the good news was true, how could I have imagined, (had there been so much as a doubt as to the intent of the order received,) a necessity for my command at Pittsburg Landing?

    But, proceeding.  The letters further establish, that,
    immediately upon receiving the order, I put my column en
    route, to execute it.

Now comes the questions.  Did I take the right road to effect the junction with the right of the army, or one leading to Purdy, away from the battle?  Pertinent to these inquiries, General Knefler says, that the road chosen for the movement had been patrolled and picketted by my cavalry.  By their report, if by nothing else, I must have been posted as to its terminus.  In corroboration of this assertion please notice that General Macaulay, General Strickland, General Thayer and General Knefler, all allude to the fact that the head of the column was approaching, not going away from the firing, when the countermarch took place.  Consider, further, that the most imperative necessities of my situation, isolated as I had been from the main army, were, to know all the communications with that army, and to keep them clear, and in order for rapid movement. Not only did I know the road, but every step my division took from the initial point of the march up to the moment of the change of direction, was, as is well known to every soldier in the column, a step nearer to the firing and therefore a step nearer to the battle.  While on this inquiry, let me add that the report of my being set right after marching upon the wrong road has in it this much truth, and no more.  When about a mile from the position which had been occupied by the right of the army (General Sherman’s division), Captain Rowley overtook me and told me that you had sent him to hurry me up, and that our lines had been carried by the enemy and the army driven back almost to the river, a very different story from the one brought me by Captain Baxter.  Captain Rowley set me right as to the conditions of the battle, not as to the road I was following.  Colonel McPherson and Major Rawlins, the other members of your staff, mentioned as having been sent to me, met me after the countermarch, when my command was on the river road moving to Pittsburg Landing.

Concerning the countermarch, I would remark that the condition of the battle, as reported by Captain Rowley, made it prudent, if not necessary.  My column was only five thousand men, of all arms.  Reflecting upon it now, I am still of the opinion that it did better service the next day in your new line of battle, than it could have done, operating alone and unsupported in the rear of the whole rebel army, where I was certainly taking it, when “set right” by the captain.

Instead of making the change of direction, when it was resolved on, by a countermarch, the result proved that it should have been effected by a general right about.  The former manoeuvre