With an army of one hundred and twenty thousand men opposed to one whose effective force was considerably less than half that number, he instructed his generals that it was "better to retreat than to fight." This rule was strictly observed and upon different occasions important advantages were waived and reverse movements made in conformity to it. The result was an elaborate underground campaign in which the spade was the only aggressive factor. Except at the very outset, the army literally burrowed its way into Corinth. While the pioneer corps toiled beneath the surface, the others watched, not so much as guards but rather as sentinels to give the alarm. The vicinity of Corinth was a veritable labyrinth with complex runways such as might have been made by gigantic field-mice. This harmless procedure must have been quite as amusing to the Rebels as it was irksome to us. But even they grew tired of the farce and considerately exploded a magazine as a hint that they had marched out and would not hurt us if we had really set our hearts upon marching in.
Illinois Monument at Shiloh to Special Commands the front tablet is to companies a and b.
At last Corinth was "captured." The army did not start upon its advance until April 30th, when the men, burrowing through the ground like gophers, moved at an average rate of about 1700 feet per day. A month was consumed in this process. Trenches, rifle-pits and bomb-proofs were constructed to shelter one hundred thousand men; and all this to capture another lot of trenches, rifle-pits and bomb-proofs that were empty. It was a bloodless victory, and the countless hills and holes that cost so much labor and so many lives incident to the use of polluted surface-water and exposure under unsanitary conditions, will remain indefinitely as monuments to the caution and timidity of that unique general whose conception of prosecuting the war seemed to have been to treat the entire South as an immense garrison to be captured only after complete investment and a prolonged, careful and strictly methodical siege. Halleck's "caution" would appear to have been the result of a fevered imagination rather than the outgrowth of well considered military conditions which he should and might have known but did not; for, on the day following the evacuation of Corinth, when the Rebels were many miles away in full retreat, he caused his whole army to be drawn up in preparation for battle, announcing in orders that there was "every indication that our left was to be attacked that morning." The "indications" proved to be as humiliating as the preparations to meet them were preposterous; but their significance was entirely obscured by the cloud of egotism which seemed to envelop the personality of this overrated commander who might have been more successful had he possessed a sense of humor. In the light of Halleck's experience, it is refreshing to recall General Grant's opinion of what might have been: