William A. Crafts, Life of Ulysses S. Grant: His Boyhood, Campaigns, and Services, Military and Civil.

[45] already been appointed to the command of the District of West Tennessee, and when relieved from his unmerited disgrace, assumed command of the forces which were moving up the Tennessee, and the advance of which was encamped at Pittsburg Landing, awaiting reinforcements. The rebels, alarmed at the movements in Tennessee, were concentrating large forces at Corinth, Miss., and Buell was ordered to march from Nashville with forty thousand men to support Grant. The latter intended, as soon as these troops arrived, to advance on Corinth. But Buell's movements were slow, and the rebels determined to attack Grant's army before it was reinforced; and accordingly they advanced from Corinth, sixty thousand strong.

The position of the Union army at Pittsburg Landing was not selected by Grant, but by Smith before the former resumed command. It was naturally a good one, and it only required intrenchments to make it entirely safe till the time for an advance; but the western armies had not then learned the use of the pick and shovel. Grant made every effort to hurry forward the troops coming up from Cairo, and urged Buell to hasten on also. But the enemy, after various threatening movements, made their attack when the latter was a day's march away, and seemed in no great haste to reach the. Tennessee, where he would be a subordinate.

The limits of this work will not allow the giving of the details of the battle of Shiloh, or of any of Grant's campaigns, but simply the narration of some of the leading events which show the ability and character of the general himself. Grant's headquarters were at Savannah,