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[528] up the Tennessee was, at first, only subsidiary. It was meant to cut the communications from Memphis east, and prevent reinforcements to the Confederates on the Mississippi. Afterward, when the concentration of troops at Corinth was reported to him, with wonderful exaggerations of the Confederate strength-100,000, 200,000 men-he determined to mass Buell and Grant against the army at that point; and Buell was ordered, March 15th, to unite his forces with Grant's, a movement previously suggested by him.

Meanwhile, the expedition up the Tennessee was begun by C. F. Smith, on the 10th of March, with a new division under Sherman in advance. On the 13th of March, Smith assembled four divisions-Sherman's, Hurlbut's, Lew Wallace's, and W. H. L. Wallace's, at Savannah, on the right bank of the Tennessee, at its Great Bend. Smith at once sent Sherman with his division, escorted by two gunboats, to land below Eastport and make a break in the Memphis & Charleston Railroad between Tuscumbia and Corinth. Sherman, finding a Confederate battery at Eastport, disembarked below at the mouth of the Yellow River, and started for Burnsville; but, becoming discouraged at the continued rains, the swollen streams, the bad roads, and the resistance he met with from the troops posted there, under G. B. Crittenden, he retired. After consultation with Smith, he again disembarked, on the 16th, at Pittsburg Landing, on the left bank, seven miles above Savannah, and made a reconnaissance as far as Monterey, some ten miles, nearly half-way to Corinth. On the 17th General Grant took command, relieving Smith, who was lying ill at Savannah on his death-bed. Smith died April 25th--a very gallant and able officer.

Two more divisions, Prentiss's and McClernand's, had joined in the mean time, and Grant assembled the Federal army near Pittsburg Landing, which was the most advantageous base for a movement against Corinth. Here it lay motionless until the battle of Shiloh.

The Federal army was at Shiloh, near Pittsburg Landing, in a position naturally very strong. Its selection has been censured for rashness, on the erroneous presumption that the army there was outnumbered, inferior in discipline to its opponents, and peculiarly exposed to attack. The criticism is unjust, because the supposition is altogether untrue. It cannot be denied that General Grant reported the Confederate army at Corinth, at 60,000-80,000-100,000, and as rumored to be 200,000 strong; but we are not to suppose that his sagacity was so much at fault as to be misled by these “old women's stories,” as Sherman calls them, especially when Buell was conveying to Halleck pretty accurate information of the numbers there.

Grant felt safe at Shiloh, because he knew he was numerically stronger than his adversary. His numbers and his equipment were superior to those of his antagonist, and the discipline and morale of

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