"Ordered further, that the two departments now under the respective commands of Generals Halleck and Hunter, together with so much of that, under General Buell, as lies west of a north and south line indefinitely drawn through Knoxville, Tennessee, be consolidated and designated the Department of the Mississippi; and that, until otherwise ordered, Major-General Halleck have command of said department." Immediately upon the receipt of this order, General Halleck ordered Buell to march his army to Savannah. The forces of the Confederacy were gathering at Corinth; the forces of Halleck and Buell were massing at Savannah. Instead of a hurried dash by a flying column, to tear up a section of railway as ancillary to a real movement elsewhere, the programme now contemplated a struggle by armies for the retention or for the destruction of a strategic point deemed almost vital to the Confederacy. About the close of February, General Beauregard sent a field-battery, supported by two regiments of infantry, to occupy the river-bluff at Pittsburg Landing, twenty-three miles northwest from Corinth, and nine miles above Savannah. Lieutenant-Commander Gwin, who was stationed at Savannah with two gunboats, the Tyler and the Lexington, proceeded to Pittsburg Landing, on March 1st, and, after a brisk skirmish, silenced the battery and drove it and its supports away. General C.F. Smith, in pursuance of the authority given him by General Halleck, selected this as the point of assembly of the army.