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Notes of a Confederate staff-officer at Shiloh.
Thomas Jordan, Brigadier-General (at Shiloh, Adjutant-General of the Confederate Army).
After 10 o'clock at night, on the 2d of April, 1862, while in my office as adjutant-general of the Confederate army assembled at
Corinth, a telegram was brought to me from
General Cheatham, commanding an outpost on our left flank at
Bethel, on the Mobile and Ohio railway, some twenty odd miles northward of
Corinth.-
General Cheatham had addressed it to
General Polk, his corps commander, informing him that a Federal division, under
General Lew Wallace, had been manoeuvring in his proximity during the day.
General Polk had in due course sent the message to
General Beauregard, from whom it came to me with his indorsement,
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A Confederate private of the West.
From a tintype. |
addressed to
General A. S. Johnston, in substance: “Now is the time to advance upon
Pittsburg Landing.”
And below were these words, in effect, if not literally: “
Colonel Jordan had better carry this in person to
General Johnston and explain the military situation.-G. T. B.”
At the time
Colonel Jacob Thompson, formerly
Secretary of the Interior of the
United States, was in my office.
I read the telegram aloud to him and immediately thereafter proceeded to
General Johnston's quarters, nearly a quarter of a mile distant, where I found the general surrounded by his personal staff, in the room which the latter habitually occupied.
I handed him the open dispatch and the indorsements, which he read without comment.
He then asked me several questions about matters irrelevant to the dispatch or what might naturally grow out of it, and rose, saying that he would cross the street to see
General Bragg.
I asked if I should accompany him. “Certainly,” was his answer.
We found that
General Bragg had already gone to bed, but he received us in dishabille,
General Johnston handing him the dispatch at once, without remark.
Bragg, having read it, immediately expressed his agreement with
Beauregard's advisement.
General Johnston thereupon very clearly stated strongly some objections, chiefly to the effect that as yet our troops were too raw and incompletely equipped for an offensive enterprise, such as an attack upon the
Federal army in a position of their own choosing, and also that he did not see from what quarter a proper reserve could be assembled in time.
As
General Beauregard had discussed with me repeatedly within a week the details of such an offensive operation in all its features, and the necessity for it before the
Federal army was itself ready to take the offensive, I was able to answer satisfactorily the objections raised by
General Johnston, including the supposed difficulty about a reserve — for which use I pointed out that the Confederate forces posted under
General Breckinridge at several points along the line of the Memphis and Charleston railroad, to the
