Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 20.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

[241] assault along the entire Federal front with the corps of Hardee, Bragg and Polk. It is not our intention to attempt a description of the bloody tragedy. Sherman's lines were broken, Prentiss with his brigade was captured, Hurleburt and McClernand and Wallace were driven in utter rout. At 6 o'clock P. M. the Confederates occupied every camp of the Federals except the one guarded by the gunboats on the bank of the Tennessee. The Federal army, which had fought with splendid gallantry that day, cowered that night on the river bank, no longer an army, but a disorganized mass of fugitives, many of whom were trying to cross the river on logs and such driftwood as the river afforded. (See report of McCook, Crittenden and Buell.) It is said that in the afternoon of Waterloo, when Napoleon's battalions had captured La Ha Saynte, and Wellington felt that the day would be lost, that, looking up to the sun, then seeming to stand still in the afternoon sky, he exclaimed, in the anguish of a grand despair, ‘Oh, that night or Blucher would come!’ Blucher, with his fifty-two thousand Prussians, came, and Wellington was saved. Is it not probable that on that fatal Sunday afternoon at Shiloh, when the very streams ran crimson, that Grant's prayer was, ‘Oh, that night or Buell would come’? Buell, with his army of veterans, was then crossing the Tennessee, Nelson's division of which landed on the western bank in time to take part in the closing fight of the evening. These soldiers, seeing the soldiers of Grant cowering armless on the bank of the river begging for any kind of transportation across the Tennessee, feeling the inspiration born of a forlorn hope,

Came as the winds come
     When forests are rended,
Came as the storms come
     When navies are stranded,

and, with the courage of the true American soldier, hurled themselves into the deserted breastworks of Grant's fled army. During the night of the 6th the broken fragments of Grant's army were reorganized and united with Buell's twenty-one thousand five hundred and seventy-nine fresh troops, and the battle was renewed at 5 A. M. on Monday, the 7th. The Federals now took the offensive, and by 2 o'clock P. M. had driven back the Confederates from the positions captured by them the day before. The Confederates retired in good order, and no effort was made till the next day to