142 THE FINAL VICTORY. [1862. when General Polk ordered me forward to support his line. When moving to the support of General Polk, an order reached me from General Beauregard to report to him with my command at his headquarters." The fighting was of the same general description as on the previous day, except that the advantage was now with the National troops. Sherman was ordered to advance his command and recapture his camps. As these were about Shiloh church, and that was the point that Beauregard was most anxious to hold, the struggle there was intense and bloody. About the same time, early in the afternoon, Grant and Beauregard did the same thing each led a charge by two regiments that had lost their commanders. Beauregard's charge was not successful; Grant's was, and the two regiments that he launched with a cheer against the Confederate line broke it, and began the rout. Beauregard posted a rearguard in a strong position, and withdrew his army, leaving his dead on the field, while Grant captured about as many guns on the second day as he had lost on the first. There was no serious attempt at pursuit, owing mainly to the heavy rain and the condition of the roads. The losses on both sides had been enormous. On the National side the official figures are: 1,754 killed, 8,408 wounded, 2,885 missing; total 13,047. On the Confederate side they are: 1,728 killed, 8,012 wounded, 957 missing; total, 10,699. General Grant says: "This estimate must be incorrect. We buried, by actual count, more of the enemy's dead 1862.] THE LOSSES. 143 in front of the divisions of McClernand and Sherman alone than are here reported, and 4,000 was the estimate of the burial parties for the whole field." At all events, the loss was large enough to gratify the ill-wishers of the American people, who were looking on with grim satisfaction to see them destroy one another. The losses were the same, in round numbers, as at the historic battle of Blenheim, though the number of men engaged was fewer by one fourth. If we should read in to-morrow's paper that by some disaster every man, woman, and child in the city of Concord, New Hampshire, had been either killed or injured, and in the next day's paper that the same thing had happened in Montgomery, Alabama, the loss in life and limb would only equal what took place on the mournful field of Shiloh. 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 reënforced, 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, 144 THE TURNING-POINT OF THE WAR. [1862. 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 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. 1862.] THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF DEFENCE. 145 Back of all this, in the logic of the struggle, is the fact that no defensive attitude can be maintained permanently. The belligerent that can not prevent his own territory from becoming the seat of war must ultimately surrender his cause, no matter how valiant his individual soldiers may be, or how costly he may make it for the invader; or, to state it affirmatively, a belligerent that can carry the war into the enemy's country, and keep it there, will ultimately succeed. In most wars, the side on whose soil the battles were fought has been the losing side; and this is an important lesson to bear in mind when it becomes necessary to determine the great moral question of responsi bility of prolonging a hopeless contest. CHAPTER X. THE PENINSULA CAMPAIGN. WITHIN twenty-four hours after the defeat of McDowell's army at Bull Run (July 21, 1861) the Administration called to Washington the only man. that had thus far accomplished much or made any considerable reputation in the field. This was General George B. McClellan. He had been graduated at West Point in 1846, standing second in his class, and had gone at once into the Mexican war, in which he acquitted himself with distinction. After that war the young captain was employed in engineering work till 1855, when the Government sent him to Europe to study the movements of the Crimean war. He wrote a report of his observations, which was published under the title of "The Armies of Europe," and in 1857 resigned his commission and became chief engineer of the Illinois Central Railroad, and afterward President of the St. Louis and Cincinnati. He had done good work in northwestern Virginia in the early summer, and now at the age of thirty-five was commissioned Major-General in the regular army of the United States, and given command of all the troops about Washington. For the work immediately in hand, this was probably the best selection that could have been |