advantage, and attacked with
vehemence the head of Rosecrans's column, Hamilton's division,
beating it back, capturing a battery, and killing and disabling
seven hundred and thirty-six men, so that when night closed in
Rosecrans was driven to the defensive, and Price, perceiving his
danger, deliberately withdrew by the Fulton road, and the next
morning was gone. Although General Ord must have been within four
or six miles of this battle, he did not hear a sound; and he or
General Grant did not know of it till advised the next morning by a
courier who had made a wide circuit to reach them. General Grant
was much offended with General Rosecrans because of this affair,
but in my experience these concerted movements generally fail,
unless with the very best kind of troops, and then in a country on
whose roads some reliance can be placed, which is not the case in
Northern Mississippi. If Price was aiming for Tennessee; he
failed, and was therefore beaten. He made a wide circuit by the
south, and again joined Van Dorn.

On the 6th of September, at Memphis, I received an order from
General Grant dated the 2d, to send Hurlbut's division to
Brownsville, in the direction of Bolivar, thence to report by
letter to him at Jackson. The division started the same day, and,
as our men and officers had been together side by side from the
first landing at Shiloh, we felt the parting like the breaking up
of a family. But General Grant was forced to use every man, for he
knew well that Van Dorn could attack him at pleasure, at any point
of his long line. To be the better prepared, on the 23d of
September he took post himself at Jackson, Tennessee, with a small
reserve force, and gave Rosecrans command of Corinth, with his
three divisions and some detachments, aggregating about twenty
thousand men. He posted General Ord with his own and Hurlbut'a
divisions at Bolivar, with outposts toward Grand Junction and
Lagrange. These amounted to nine or ten thousand men, and I held
Memphis with my own division, amounting to about six thousand men.
The whole of General Grant's men at that time may have aggregated
fifty thousand, but he had to defend a frontage of a hundred and
fifty miles, guard some two hundred miles of railway, and as much
river. Van Dom had forty thousand men, united, at perfect liberty
to move in any direction, and to choose his own point of attack,
under cover of woods, and a superior body of cavalry, familiar with
eve