AF

XV.

CORINTH CAMPAIGN.

FTER the victory at Donelson, the troops which had taken part in that engagement went up the Tennessee River on steamers, and took position at Pittsburg Landing, about ten miles from the Mississippi line. General Buell at the same time was slowly making his way from Nashville south-west toward the same point.

Johnston chose Corinth, the railroad junction twenty miles from Pittsburg Landing, as the place where he would rally his troops. It was necessary for him to make such a movement to prevent Grant and Buell from moving across the country and attacking Memphis in the rear.

When Grant's troops pitched their tents in the woods at Pittsburg Landing, Johnston resolved to steal upon them unaware and defeat them before Buell arrived. All the troops that could be gathered up from the south-west were sent to him by railroad.

General Grant had no expectation of being attacked. The infantry pickets, instead of being out three or four miles, were not half a mile beyond camp. His army was in a bad position. General Grant did not dream that

fifty thousand men were ready to strike him; that the Confederates, with five days' rations, on Friday night started from Corinth; that orders were issued forbidding the soldiers kindling a fire, or making the least noise. Not a drum beat; not a bugle sounded its note.

Johnston approached in four lines. General Hardee was in front. A quarter of a mile in his rear was Bragg, behind him Polk, with Breckenridge in reserve. There were from ten to twelve thousand men in each line. Grant's force was much smaller.

At eleven o'clock Saturday evening Hardee was close upon the Union pickets. Johnston called his officers and gave them this order. They were to attack

at daylight.

"We sleep to-morrow night in the enemy's camp,' said Beauregard.

At three o'clock Sunday morning the Confederates were awake, their breakfasts eaten, their blankets folded, their knapsacks laid aside. The morning brightened, and the long lines wound through the forest. The Union army was asleep. The pickets were keeping guard, all others in slumber. There was nothing to indicate that a hostile army was scarcely a mile from the picket lines, ready to swoop down like an eagle upon its prey.

The Union army consisted of seven divisions: Hurlburt's, W. H. L. Wallace's, near Pittsburg Landing; McClernand's, Sherman's, and Prentiss's, nearly three miles farther out; and Lewis Wallace's, at Cramps Landing, seven miles down the river. General Grant

was at Savannah, ten miles distant on the east side of the river.

Suddenly the Union pickets saw a long line of men moving upon them. The muskets rattled, couriers hastened to give the alarm to Prentiss and Sherman. The drums beat, but before the men were awake, Hardee was upon them, sweeping all before him, and taking possession of Sherman's camp at Shiloh Church, and of Prentiss's, near the river.

It is not necessary in this sketch of General Garfield's life to follow out the details of the battle through Sunday - how the Union troops rallied; how, after the first confusion, they contested every inch of ground, falling back slowly and stubbornly; how, at nightfall, massing his artillery, and concentrating his lines along a ravine, with the aid of the gunboats, the progress of the Confederates was checked; how Buell's first division arrived, ascended the hill, and came into position; how the Confederates rested on their arms, intending to resume the fight in the morning; how, on Monday morning, Buell's troops were in line.

Grant turned the tables, and began the attack, and pressed on his columns. Beauregard, who succeeded to the command after Johnston's death, was driven back over all the ground won the day before, and at night was fleeing to Corinth.

Garfield's brigade was in Woods' division - the last to cross the river. Garfield was in position to take part in the struggle at noon, but the battle was dying away, and he was not called upon. The Confederates

had been foiled and defeated with great loss, yet Beauregard claimed a great victory.

On the last week in April, 1862, in the woods of Tennessee, near Shiloh Church, I saw the commander of a brigade exercising it upon the double-quick. The troops were marching in column, moving with precision at the word of command, charging bayonets, wheeling to the right and left, in admirable order.

"It is Colonel Garfield who won the battle of Middle Creek," said my fellow-correspondent, Whitelaw Reid, then of the Cincinnati Gazette, now of the New York Tribune.

Courteous and hearty our reception. We were upon the ground where Albert Sidney Johnston bivouacked his troops on that Saturday night-two miles from Shiloh Church. In this connection I reproduce words written on the 28th of April, 1862:

"This out-of-the-way place has become historic. Beauregard has named the late battlefield the Field of Shiloh. Our right wing on Sunday morning rested on Shiloh grounds. There the contest was waged with terrible fierceness all through that bloody day. There the next morning it was renewed, and there the enemy was put to rout. There, to use the Hebrew term Shiloh, was our 'deliverance.' Let us accept this name as that by which the victory shall be known in history.

"It is not a costly edifice. No white spire points heavenward. The aisles are not carpeted. There is no sweet-toned organ with triple rows of keys. Through the windows streams no 'dim, religious light.' It has

no silver-toned bell, no fluted columns supporting a fretted roof. It is of modest dimensions, about twenty feet square, built of logs. The chinking is gone, washed out by the rains. It would make a very good corn-crib. It has no pulpit or pews - never had. The people worshiped on benches. The logs bear the marks of the leaden rain, which swept around it during the contest. After the fight it was used as a hospital, but the floor has been torn up, and it is now suitable for a southern cow-house; but in the North it would be an unsightly object, fit for firewood or fence-rails.

"Shiloh has been a place for camp-meetings. A few rods south a clear running brook meanders through the forest, fed by limpid springs, furnishing excellent water for the worshipful assemblies. Three miles distant is the Tennessee, where the baptismal rites could be performed. All around is a grand old forest, furnishing grateful shade. There is a clearing across the ravine, an old house in the last stages of decay, riddled now by cannon-shot. This is Shiloh Field.

"There are other fields - little patches of cleared land, which have been under the plow for fifty years, while the surrounding forests have stood in all their majesty, with undeveloped, virgin richness of uncounted centuries beneath the mold. This place has stood still while the rest of the world has moved on.

"The place is no further advanced than it was when the first settlers came over the mountains. Civilization came, made a beginning, but there has been no advance. No elevation, no aspiration after a better state