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[321] rear of the Tuscumbia and its affluents, some six miles from Corinth, long enough to collect stragglers, Gen. Beauregard resumed his march, concentrating his main forces at Baldwin. On the 7th of June he left Baldwin, it offering no advantages of a defensive character, and assembled the main body of his forces at Tupelo. Tile position selected was an excellent one to protect the south branches of the Mobile and New Orleans railroads. The movement of Gen. Beauregard was a surprise to the enemy, and a decided success. His effective force did not exceed forty-seven thousand men of all arms, and he had skilfully avoided attack from an enemy superiour in numbers. By holding Corinth, he had gained time, and held the enemy in check without a battle; and by retreating when he did, he out-generaled Halleck, rendered him powerless to move, and saved Mississippi from the inroad of a large army, which would have followed him into the interiour at an earlier season of the year, but was now unable to do so, from weakened forces and the great heats.1 Gen. Halleck attempted to break the news of his discomfiture by a flaming official despatch to Washington, in which he was assisted by Gen. John Pope, then acting under him, to one of the most monstrous falsehoods of the war. This false despatch is so characteristic of the Federal method in dealing with the facts of the war, that it may be copied here for a general lesson to the reader:
1 The correspondent of a Northern journal thus betrays the disappointment of the enemy, and the damage to his expectations and plans in Beauregard's evacuation of Corinth:
I went all over the tented field of the enemy-all over the fortifications-all over the town-talked with the frank druggist and the sturdy Irishman that had worked upon the railroad. And so do I write what I saw in grief, mortification, chagrin, and shame. I said yesterday: “ I'll write no more; others may; I can't. Patriotism will not let me write what I have seen, and can swear to.” When I write such words as I am sometimes compelled to, if I write at all, I am afraid lest, in exposing military imbecility, I shall wound and damage our beautiful commonwealth, that struggles so tremendously for existence and perpetuity. But I do religiously believe that it is best now for the commonwealth to hear and heed what is bitter, undisputed fact — the Confederate strategy since the battle of Shiloh has been as successful as it has been superiour. Taking the enemy's stand-point, and writing when and where I do, I cannot possibly imagine how it could have been more eminent for perfection and success. Taking our stand-point — the stand-point of the Union's hopes and Halleck's fame — I cannot possibly imagine how it could have been more mortifyingly disastrous. If the attack at Shiloh was a surprise to Gen. Grant, the evacuation of Corinth was no less a surprise to Gen. Halleck. If the one ruined Grant, the other hes. laid out in pallid death the military name and fame of Major-Gen. Halleck. The druggist says he was two weeks getting away. But aside from such testimony, could the army of Beauregard be removed so cleanly, and completely, and noiselessly, during a night, or day and night, or two days and two nights? Did it require the tremendous concussion of the magazine-explosion to get into our ears — what we could not get into our eyes — the evacuation? Why, that was the last act of the mortifying drama. On Friday morning we went in. The prisoners that we captured amounted to about four hundred. Four hundred! Even the beggarly picket regiments and light artillery that fought us so boldly, got away. Those that we caught declare that they were kept in ignorance of the movements at Corinth, and were as much surprised at the evacuation as ourselves. Corinth has been searched in vain for a spiked or disabled gun. Shame on us, what a clean piece of evacuation it was.
1866.
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