Although their army was routed at many points the Northern officers showed indomitable courage.  Driven back in the forest they always strove to form the lines anew, and now their efforts began to show some success.  Their resistance on the right hardened, and on the left they held fast to the last chain of hills that covered the wharves and their stores at the river landing.  As they took position here two gunboats in the river began to send huge shells over their heads at the attacking Southern columns, maintaining a rapid and heavy fire which shook assailants and strengthened defenders.  Again the water had come to the help of the North, and at the most critical moment.  The whole Northern line was now showing a firmer front, and Grant, himself, was directing the battle.

Fortune, which had played a game with Grant at Donelson, played a far greater one with him on the far greater field of Shiloh.  The red dawn of Shiloh, when Johnston was sweeping his army before him, had found him at Savannah far from the field of battle.  The hardy and vigorous Nelson had arrived there in the night with Buell’s vanguard, and Grant had ordered it to march at speed the next day to join his own army.  But he, himself, did not reach the field of Shiloh until 10 o’clock, when the fiercest battle yet known on the American continent had been raging for several hours.

Grant and his staff, as they rode away from his headquarters, heard the booming of cannon in the direction of Shiloh.  Some of them thought it was a mere skirmish, but it came continuously, like rolling thunder, and their trained ears told them that it rose from a line miles in length.  One seeks to penetrate the mind of a commanding general at such a time, and see what his feelings were.  Again the battle had been joined, and was at its height, and he away!

Those trained ears told him also that the rolling thunder of the cannon was steadily moving toward them.  It could mean only that the Northern army had been driven from its camp and that the Southern army was pushing its victory to the utmost.  In those moments his agony must have been intense.  His great army not only attacked, but beaten, and he not there!  He and his staff urged their horses forward, seeking to gain from them new ounces of speed, but the country was difficult.  The hills were rough and there were swamps and mire.  And, as they listened, the roar of battle steadily came nearer and nearer.  There was no break in the Northern retreat.  The sweat, not of heat but of mental agony, stood upon their faces.  Grant was not the only one who suffered.

Now they met some of those stragglers who flee from every battlefield, no matter what the nation.  Their faces were white with fear and they cried out that the Northern army was destroyed.  Officers cursed them and struck at them with the flats of their swords, but they dodged the blows and escaped into the bushes.  There was no time to pursue them.  Grant and his staff never ceased to ride toward the storm of battle which raged far and wide around the little church of Shiloh.