f armies or
supplies until that running east from Vicksburg was reached. It was the
great strategic position at the West between the Tennessee and the
Mississippi rivers and between Nashville and Vicksburg.

I at once put all the troops at Savannah in motion for Pittsburg
landing, knowing that the enemy was fortifying at Corinth and collecting
an army there under Johnston. It was my expectation to march against
that army as soon as Buell, who had been ordered to reinforce me with
the Army of the Ohio, should arrive; and the west bank of the river was
the place to start from. Pittsburg is only about twenty miles from
Corinth, and Hamburg landing, four miles further up the river, is a mile
or two nearer. I had not been in command long before I selected Hamburg
as the place to put the Army of the Ohio when it arrived. The roads
from Pittsburg and Hamburg to Corinth converge some eight miles out.
This disposition of the troops would have given additional roads to
march over when the advance commenced, within supporting distance of
each other.

Before I arrived at Savannah, Sherman, who had joined the Army of the
Tennessee and been placed in command of a division, had made an
expedition on steamers convoyed by gunboats to the neighborhood of
Eastport, thirty miles south, for the purpose of destroying the railroad
east of Corinth. The rains had been so heavy for some time before that
the low-lands had become impassable swamps. Sherman debarked his troops
and started out to accomplish the object of the expedition; but the
river was rising so rapidly that the back-water up the small tributaries
threatened to cut off the possibility of getting back to the boats, and
the expedition had to return without reaching the railroad. The guns
had to be hauled by hand through the water to get back to the boats.

On the 17th of March the army on the Tennessee River consisted of five
divisions, commanded respectively by Generals C. F. Smith, McClernand,
L. Wallace, Hurlbut and Sherman. General W. H. L. Wallace was
temporarily in command of Smith's division, General Smith, as I have
said, being confined to his bed. Reinforcements were arriving daily and
as they came up they were organized, first into brigades, then into a
division, and the command given to General Prentiss, who had been
ordered to report to me. General Buell was on his way from Nashville
with 40,000 veterans. On the 19th of March he was at Columbia,
Tennessee,