On the night of the fourth of April the Carondelet started to cut this last line south. She was swathed in hawsers and chain cables. Her decks were packed tight with every sort of gear that would break the force of plunging shot; and a big barge, laden with coal and rammed hay, was lashed to her port side to protect her magazine. Twenty-three picked Illinoisian sharpshooters went aboard; while pistols, muskets, cutlasses, boarding-pikes, and hand grenades were placed ready for instant use. The escape-pipe was led aft into the wheel-house, so as to deaden the noise; and hose was attached to the boilers ready to scald any Confederates that tried to board. Then, through the heart of a terrific thunderstorm, and amid a furious cannonade, the Carondelet ran the desperate gauntlet at full speed and arrived at New Madrid by midnight.
The Confederates were now cut off both above and below; for the position of Island Number Ten was at the lower point of a V-shaped bend in the Mississippi, with Federal forces at the two upper points. But the Federal troops could not close on the Confederates without crossing over to the east bank; and their transports could not run the gauntlet like the ironclads. So the Engineer Regiment of the West cut out a water road connecting the two upper points of the V. This admirable feat of emergency field engineering was effected by sawing through three miles of heavy timber to the nearest bayou, whence a channel was cleared down to New Madrid. Then the transports went through in perfect safety and took Pope's advanced guard aboard. The ironclad Pittsburg had come down, through another thunderstorm, this same morning of the seventh; and when the island garrison saw their position completely cut off they surrendered to Foote. Next day Pope's men cut off the greater part of the Confederates on the mainland.
Thus fell the last point near Johnston's original line along the southern borders of Missouri and Kentucky. Just before it fell Johnston made a desperate counterattack from his new line at Corinth, in northwest Mississippi, against Grant's encroaching force at Shiloh, fifteen miles northeast, on the Tennessee River.
Writing "A. S. Johnston, 3d April, 62, en avant" on his pocket map of Tennessee, the Confederate leader, anguished by the bitter criticism with which his unavoidable retreat had been assailed, cast the die for an immediate attack on Grant before slow Halleck reinforced or ready Buell joined him. Johnston's lieutenants, Beauregard and Bragg, had obtained ten days for reorganization;and their commands were as ready as raw forces could be made in an extreme emergency. They hoped to be joined by Van Dorn, whose beaten army was working east from Pea Ridge. But on the second they heard that Buell was approaching Grant from Nashville; and on the third Johnston's advanced guard began to move off. Van Dorn arrived too late.
The march, which it was hoped to complete on the fourth, was not completed till the fifth. The roads were ankle-deep in clinging mud, the country densely wooded and full of bogs and marshes. The forty thousand men were not yet seasoned; and, though full of enthusiasm, they neither knew nor had time to learn march discipline. Moreover, Johnston allowed his own proper plan of attacking in columns of corps to be changed by Beauregard into a three-line attack, each line being formed by one complete corps.
This meant certain and perhaps disastrous confusion. For in an attack by columns of corps the firing line would always be reinforced by successive lines of the same corps; while attacking by lines of corps meant that the leading corps would first be mixed up with the second, and then both with the third.
In the meantime Grant was busier with his own pressing problems of organization for an advance than with any idea of resisting attack. He lacked the prevision of Winfield Scott and Lee, both of whom expected from the first that the war would last for years. His own expectation up to this had been that the South would collapse after the first smashing blow, and that its western armies were now about to be dealt such a blow. He was not unmindful of all precautions; for he knew the Confederates were stirring on his front. Yet he went downstream to Savannah without making sure that his army was really safe at Shiloh.
Pittsburg Landing was at the base of the Shiloh position. But the point at which, by the original orders, Buell was to join was Savannah, nine miles north along the Tennessee. So Grant had to keep in touch with both. He had not ignored the advantage of entrenching. But the best line for entrenching was too far from good water; and he thought he chose the lesser of two evils when he devoted the time that might have been used for digging to drilling instead. His army was raw as an army; many of the men were still rawer recruits; and, as usual, the recruiting authorities had sent him several brand-new battalions, which knew nothing at all, instead of sending the same men as reinforcements to older battalions that could "learn 'em how." Grant's total effectives at first were only thirty-three thousand. This made the odds five to four in favor of Johnston's attack. But the rejoining of Lew Wallace's division, the great reinforcement by Buell's troops, and the two ironclad gunboats on the river, raised Grant's final effective grand total to sixty thousand. The combined grand totals therefore reached a hundred thousand--double the totals at Donelson and far exceeding those at Bull Run.
