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