“My first impulse was to go on. A vigorous assault upon the enemy’s rear might turn defeat into victory. Two years later, at City Point, General Grant told me that if he had known at Shiloh what he then knew he would have ordered me where I started to go. To which I add, if I had known the moment Rowley was talking to me that General Nelson was on the right bank of the Tennessee, with a possibility of crossing his division to the left bank at Pittsburg Landing before night, I would have continued my march at all hazards. As it was, I did not even know that General Buell was within fifty miles of Savannah. Why, in the morning at Crump’s Landing, General Grant did not tell me that a considerable part of the Army of the Ohio was within supporting distance of the Army of the Tennessee has been a mystery to me from that day to this. It must have been that he did not yet believe there was seriousness in the rebel demonstration at Pittsburg Landing.
“Captain Rowley, it is to be observed, did not estimate that there was a mistake in my movement to the right of the army. I told him it was plain that I was in the rear of the rebel army, and asked categorically: ‘What does General Grant want me to do? Do you bring me an order from him?’
“‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘General Grant wants you to go to Pittsburg Landing, and he wants you there like hell.’
“‘Very well, I shall obey him,’ I said. ‘But it will be necessary for me to back out of this and find a cross road to take the column into the river road. You have just come through the swamps; stay, now, and pilot me.’
“He declined, and presently left me; then, thinking to find a crossing into the river road before the head of the column would lap the foot, I sent Captain Kneffler, who was still with Major Myers at the Owl Creek bridge, intelligence of the altered situation and a desire that he would remain with Myers and help take care of the rear. Thereupon I ordered a counter-march by brigades. The tactics of the movement have been criticised, and I now think justly. I should have resorted to a right-about of column.
“Note, now, please—when we thus changed direction, from the south facing north, it was to march completely around the left flank of the Confederate army. Note, also—when the counter-march was ordered, not only was my cavalry holding the bridges at Owl Creek, scarcely a half-mile from the bluff on which the right of Sherman’s division rested in the morning, but Thayer’s advance guard had been some time turned into the Hamburg-Purdy road, and could not have been to exceed three-quarters of a mile from the bridge. And, marvelous to say, not a sign of the enemy had been seen! The inference is that the rear of the Confederates was unguarded. Indeed, it has been told me by reputable officers of their side that at the time of my approach there were fully as many of their soldiers looting and drinking in the captured camps as there were of ours burrowing under the bluffs down at the landing. Who shall tell the result had I been permitted to go on in my march? Many a time, seeing as we see in dreams, I have beheld Thayer’s deployed regiments moving through those tented streets, a wave crested with bayonets, and heard the demoralized hordes rushing panic-stricken upon their engaged lines. And now, in moments when personal ambition gets the better of me, I hold Rowley’s coming my greatest quarrel with Fortune. Oh, if he had remained lost in the woods an hour longer!”
[1] Appleton’s Magazine, January, 1906.
