When I reassumed command on the 17th of March I found the army divided, about half being on the east bank of the Tennessee at Savannah, while one division was at Crump’s landing on the west bank about four miles higher up, and the remainder at Pittsburg landing, five miles above Crump’s.  The enemy was in force at Corinth, the junction of the two most important railroads in the Mississippi valley—­one connecting Memphis and the Mississippi River with the East, and the other leading south to all the cotton states.  Still another railroad connects Corinth with Jackson, in west Tennessee.  If we obtained possession of Corinth the enemy would have no railroad for the transportation of armies or supplies until that running east from Vicksburg was reached.  It was the great strategic position at the West between the Tennessee and the Mississippi rivers and between Nashville and Vicksburg.

I at once put all the troops at Savannah in motion for Pittsburg landing, knowing that the enemy was fortifying at Corinth and collecting an army there under Johnston.  It was my expectation to march against that army as soon as Buell, who had been ordered to reinforce me with the Army of the Ohio, should arrive; and the west bank of the river was the place to start from.  Pittsburg is only about twenty miles from Corinth, and Hamburg landing, four miles further up the river, is a mile or two nearer.  I had not been in command long before I selected Hamburg as the place to put the Army of the Ohio when it arrived.  The roads from Pittsburg and Hamburg to Corinth converge some eight miles out.  This disposition of the troops would have given additional roads to march over when the advance commenced, within supporting distance of each other.

Before I arrived at Savannah, Sherman, who had joined the Army of the Tennessee and been placed in command of a division, had made an expedition on steamers convoyed by gunboats to the neighborhood of Eastport, thirty miles south, for the purpose of destroying the railroad east of Corinth.  The rains had been so heavy for some time before that the low-lands had become impassable swamps.  Sherman debarked his troops and started out to accomplish the object of the expedition; but the river was rising so rapidly that the back-water up the small tributaries threatened to cut off the possibility of getting back to the boats, and the expedition had to return without reaching the railroad.  The guns had to be hauled by hand through the water to get back to the boats.

On the 17th of March the army on the Tennessee River consisted of five divisions, commanded respectively by Generals C. F. Smith, McClernand, L. Wallace, Hurlbut and Sherman.  General W. H. L. Wallace was temporarily in command of Smith’s division, General Smith, as I have said, being confined to his bed.  Reinforcements were arriving daily and as they came up they were organized, first into brigades, then into a division, and the command given to General Prentiss, who had