Col. J. Stoddard Johnston, Confederate Military History, a library of Confederate States Military History: Volume 9.1, Kentucky
Clement Anselm Evans, Ed.

[65] and Col. John A. Wharton's cavalry (Eighth Texas), were unattached. On the 28th of February, no movement from Nashville having been meanwhile made against General Johnston, he put his army in motion for Decatur, Ala., via Shelbyville, reaching the former place on the 10th of March. Here the Tennessee river, then at flood-height, was crossed, and by the 25th of March General Johnston completed the concentration of his army at Corinth. This included, in addition to the troops brought by him, the command of General Polk, which had evacuated Columbus on the 2d of March, and General Bragg's corps of 10,000 from Pensacola, which together with other smaller detachments made about 40,000 men.

A corresponding movement had meanwhile taken place on the part of the Federal forces. General Grant had on the 10th of March begun his expedition up the Tennessee river, and on the 17th the greater part of his army, now augmented to nearly 50,000 effectives, was in camp at and near Pittsburg Landing on the southwest side of the Tennessee, twenty-three miles northeast of Corinth. On the 15th of March General Buell, with his army of 37,000, marched from Nashville for the same point by way of Columbia and Waynesboro, while Gen. O. M. Mitchel with a corps of 18,000 marched south to Huntsville and Decatur to seize the Memphis & Charleston railroad. Such was the situation, with General Grant resting in fancied security and awaiting the arrival of General Buell to move southward, with no thought of danger, when General Johnston, hoping to strike him before Buell should effect a junction, moved out from Corinth on the 3rd of April. He had said in response to the clamor following the evacuation of Kentucky and Tennessee that if he could effect a concentration of his scattered forces, those who declaimed against him would be without an argument. He was now about to redeem his word. How fully at Shiloh he did it, and in an instant