‘It was necessary that a combat, fierce and bitter, to test the manhood of the two armies, should come off, and that was as good a place as any. It was not then a question of miltary skill and strategy, but of courage and pluck, and I am convinced that every life lost that day to us was necessary, for otherwise, at Corinth, at Memphis, at Vicksburg, we would have found harder resistance, had we not shown our enemies, that rude and untutored as we then were, we could fight as well as they.’A well ordered line of battle, some rifle pits, and a vigilant watch for an approaching enemy, followed by such fighting as these precautions would have insured, might have made even a better impression upon the rebels with a great saving of life. At Shiloh, for the first time since-General Buell had obtained an ‘honorable position’ for General Sherman in Louisiana, these two officers met on the battle-field. This time General Buell came when sorely needed, to aid Sherman and his associates in securing honorable victory. All would suppose that when the author of the Memoirs sat down to write his version of Shiloh he would at least have done bare justice to General Buell and his army, but the reader will look for it in vain. Whatever his impressions at the time may have been, the public discussions which have since taken place, and the whole official history of the movements, which was at his disposal, afforded every means of correcting previous errors. Although, toward the close of that first disastrous day, Grant's whole army was praying for ‘night or Buell,’ and Grant about noon was urging Buell on as follows:—‘If you will get upon the field, leaving all your baggage over the river, it will be a move to our advantage, and possibly save the day to us,’—General Sherman finds little to recognize or praise in the gallantry and efficient aid rendered in time of need by his former friend, and has cold words of disparagement instead. The closing portion of his chapter on Shiloh, is chiefly
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carelessness, General Sherman some years later had this excuse, in a letter to the United States service Magazine:
Cincinnati: Wilstach, Baldwin & Co. 1875.
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