“I understood Grant’s forces were to advance on the right of the Corinth road and Buell’s on the left, and accordingly at daylight I advanced my division by the flank, the resistance being trivial, up to the very spot where the day before the battle had been most severe, and then waited till near noon for Buell’s troops to get up abreast, when the entire line advanced and recovered all the ground we had ever held. I know that with the exception of one or two struggles, the fighting of April 7th was easy as compared with that of April 6th. “I never was disposed, nor am I now, to question any thing done by General Buell and his army, and know that, approaching our field of battle from the rear, he encountered that sickening crowd of laggards and fugitives that excited his contempt and that of his army, who never gave full credit to those in the front line, who did fight hard, who had, at two P. M., checked the enemy, and were preparing the next day to assume the offensive. I remember the fact the better from General Grant’s anecdote of the Donelson battle, which he told me then for the first time—that, at a certain period of the battle, he saw that either side was ready to give way if the other showed a bold front, and he determined to do that very thing, to advance on the enemy, when, as he prognosticated, the enemy surrendered. “At four P. M. of April 6th, he thought the appearances the same, and he judged, with Lew. Wallace’s fresh division, and such of our startled troops as had recovered their equilibrium, he would be justified in dropping the defensive and assuming the offensive in the morning. And, I repeat, I received such orders before I knew General Buell’s troops were at the river. I admit that I was glad Buell was there, because I knew his troops were older than ours, and better systematized and drilled, and his arrival made that certain which before was uncertain. I have heard this question much discussed, and must say that the officers of Buell’s army dwelt too much on the stampede of some of our raw troops, and gave us too little credit for the fact that for one whole day, weakened as we were by the absence of Buell’s army, long expected, of Lew. Wallace’s division, only four miles off, and of the fugitives from our ranks, we had beaten off our assailants for the time. At the same time our Army of the Tennessee have indulged in severe criticism at the slow approach of that army which knew the danger that threatened us from the concentrated armies of Johnston, Beauregard, and Bragg, that lay at Corinth.