Chance. Might-have-been! Tell me what they are and I will tell you what God is!
Grant and Buell threshed out their differences years ago before they both passed into the shadowland, and nothing is more interesting than the grave and dignified controversy between these two men. Grant, great as he was in war, was out of his element with a pen in his hand; and in the written battle, Buell, to my mind, has worsted him. Nor was it Buell’s fault that this controversy arose. It came about from the exaggerated desire of the friends of the Army of the Tennessee to shield Grant and Sherman from the blunders they so clearly made and which should have been acknowledged by them like men, instead of trying to belittle the part that Buell played. For Buell had enough to his own credit.
In his very able article in The Century, Buell demonstrates at least very clearly to his own mind:
First. That Grant and Sherman were neglectful in preparing for this battle.
Second. That Grant’s army was too badly scattered, and he, himself, too far away from the front when the battle opened.
Third. That Grant and Sherman were surprised.
Fourth. That they were whipped.
Fifth. and (Q. E. D.) that Buell saved them.
Here is Buell’s very succinct, graphic and convincing statement in the beginning of his paper and argued throughout with the greatest ability:
“An army comprising seventy regiments of infantry, twenty batteries of artillery and a sufficiency of cavalry lay for two weeks and more in isolated camps, with a river in its rear and a hostile army, claimed to be superior in numbers, twenty miles distant in its front, while the commander made his headquarters and passed his nights nine miles away, on the opposite side of the river. It had no line or order of battle, no defensive works of any sort, no outposts, properly speaking, to give warning or check the advance of an enemy, and no recognized head during the absence of the regular commander. On a Saturday the hostile force arrived and formed in order of battle, without detection or hindrance, within a mile and a half of the unguarded army, advanced upon it the next morning, penetrated its disconnected lines, assaulted its camps in front and flank, drove its disjointed members successively from position to position, capturing some and routing others, in spite of much heroic individual resistance, and steadily drew near the landing and depot of its supplies in the pocket between the river and an impassable creek. At the moment, near the close of the day, when the remnant of the retrograding army was driven to refuge in the midst of its magazines, with the triumphant enemy at half-gunshot distance, the advance division of a reinforcing army arrived on the opposite bank of the river, crossed and took position under fire at the point of attack; the attacking force was checked and the battle ceased for the day. The next morning at dawn the reinforcing army and a fresh division belonging to the defeated force advanced against the assailants, followed or accompanied by such of the broken columns of the previous day as had not lost all cohesion, and, after ten hours of conflict, drove the enemy from the captured camps and the field.”