The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-08-15

the Napoleonlc tactics a model. We
 were marshalled by cooler and slower
 men, who could not see when they were
 worsted who had less elan, but better
 staying qualities.
 Our brave leader. General sherman,
 says in his account of 1t that we did
 not throw up any intrenchments ln
 those woods, because we expected to
 move on to Corinth when Buell. ar
 rived. Our position was a mere can
 tonment in the woods. But It would
 be very unjust to Generals Johnston
 and Beauregard to deny that they had
 counted on this very negligence, and
 meant to get to the river before Buell. arrived-and did. The impatient southerners refused to wait at Corinth for our men to reach them. And so it was that on that Saturday night there
 were thirty-two thousand of us in the
 woods and thirty-five thousand of our enemy in the same woods without our
 knowing it, making a five-mile line so close that their bugle-calls were mis- taken for those of our own camp. am not writing a criticism of the battle.
 I am only telling you what l saw. There was not man in my prlgade who suspected that the perspectives of
 that forest were peopled with an eager
 enemy We had a general notion that their pickets had audaciously craWled
 up here and there. That was all, and so we played cards, hummed our war songs in spite of the patrol, till taps, and then went to sleep securely under
 the aegis of Uncle Sam, to be startled at daybreak on Sunday by the hurri-
 cane of death.
 Of all the entrances to battle, sleep is
 the worst To step out of slumber into
 the fierce surprise of intense and dead ly enmity leaves no room for adjust
 ment. To be awakened from fantasies by the plant of hell is confusing. But
 there you are, your tent is gone with
 crash, your ears are rent by the split
 ting timber. There is a wild, shrill, hu-
 man medley of agony and rage and | command filling the atmosphere. Shouts and screams intermingle in an appalling dissonance and the rattle of
 musketry and the bursting of shells tear the undisciplined comprehension to pieces. You find yourself half dressed, with a musket in your hand, looking for the reassuring strength that organization gives. But in the
 smoke and delirium of it you meet only
 chaos and bewilderment. Officers are hoarsely bowling, and some of them are torn to fragments as they gesticu- late. I saw one of them struck by
 bleeding artillery horse that went screaming and plunging through the trees, dragging his harness and part of
 caisson with him. Entangled in that flying mass, the officers blasphemy was cut off in the middle and in an in- stant he was dragged and hurled into an unrecognizable and dismembered | mass. Nothing is so terrible to a body
 of men as to be surprised in wood when their facilities are not alert, and
 to lose all sense of the points of the compass and all reliance upon the or
 ganized units of power. | Now that we can look back sat that Sunday morning through the big end of the spy-glass, it is the bitterness and
 prejudice and hatred that become small. I believe that General Beaure- gard was correct in saying that many
 of his men were poorly equipped with 1 all sorts of old-fashioned and unwar- l like weapons, for I saw among the pris- | oners that we captured afterwards the strangest collection of venerable mus kets, rifles and shotguns and I have at
 this day over my mantel flint-lock
 musket that I sent back from that bat | tlefield, that is a fit match for "the ole queens arm that Granther Young | fetched back from Concord busted"
 But the impetus and the rapidity of l the enemy's attack were beyond all l praise. They showed us then what we 1 afterwards grew to expect, that in the | first dash and impact of the fight, their l southern blood carried them with an almost irresistible momentum. They 1 drove whole brigades of us to the river. 1 They occupied our camp, and, poor | devils, they must have been hungry, for | they left not crumb behind them. But they were as ignorant of the north ern mettle as we were of the southern fire. What they did not calculate on
 was our second breath, and the cool | disciplineary skill with which old Te- cumseth Kicked together the frag-
 ments of his scattered forces and start ed onward on Monday. It is true Buell. | had come up, and we were numerically
 strong, but it was the original brigades | that recaptured the camps and brought
 about the retreat of Beauregard to Cor | inth. From Sunday morning to Mon | day afternoon we were at it hot and
 heavy. You have only to look at the official reports. Beauregard lost 10,690
 men, and our loss was HOO killed and l 7,495 wounded-almost as many men In
 the aggregate as make up one of our
 recent expeditions. I was struck by a piece of shell in the thigh on the second
 day. It made bad flesh wound, but although it incapacitated me tempora- rily, it was not fatal, and l went to
 Cairo on the first dispatch-b boat. There
 it was that I first learned what tre- mendous excitement the battle had | caused the north, and especially
 throughout the northwest, which had
 furnished most of the men. The first news had fallen with the weight of a crushing disaster, loaded with the pam | ic and slaughter. Indignation meet | ings were held in Chicago and MilWau
 kee. Lieutenant Governor Stanton of l Ohio voiced the wild indignation of that l state in print, and poured the most
 scathing denunciations upon General Grant, who was accused of being drunk 1 and absent from the battlefield. Nor | did the popu1ar voice snare General