Chapter 3:
After the extended discussions over the events preceding and attending the battle of Shiloh, in some of which controversies General Sherman himself participated, and all of which have called out extracts from the official records, that, taken together, effectually settle some of the earlier questions in dispute, it must surprise all readers of the Memoirs to find their author ignoring these records, and at this late day presenting many inaccurate statements in regard to the operations about Pittsburgh Landing. The main questions at issue have always been whether the Union army was surprised at Shiloh; if it was, who was mainly responsible, and how far Buell's army can lay claim to having made the victory possible? General Sherman labors ingeniously, but inaccurately, as the official records show, to relieve himself from responsibility for it, and even attempts to create the impression that there was no general surprise. Ever since this battle, most who believed that the Union army was unexpectedly attacked on that occasion, have laid the chief load of responsibility upon General Grant, and he through all these years has made no effort to shift the burden. But now it will appear through the records which these Memoirs have called out, that General Sherman was mainly responsible, since he was encamped in advance; his division, as he wrote to the United States Service Magazine in 1865, ‘forming as it were the outlying picket,’ so that he was in charge of the picket front looking toward
