Robert Underwood Johnson, Clarence Clough Buell, Battles and Leaders of the Civil War: The Opening Battles. Volume 1.

The story had been colored for popular effect, but was traceable to a conversation in a vein of pleasantry that occurred at my camp, after the battle, among a party of officers in which I had taken but little part.

Some time afterward it took on a modification which suited the alleged conversation, to my meeting with General Grant on my arrival at Pittsburg Landing during the battle. This changed materially the character of the report, but I continued to treat it with the indifference which I thought it deserved, though the story has been freely circulated. I never knew until within a few months past, through the publication of the War Records, that in its modified form it had the indorsement of an official authorship.

From that publication it appears that a year after the battle General Grant called upon three of his staff-officers to make reports concerning the movements of General Lew Wallace's division on the day of the battle, in answer to a complaint of the latter officer that injustice had been done him in General Grant's reports. Two of the officers, namely, General McPherson and Captain Rowley, in their replies confined themselves to that subject. The third, Colonel Rawlins, on the other hand, made it the occasion of a specific defense, or explanation, or commendation, or whatever it may be called, of General Grant's relation to the battle. Among other things that have since been more or less disputed, he said:

“General Nelson's division of the Army of the Ohio reached Savannah on the afternoon of the 5th of April, but General Buell himself did not arrive... You [General Grant] then rode back to the house near the river that had been designated for headquarters, to learn what word if any had been received from General Nelson, whose division you expected soon to arrive at the landing on the opposite side of the river; and you there met Maj.-Gen. D. C. Buell, who had arrived at Savannah and taken a steamer and come up to see you, and learn how the battle was progressing in advance of his force. Among his first inquiries was: ‘ What preparations have you made for retreating? ’ To which you replied, ‘ I have not yet despaired of whipping them, general’ ; and went on to state to him your momentary expectation of the arrival of General Wallace, to whom orders had been timely and repeatedly sent, and that General Nelson's division might soon be expected by the wagon-road from Savannah,” etc.

This statement, ridiculous and absurd in its principal feature, is incorrect in every particular.

It is well known that I arrived at Savannah on the 5th of April; General Grant did not, as might be inferred, find me at the landing at Pittsburg — I found him there; we did not meet at “the house near the river,” but on his headquarters steamer.

I mention these points only to show the tendency of the statement to error, and I aver that no such conversation as is described ever occurred, and that the contingency of a retreat was not brought forward by General Grant or by me.

My attention has within a few days been called to the fact that an article, in a recent number of The Century magazine [General Adam Badeau's paper on General Grant, in the number for May, 1885], has given fresh circulation to the story, and has combined the official and the original phraseology of it. I have regarded it as a trivial question, of little moment to either General Grant or myself; but perhaps the value attached to it by others makes it proper for me to give it an attention which I have not heretofore chosen to bestow upon it.