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CHAPTER XV

Reminiscences.

After the smoke of the great battle had cleared away and the enemy settled permanently in their old quarters north of the Rappahannock, Lee moved his army some miles south of Fredericksburg, on the wooded highlands, and prepared for winter quarters.  This was not a very laborious undertaking, nor of long duration, for all that was necessary was to pitch our old wornout, slanting-roof tents, occupied by six or eight men each.  The troops had become too well acquainted with the uncertainty of their duration in camp to go into any very laborious or elaborate preparations.  Kershaw had a very desirable location among the wooded hills, but this was soon denuded of every vestige of fuel of every kind, for it must be understood the army had no wagons or teams to haul their fire wood, but each had to carry his share of the wood required for the daily use, and often a mile or mile and a half distant.  At the close of the year the Eastern Army found itself in quite easy circumstances and well pleased with the year’s campaign, but the fruits of our victory were more in brilliant achievements than material results.

In the Western Army it was not so successful.  On the first of the year General Albert Sidney Johnston had his army at Bowling Green, Ky.  But disaster after disaster befell him, until two states were lost to the Confederacy, as well as that great commander himself, who fell at the moment of victory on the fatal field of Shiloh.  Commencing with the fall of Fort Henry on the Tennessee, then Fort Donaldson on the Cumberland, which necessitated the evacuation of the lines of defense at Bowling Green, and the withdrawal of the army from Kentucky.  At Pittsburg Landing Grant was overwhelmingly defeated by the army under Beauregard, but by the division of the army under the two Confederate leaders, and the overpowering numbers of the enemy under some of the greatest Generals in the Union Army, Beauregard was forced to withdraw to Shiloh.  Here the two combined armies of Beauregard and Johnston attacked the Union Army under Grant, Sherman, Buell, Lew Wallace, and other military geniuses, with over one hundred and sixteen thousand men, as against an army of forty-eight thousand Confederates.  After one of the most stubborn, as well as bloodiest battles of the war, the Confederates gained a complete victory on the first day, but through a combined train of circumstances, they were forced to withdraw the second.  After other battles, with varied results, the end of the year found the Western Army in Northern Mississippi and Southern Tennessee.