The Battle of Shiloh or Pittsburg J^anding            11

day to assume the offensive ["]. He remembers ["] the fact the
better from General Grant's anecdote of his Donelson battle,
which he told him then for the first time — that at a certain period
of the battle, he saw that either side was ready to give way if the
other showed a bold front, and that he determined to do that very
thing, to advance on the enemy, when, as he prognosticated, the
enemy surrendered". You are thus given to undeistand, according
to General Sherman, that at a certain period of the battle at
Donelson, General Grant's thirty or thirty five thousand men
were ready to give way if his adversary ten or twelve thousand
strong, with an impassable river in his rear, had shown a bold
front, and that Giant tiiumphed by bravado. You are told that at
4 o'clock, p.m. on the 6th of April,—by which time the camps of
his army, with 4000 prisoners and half of his artillery, were in the
hands of the enemy; 6,000 of his men killed or wounded; 20,000
routed and demoralized and swarming down the river for miles,
with longing eyes turned to the opposite shore, or crouching be¬
neath the bank in a paralysis of fear; and with probably not more
than 10,000 men in ranks on the field of battle — you are told
that under these circumstances General Grant "thought the ap¬
pearances the same, (as at the battle of Donelson,) and he judged
with Lew Wallace's fresh division, and such of our startled troops
as had gained their equilibrium, he would be justified in dropping
the defensive and assuming the offensive in the morning"!' And
General Sherman reiterates again, as if to insist that this determin¬
ation was formed without regard to the succor which was at hand,
that he "received such orders before he knew General Buell's
troops were at the river". He assures you also that "there \vas no

1 Sherman's letter states at this point: ''I never was disposed, nor am I now, to
question any thing done by General Buell and his army, and know that approach¬
ing our field of battle from the rear, he encountered that sickening crowd of lag¬
gards and fugitives that excited his contempt, and that of his army, who never
gave full credit to those in the front line, who did fight hard, and who had, at
four P.M., checked the enemy, and were preparing the next day to assume the
offensive." United Slates Service Magazine, \-ol. Ill, no. 1, January 1865, page 2.