The Situation Before the Battle—The First Skirmish—Plans of the Rebel Leaders—The Scene on Sunday Morning—Troops in Disorder—Analysis of the Situation—Faulty Disposition of the Federal Troops—Arrangement of Sherman's Division—The Rebel Plan of Attack—Sherman's Old Friend Bragg among the Rebel Leaders.
In the records of the Rebellion, written amid the actual roar of the conflict or years afterward amid the calm of reestablished peace, no chapter is more noteworthy than the story of Shiloh, written for The Cincinnati Gazette by its correspondent "Agate," who has since become famous throughout the world for his work as a journalist, historian and statesman. No record of Sherman's campaigns would be complete without it, and no other pen could write a chapter worthy to replace it. So it is given here in full, as it was written from the "Field of Battle, Pittsburgh Landing, Tenn., April 9th:"
Fresh from the field of the great battle, with its pounding and roaring of artillery, and its keener-voiced rattle of musketry still sounding in my wearied ears; with all its visions of horror still seeming seared upon my eyeballs, while scenes of panic-stricken rout and brilliant charges, and obstinate defences, and succor, and intoxicating success are burned alike confusedly and indelibly upon the brain, I essay to write what I know of the battle of Pittsburgh Landing.
Yet how bring order out of such a chaos? How deal justly, writing within twenty-four hours of the closing of the fight, with all the gallant regiments, of the hundred present, that bravely won or as bravely lost, and with all that ignobly fled in panic from the field? How describe, so that one man may leisurely follow, the simultaneous operations of a hundred and fifty thousand antagonists, fighting backward and forward for two long days, in a five miles' line and over four miles' retreat and advance, under eight Division Commanders on one side, and an unknown number on the other? How, in short, picture on a canvas so necessarily small a panorama, so grandly great? The task is impossible.
But what one man, diligently using all his powers of observation through those two days, might see, I saw, and that I can faithfully set down. For the rest, after riding carefully over and over the ground, asking questions innumerable of those who knew, and sifting consistent truth from the multiplicity of replies with whatever skill some experience may have taught, I can only give the concurrent testimony of the actors.
Our great Tennessee Expedition had been up the river some four weeks. We had occupied Pittsburgh Landing for about three; had destroyed one railroad connection, which the Rebels had restored in a day or two, and had failed in a similar but more important attempt on another. Beyond this we had engaged in no active operations. The Rebels, alarmed by our sudden appearance, began massing their troops under our eyes. Presently they had more in the vicinity than we had. Then we waited for Buell, who was crossing the country from Nashville by easy marches. The Rebels had apparently become restive under our slow concentrations, and General Grant had given out that an attack from them seemed probable. Yet we had lain at Pittsburgh Landing, within twenty miles of the Rebels, that were likely to attack us in superior numbers, without throwing up a single breastwork or preparing a single protection for a battery, and with the brigades of one division stretched from extreme right to extreme left of our line, while four other divisions had been crowded in between, as they arrived.
On the evening of Friday, April 4th, there was a preliminary skirmish with the enemy's advance. Rumors came into camp that some of our officers had been taken prisoners by a considerable Rebel force, near our lines, and that pickets had been firing. A brigade, the Seventieth, Seventy-second, and Forty-eighth Ohio, was sent out to see about it. They came upon a party of Rebels, perhaps a thousand strong, and after a sharp little action drove them off, losing Major Crocket, of the Seventy-second Ohio, and a couple of lieutenants from the Seventieth, prisoners, taking in return some sixteen, and driving the Rebels back to a battery they were found to have already in position, at no great distance from our lines. General Lew. Wallace's troops, at Crump's Landing, were ordered out under arms, and they marched to Adamsville, half-way between the river and Purdy, to take position there and resist any attack in that direction. The night passed in dreary rain, but without further Rebel demonstration; and it was generally supposed that the affair had been an ordinary picket-fight, presaging nothing more. Major-General Grant had indeed said there was great probability of a Rebel attack, but there were no appearances of his making any preparations for such an unlooked-for event, and so the matter was dismissed. Yet on Saturday there was more skirmishing along our advanced lines.
MAJOR-GENERAL SLOCUM.
There can be no doubt the plan of the Rebel leaders was to attack and demolish Grant's army before Buell's reinforcements arrived. There were rumors, indeed, that such a movement had been expressly ordered from headquarters at Richmond, as being absolutely necessary, as a last bold stroke, to save the falling fortunes of the Confederacy in the West; though of that, no one, I presume, knows anything.