The great body of the Tennessee troops never fought better than at Shiloh. Though many of them had little training, they fought in the open field and exhibited remarkable steadiness and readiness to obey orders. While company and regimental organizations were observed, it was next to impossible to maintain brigade and division organizations. The field seemed to be full of roving staff officers begging for a regiment to support a hard-pressed part of the line. In many instances they assumed to be clothed with authority to order a regiment from its own brigade to another. The consequence was that in a few hours after the opening of the battle the efficiency of the troops was seriously affected, and some of them were made the victims of great injustice.
The retirement to Corinth was made in good order. No pursuit was made or attempted. General Beauregard reports the Confederate loss at 10,699. Swinton fixes the loss of Grant and Buell in killed, wounded and captured, at 15,000.
In May, 1862, Colonel Lowe, afterward brigadiergen-eral, commanding the Federal forces at Forts Henry and Heiman, sent out an expedition in the direction of Paris and Dresden, for the capture of medical supplies reported to have been forwarded from Paducah to the Confederate army. The expedition, consisting of three companies of cavalry, was commanded by Maj. Carl Shaeffer de Boernstein. Col. Thomas Claiborne, Sixth Tennessee cavalry, with his own and the Seventh Tennessee, Col. W. H. Jackson, the whole force 1,250 strong, hearing of the Federal expedition, made pursuit from Paris, where he expected to meet it, to Lockridge's mill in Weakley
