By half-past five, after twelve hours' fighting, Grant at last
succeeded in forming a new and shorter line, a mile behind that
morning's front, but without any dangerous gaps. There were three
reorganized divisions--Sherman's, McClernand's, and Hurlbut's,
one fresh division under Nelson, and a strong land battery of
over twenty field guns helping the two ironclad gunboats in the
defense of Pittsburg Landing. The Confederate effectives, reduced
by heavy losses and by as many stragglers as the Federals, were
now faced by five thousand fresh men on guard at the Landing.
Beauregard, who had succeeded Johnston, then stopped the battle
for the day, with the idea of retiring next morning to Corinth.
But, before his orders reached it, his battleworn right made a
desperate, fruitless, and costly attack on the immensely
strengthened Landing.

That night the rain came down in torrents; and the Confederates
sought shelter in the tents the Federals had abandoned. They
found little rest there, being harassed all through the bleak
dark by the big shells that the gunboats threw among them.

At dawn Grant, now reinforced by twenty-five thousand fresh men
under Buell and Lew Wallace, took the offensive. Beauregard,
hopelessly outnumbered and without a single fresh man, retired on
Corinth, magnificently covered by Bragg's rearguard, which held
the Federals back for hours near the crucial point of Shiloh
Church.

Shiloh was the fiercest battle ever fought in the River War. The
losses were over ten thousand a side in killed and wounded; while