let the regiments send out parties to bury their own dead, and to detail
parties, under commissioned officers from each division, to bury the
Confederate dead in their respective fronts and to report the numbers so
buried. The latter part of these instructions was not carried out by
all; but they were by those sent from Sherman's division, and by some of
the parties sent out by McClernand. The heaviest loss sustained by the
enemy was in front of these two divisions.

The criticism has often been made that the Union troops should have been
intrenched at Shiloh. Up to that time the pick and spade had been but
little resorted to at the West. I had, however, taken this subject
under consideration soon after re-assuming command in the field, and, as
already stated, my only military engineer reported unfavorably. Besides
this, the troops with me, officers and men, needed discipline and drill
more than they did experience with the pick, shovel and axe.
Reinforcements were arriving almost daily, composed of troops that had
been hastily thrown together into companies and regiments--fragments of
incomplete organizations, the men and officers strangers to each other.
Under all these circumstances I concluded that drill and discipline were
worth more to our men than fortifications.

General Buell was a brave, intelligent officer, with as much
professional pride and ambition of a commendable sort as I ever knew. I
had been two years at West Point with him, and had served with him
afterwards, in garrison and in the Mexican war, several years more. He
was not given in early life or in mature years to forming intimate
acquaintances. He was studious by habit, and commanded the confidence
and respect of all who knew him. He was a strict disciplinarian, and
perhaps did not distinguish sufficiently between the volunteer who
"enlisted for the war" and the soldier who serves in time of peace. One