Memoirs of General William T. Sherman — Complete
and its available line of supply and retreat. At the very time
that we were fighting the bloody battle on the Tennessee River,
General Pope and Admiral Foote were bombarding the batteries on
Island Number Ten, and the Kentucky shore abreast of it; and
General Pope having crossed over by steamers a part of his army to
the east bank, captured a large part of this rebel army, at and
near Tiptonville.
General Halleck still remained at St. Louis, whence he gave general
directions to the armies of General Curtis, Generals Grant, Buell,
and Pope; and instead of following up his most important and
brilliant successes directly down the Mississippi, he concluded to
bring General Pope's army around to the Tennessee, and to come in
person to command there. The gunboat fleet pushed on down the
Mississippi, but was brought up again all standing by the heavy
batteries at Fort Pillow, about fifty miles above Memphis. About
this time Admiral Farragut, with another large sea-going fleet, and
with the cooperating army of General Butler, was entering the
Mississippi River by the Passes, and preparing to reduce Forts
Jackson and St, Philip in order to reach New Orleans; so that all
minds were turned to the conquest of the Mississippi River, and
surely adequate means were provided for the undertaking.
The battle of Shiloh had been fought, as described, on the 6th and
7th of April; and when the movement of the 8th had revealed that
our enemy was gone, in full retreat, leaving killed, wounded, and
much property by the way, we all experienced a feeling of relief.
The struggle had been so long, so desperate and bloody, that the
survivors seemed exhausted and nerveless; we appreciated the value
of the victory, but realized also its great cost of life. The
close of the battle had left the Army of the Tennessee on the
right, and the Army of the Ohio on the left; but I believe neither
General Grant nor Buell exercised command, the one over the other;
each of them having his hands full in repairing damages. All the
division, brigade, and regimental commanders were busy in
collecting stragglers, regaining lost property, in burying dead men
and horses, and in providing for their wounded. Some few new
regiments came forward, and some changes of organization became
necessary. Then, or very soon after, I consolidated my font
brigades into three, which were commanded: First, Brigadier-General
Morgan L: Smith; Second, Colonel John A. McDowell; Third,
Brigadier-General J. W. Denver. About the same time I was promoted
to major-general volunteers.
The Seventy-first Ohio was detached to Clarksville, Tennessee, and
the Sixth and Eighth Missouri were transferred to my division.
In a few days after the battle, General Halleck arrived by
steamboat from St. Louis, pitched his camp near the steamboat-
landing, and assumed personal command of all the armies. He was
attended by his staff, composed of General G. W. Cullum, U. S.
Engineers, as his chief of staff; Colonel George Thom, U. S.
Engineers; and Colonels Kelton and Kemper, adjutants-general. It
soon became manifest that his mind had been prejudiced by the
rumors which had gone forth to the detriment of General Grant; for
in a few days he issued an order, reorganizing and rearranging the
whole army. General Buell's Army of the Ohio constituted the
centre; General Pope's army, then arriving at Hamburg Landing, was
the left; the right was made up of mine and Hurlbut's divisions,
belonging to the old Army of the Tennessee, and two new ones, made
up from the fragments of the divisions of Prentiss and C. F. Smith,
and of troops transferred thereto, commanded by Generals T. W.
Sherman and Davies. General George H. Thomas was taken from Buell,
to command the right. McClernand's and Lew Wallace's divisions
were styled the reserve, to be commanded by McClernand. General
Grant was substantially left out, and was named "second in
command," according to some French notion, with no clear,
well-defined command or authority. He still retained his old
staff, composed of Rawlins, adjutant-general; Riggin, Lagow, and
Hilyer, aides; and he had a small company of the Fourth Illinois
Cavalry as an escort. For more than a month he thus remained,
without any apparent authority, frequently visiting me and others,
and rarely complaining; but I could see that he felt deeply the
indignity, if not insult, heaped upon him.
General Thomas at once assumed command of the right wing, and,
until we reached Corinth, I served immediately under his command.
We were classmates, intimately acquainted, had served together
before in the old army, and in Kentucky, and it made to us little
difference who commanded the other, provided the good cause
prevailed.
Corinth was about thirty miles distant, and we all knew that we
should find there the same army with which we had so fiercely
grappled at Shiloh, reorganized, reenforced, and commanded in chief
by General Beauregard in place of Johnston, who had fallen at
Shiloh. But we were also reenforced by Buell's and Pope's armies;
so that before the end of April our army extended from Snake Creek
on the right to the Tennessee River, at Hamburg, on the left, and
must have numbered nearly one hundred thousand men.
Ample supplies of all kinds reached us by the Tennessee River,
which had a good stage of water; but our wagon transportation was
limited, and much confusion occurred in hauling supplies to the
several camps. By the end of Aril, the several armies seemed to be
ready, and the general forward movement on Corinth began. My
division was on the extreme right of the right wing, and marched
out by the "White House," leaving Monterey or Pea Ridge to the
south. Crossing Lick Creek, we came into the main road about a
mile south of Monterey, where we turned square to the right, and
came into the Purdy road, near "Elams." Thence we followed the
Purdy road to Corinth, my skirmishers reaching at all times the
Mobile & Ohio Railroad. Of course our marches were governed by the
main centre, which followed the direct road from Pittsburg Landing
to Corinth; and this movement was provokingly slow. We fortified
almost every camp at night, though we had encountered no serious
opposition, except from cavalry, which gave ground easily as we
advanced. The opposition increased as we neared Corinth, and at a
place called Russell's we had a sharp affair of one brigade, under
the immediate direction of Brigadier-General Morgan L. Smith,
assisted by the brigade of General Denver. This affair occurred on
the 19th of May, and our line was then within about two miles of
the northern intrenchments of Corinth.
On the 27th I received orders from General Halleck "to send a force
the next day to drive the rebels from the house in our front, on
the Corinth road, to drive in their pickets as far as possible, and
to make a strong demonstration on Corinth itself;" authorizing me
to call on any adjacent division for assistance.
I reconnoitred the ground carefully, and found that the main road
led forward along the fence of a large cotton-field to our right
front, and ascended a wooded hill, occupied in some force by the
enemy, on which was the farm-house referred to in General Halleck's
orders. At the farther end of the field was a double log-house,
whose chinking had been removed; so that it formed a good block
house from which the enemy could fire on any person approaching
from our quarter.
General Hurlbut's division was on my immediate left, and General
McClernand's reserve on our right rear. I asked of each the
assistance of a brigade. The former sent General Veatch's, and the
latter General John A. Logan's brigade. I asked the former to
support our left flank, and the latter our right flank. The next
morning early, Morgan L. Smith's brigade was deployed under cover
on the left, and Denver's on the right, ready to move forward
rapidly at a signal. I had a battery of four twenty-pound Parrott
guns, commanded by Captain Silversparre. Colonel Ezra Taylor,
chief of artillery, had two of these guns moved up silently by hand
behind a small knoll, from the crest of which the enemy's
block-house and position could be distinctly seen; when all were
ready, these guns were moved to the crest, and several quick rounds
were fired at the house, followed after an interval by a single
gun. This was the signal agreed on, and the troops responded
beautifully, crossed the field in line of battle, preceded by their
skirmishers who carried the position in good style, and pursued the
enemy for half a mile beyond.
The main line halted on the crest of the ridge, from which we could
look over the parapets of the rebel works at Corinth, and hear
their drum and bugle calls. The rebel brigade had evidently been
taken by surprise in our attack; it soon rallied and came back on
us with the usual yell, driving in our skirmishers, but was quickly
checked when it came within range of our guns and line of battle.
Generals Grant and Thomas happened to be with me during this
affair, and were well pleased at the handsome manner in which the
troops behaved. That night we began the usual entrenchments, and
the next day brought forward the artillery and the rest of the
division, which then extended from the Mobile & Ohio Railroad, at
Bowie Hill Out, to the Corinth & Purdy road, there connecting with
Hurlbut's division. That night, viz., May 29th, we heard unusual
sounds in Corinth, the constant whistling of locomotives, and soon
after daylight occurred a series of explosions followed by a dense
smoke rising high over the town. There was a telegraph line
connecting my headquarters with those of General Halleck, about
four miles off, on the Hamburg road. I inquired if he knew the
cause of the explosions and of the smoke, and he answered to
"advance with my division and feel the enemy if still in my front"
I immediately dispatched two regiments from each of my three
brigades to feel the immediate front, and in a very short time
advanced with the whole division. Each brigade found the rebel
parapets abandoned, and pushed straight for the town, which lies in
the northeast angle of intersection of the Mobile & Ohio and
Memphis & Charleston Railroads. Many buildings had been burned by
the enemy on evacuation, which had begun the night before at 6
p.m., and continued through the night, the rear-guard burning their
magazine at the time of withdrawing, about daybreak. Morgan L.
Smith's brigade followed the retreating rear-guard some four miles
to the Tuacumbia Bridge, which was found burned. I halted the
other brigades at the college, about a mile to the southwest of the
town, where I was overtaken by General Thomas in person.
The heads of all the columns had entered the rebel lines about the
same time, and there was some rather foolish clamor for the first
honors, but in fact there was no honor in the event. Beauregard
had made a clean retreat to the south, and was only seriously
pursued by cavalry from General Pope's flank. But he reached
Tupelo, where he halted for reorganization; and there is no doubt
that at the moment there was much disorganization in his ranks, for
the woods were full of deserters whom we did not even take
prisoners, but advised them to make their way home and stay there.
We spent the day at and near the college, when General Thomas, who
applied for orders at Halleck's headquarters, directed me to
conduct my division back to the camp of the night before, where we
had left our trains The advance on Corinth had occupied all of the
month of May, the most beautiful and valuable month of the year for
campaigning in this latitude. There had been little fighting, save
on General Pope's left flank about Farmington; and on our right. I