Startling Reveille. -- Result of First Day's Battle. --
Victory for the Rebels. -- Arrangements for Second Day. --
Bloody Scenes. -- Grant's Attack. -- Rebels fall back. --
Fluctuations of the Day. -- General Hindman blown up. --
Retreat determined on -- Leaving the Field. -- Horrors of
the Retreat. -- Sleep among the Dying. -- Reach Corinth. --
Resolve.


General Breckenridge, about the 1st of April, let me know that he
would soon wish me to act on his staff as special _aid-de-camp_, and
advised me to instruct the next officers in command what to do in my
absence.

But, before proceeding further, let us return to the movements of
the Federal army under General Grant, which we left at Fort
Donelson in February.

During the month of March, this army was transported down the
Cumberland and up the Tennessee river in boats, and landed at
Pittsburg, near the foot of Muscle Shoals, beyond which large
transport boats could not pass. They camped about twenty miles from
Corinth, Mississippi, and were awaiting Buell's column, before
making an advance on Corinth.

Deserters and scouts gave Beauregard early notice of Grant's
flotilla at Pittsburg Landing, about the 1st of April. Let me here
repeat that the Rebel army has an incalculable advantage over the
Federal troops, because fighting on their own soil, and where every
man, woman, and child is a swift witness against "the invaders."