began to push them back until all the lost ground was recovered,
but the Confederates conducted their retreat in good order and
finally reached a point of safety, leaving very few prisoners in
their pursuers' hands.

Grant had saved his army from destruction and had even driven his
adversary from the field, but at a fearful cost, for no less than
10,000 Union soldiers were killed or wounded in the two days'
desperate fighting at Shiloh and almost 3,000 had been captured.
The Confederates, it is true, had lost nearly 10,000 men, but their
army, which should have been crushed by the combined efforts of
Grant and Buell, was still in possession of Corinth and had come
dangerously near to annihilating half of the Union forces.

The results of the battle were, therefore, received at Washington
with surprise and indignation; the country at large, horrified at
the frightful slaughter, denounced it as a useless butchery; Halleck
hastily assumed charge of all the forces in the field and from that
time forward Grant, though nominally the second in command, was
deprived of all power and virtually reduced to the role of a mere
spectator. Indeed, serious efforts were made to have him dismissed
from the service, but Lincoln after carefully considering the charges,
refused to act. "I can't spare this man," was his comment. "He
FIGHTS."

Lincoln intended to imply by that remark that there were generals
in the army who did not fight, and Halleck was certainly one
of them, for he took thirty-one days to march the distance that
the Confederates had covered in three. Indeed, he displayed such
extraordinary caution that with an army of 100,000 at his back