The Battle of Shiloh. 319
ended by 4 o'clock, and would have done so but for the unfortunate absence of discipline and experience.
When the Confederates passed through the enemy's encampments and found such quantities of provisions and booty, they halted and began to help themselves. Good men left the ranks and returned to the rear with bundles of plunder, in some cases sufficient to stock a small store. Then it was the officers failed to do their duty. They should have checked the confusion and kept the men in ranks.
General Buell, in his report of his arrival at Pittsburg Landing, said:
"The banks swarmed with a confused mass of men of various regiments; these could not have been less than four or five thousand, and later in the day it became much greater. The throng of de- moralized troops increased continually by fresh fugitives from the battle, which steadily closed nearer the landing, and these were in- termingled with teams, striving to get as near the river as possible. With few exceptions, all efforts to form the troops and move them forward to the fight utterly failed."
Assuredly the Confederates were at fault for not pressing on, not that it was General Beaureguard's fault, he who urged that move- ment, but his officers, who allowed the lines to halt in the Yankee camps.
In ending this criticism of Shiloh, and in closing the Confederate column, which we have endeavored to make as interesting to the old boys as we were able to do, we close our work with a reference to a subject not associated with Shiloh alone, but which has become a source of so much ill-feeling and contention on the part of our late enemies, that we deem it of use and as appropriate as a finale to these stories about the war, to place on record the following state- ment from a Federal newspaper correspondent at Shiloh to the Cin- cinnati Commercial.
Said he: "I am glad to be able to say something good of an army of traitors. * * * No instance came to my knowledge in which our dead or wounded were treated in so diabolical a manner as they were reported to be at Manassas and Pea Ridge. They were in- variably, whenever practicable, kindly cared for. * * * A. Hecken- looper tells me that one of his corporals, who was wounded, received many attentions. An officer handed him a rubber blanket, saying that he needed it bad enough, but a wounded man needed it more.
