The same writer tells of a conversation that he held with General Beauregard some years after the war. "To my query that it had always been a mystery why he stopped the battle when he did Sunday night, when the advantage, on the whole, seemed to be with him, and when he had an hour or more of daylight, General Beauregard replied that there were two reasons: first, his men were, as he put it, 'out of hand,' had been fighting since early morn, were worn out, and also demoralized by the flush of victory in gathering the stores and sutlers' supplies found in our camps. As one man said, 'You fellows went to war with cheese, pigs' feet, dates, pickles--things we rebs had forgotten the sight of.' 'In the second place,' he said, 'I thought I had General Grant just where I wanted him, and could finish him up in the morning.'"
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JONES M. WITHERS, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL THOMAS L. CRITTENDEN.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN A. McCLERNAND.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL GEORGE B. CRITTENDEN, C. S. A.]
After the battle, General Halleck took command in person, and proceeded to lay siege to Corinth, to capture it by regular approaches. Both he and Beauregard were reinforced, till each had about one hundred thousand men. Halleck gradually closed in about the place, till in the night of May 29th Beauregard evacuated it, and on the morning of the 30th Sherman's soldiers entered the town.
Some military critics hold that the fate of the Confederacy was determined on the field of Shiloh. They point out the fact that after that battle there was nothing to prevent the National armies at the West from going all the way to the Gulf, or--as they ultimately did--to the sea. In homely phrase, the back door of the Confederacy was broken down, and, however stubbornly the front door in Virginia might be defended, it was only a question of time when some great army, coming in by the rear, should cut off the supplies of the troops that held Richmond, and compel their surrender. Those who are disposed to give history a romantic turn narrow it down to the death of General Johnston, declaring that in his fall the possibility of Southern independence was lost, and if he had lived the result would have been reversed. General Grant appears to dispose of their theory when he points out the fact that Johnston was killed while { 109} leading a forlorn hope, and remarks that there is no victory for anybody till the battle is ended, and the battle of Shiloh was not ended till the close of the second day. But, indeed, there is no reason why the fatal moment should not be carried back to the time when the line of defence from the mountains to the Mississippi was broken through at Mill Spring and Fort Donelson, or even to the time when the Confederates, because of Kentucky's refusal to leave the Union, were prevented from establishing their frontier at the Ohio. The reason why progress in conquering the Confederacy was more rapid at the West than at the East is not to be found so much in any difference in men as in topography. At the West, the armies moving southward followed the courses of the rivers, and their opponents were obliged to maintain artificial lines of defence; but the Eastern armies were called upon to cross the streams and attack natural lines of defence.