previous next
[322]
Before the close of the action the advance of General T. J. Wood's division (two brigades of Buell's corps) arrived in time to take part in the action.

My force was too much fatigued from two days hard fighting and exposure in the open air to a drenching rain during the intervening night, to pursue immediately. Night closed in cloudy and with a heavy rain, making the roads impracticable for artillery by the next morning.

General Sherman, however, followed the enemy, finding that the main part of the army had retreated in good order.

But General Sherman, in his report, uses the following language:

At the time of recovering our camps (about four o'clock P. M.) our men were so fatigued that we could not follow the retreating masses of the enemy.

And General Buell says, in his report:

Two brigades of General Wood's division arrived just at the close of the battle; but only one, that of Colonel Wagner, in time to participate actively in the pursuit, which it continued for about a mile, and until halted by my order.

If any pursuit beyond the Shiloh meeting-house was made by the Federals on the afternoon of the 7th, it must have been made very cautiously, for the Confederates were not at all disturbed in their slow and quiet retreat. General Breckinridge, commanding the reserve, bivouacked for the night near the former headquarters of Generals Johnston and Beauregard, on the night of the 5th, at about one and a half miles from the battle-field. The next morning (on the 8th) he fell back to a position only three miles farther to the rear, where he remained undisturbed for several days, with the cavalry thrown out well to the front, in close proximity to the Federal lines.

On the morning of the 8th, General Sherman, with two brigades and some cavalry, advanced to reconnoitre, on the lower Corinth road, while General Wood, with two brigades, reconnoitred on the upper road. On arriving at General Breckinridge's bivouac of the preceding night they found our cavalry pickets in position, and pursued them for about half a mile with a regiment of cavalry and one of infantry. At that point Colonel Forrest appeared, and charged the enemy with a part of his forces, a company of Wirt Adams's regiment, a squadron of the 8th Texas, and some Kentuckians, under Captain John Morgan, amounting in all to about three hundred and fifty troopers. The Federals were thrown into great confusion, and routed; ‘althoughh,’ says General Sherman,

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
Sherman (4)
T. J. Wood (3)
Buell (2)
John C. Breckinridge (2)
Wagner (1)
John Morgan (1)
A. S. Johnston (1)
N. B. Forrest (1)
G. T. Beauregard (1)
Wirt Adams (1)
hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
8th (1)
7th (1)
5th (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: