the morning of April 6,
when he proceeded from Savannah to Pittsburg Landing, to learn the cause
of a fierce cannonade. He found that the Confederate army, forty
thousand strong, was making an unexpected and determined attack in force
on the Union camp, whose five divisions numbered a total of about
thirty-three thousand. The Union generals had made no provision against
such an attack. No intrenchments had been thrown up, no plan or
understanding arranged. A few preliminary picket skirmishes had, indeed,
put the Union front on the alert, but the commanders of brigades and
regiments were not prepared for the impetuous rush with which the three
successive Confederate lines began the main battle. On their part, the
enemy did not realize their hope of effecting a complete surprise, and
the nature of the ground was so characterized by a network of local
roads, alternating patches of woods and open fields, miry hollows and
abrupt ravines, that the lines of conflict were quickly broken into
short, disjointed movements that admitted of little or no combined or
systematic direction. The effort of the Union officers was necessarily
limited to a continuous resistance to the advance of the enemy, from
whatever direction it came; that of the Confederate leaders to the
general purpose of forcing the Union lines away from Pittsburg Landing
so that they might destroy the Federal transports and thus cut off all
means of retreat. In this effort, although during the whole of Sunday,
April 6, the Union front had been forced back a mile and a half, the
enemy had not entirely succeeded. About sunset, General Beauregard, who,
by the death of General Johnston during the afternoon, succeeded to the
Confederate command, gave orders to suspend the attack, in the firm
expectation however, that he would be able to complete his victory the
next morning.

But in this hope he was disappointed. During the day the vanguard of
Buell's army had arrived on the opposite bank of the river. Before
nightfall one of his brigades was ferried across and deployed in front
of the exultant enemy. During the night and early Monday morning three
superb divisions of Buell's army, about twenty thousand fresh,
well-drilled troops, were advanced to the front under Buell's own
direction; and by three o'clock of that day the two wings of the Union
army were once more in possession of all the ground that had been lost
on the previous day, while the foiled and disorganized C