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James Ford Rhodes (1848–1927). History of the Civil War, 1861–1865. 1917.

Page 103

  raw. Twenty-five of Grant’s sixty-three regiments had fought at Donelson. The stragglers and the skulkers from the Union Army were a large number. Many of the green regiments broke and ran at the sudden onset, but the soldiers who stood to their colors and supported the strenuous efforts of Sherman showed a high degree of physical and moral courage.  32   The Grant of Shiloh was not the Grant of Donelson; nevertheless he worked hard to retrieve, as best he might, the mistake occasioned by his careless disregard of the enemy. At six o’clock, while eating his breakfast at Savannah, he received word from a private on detached duty at headquarters that artillery firing was heard in the direction of Pittsburg Landing. Leaving the table at once, he wrote an order to General Nelson, who commanded the advance of Buell’s Army, and who had arrived the day before, to move his division to Pittsburg, and then took steamer himself for the same place, stopping on the way at Crump’s Landing to tell Lew Wallace to hold his 6500 in readiness to march to the scene of action. Arriving at Pittsburg at about eight, he went to the front, and at once sent the order to Lew Wallace to come to the assistance of his army. The military critics say that Grant counted for little or nothing in the conduct of the battle. 1 The layman, unable to dissociate him from his earlier and later career, feels that during his frequent visits and verbal injunctions to his division commanders, his coolness and deportment of a courageous soldier must have helped them in their efforts to maintain confidence among their hard-pressed soldiers. At noon Grant “became very anxious.” 2 He sent word to Lew Wallace to hasten forward and despatched this entreaty to: “Commanding officer
 
Note 1. Ropes, 76; Stone, Milt. Hist. Soc., VII, 74. [back]
Note 2. McPherson, O. R., X, Pt. I, 181. [back]