Following their initial duty at Pensacola, the 33rd was ordered to report to Corinth, Mississippi, for duty with General Albert Sidney Johnston's Army of Mississippi. Arriving just after the Confederate loss at Shiloh (in which Johnston was killed and replaced in command by General P.G.T. Beauregard), the 33rd was assigned to the brigade commanded by Colonel Alexander T. Hawthorn, which was part of the Army's 3rd Corps. In July 1862 Hawthorn's brigade became part of a division commanded by Major General William Hardee, and the following month the 33rd was transferred to a brigade (still in Hardee's division) commanded by Brigadier General Sterling Wood. Private Matthews reported being "strung out in muddy ditches in S.A.M. Wood's brigade," in May 1862, and also indicates that he and his comrades traded in their Pensacola muskets for "new painted Enfield Rifles out of the boxes, with Minie balls cartridges, new bayonets and scabbards." He reports that several soldiers were ill, and says that "we did not like the water [in Corinth], except that we carried from a flowing artesian well."