General Grant, as we have noted, spent the night at Savannah, a town nine miles by way of the river from Pittsburg Landing. As he sat at breakfast, he heard the distant boom of cannon and he quickly realized that Johnston's army had attacked his own at the Landing. Instantly he took a boat and started for the scene of the conflict. At Crump's Landing, about half way between the two, General Lew Wallace was stationed with a division of seven thousand men. As Grant passed Crump's Landing, he met Wallace and ordered him to be ready for instant marching when he was called for. When Grant arrived at Pittsburg Landing, about eight o'clock in the morning, he found a tremendous battle raging, and he spent the day riding from one division commander to another, giving directions and cheering them on as best he could. About two and a half miles from the Landing stood a little log church among the trees, in which for years the simple folk of the countryside had been wont to gather for worship every Sunday morning. But on this fateful Sunday, the demon of war reigned supreme. The little church was known as Shiloh to all the country around, and it gave its name to the great battle that raged near it on that memorable day. General Prentiss had borne the first onset of the morning. He had been pressed back half a mile. But about nine o'clock, after being reënforced, he made a stand on a wooded spot with a dense undergrowth, and here he held his ground for eight long hours, until five in the afternoon, when he and a large portion of his division were surrounded and compelled to surrender. Time after time the Confederates rushed upon his position, but only to be repulsed with fearful slaughter. This spot came to be known as the "Hornet's Nest." It was not far from here that the Confederates suffered the irreparable loss of the day. Their noble commander, Albert Sidney Johnston, received his death wound as he was urging his troops to force back Hurlbut's men. He was riding in the center of the fight, cheering his men, when a minie ball cut an artery of his thigh. The wound was not necessarily fatal. A surgeon could easily have saved him. But he thought only of victory and continued in the saddle, raising his voice in encouragement above the din of battle. Presently his voice became faint, a deadly pallor blanched his cheek. He was lifted from his horse, but it was too late. In a few minutes the great commander was dead, from loss of blood. The death of Johnston, in the belief of many, changed the result at Shiloh and prevented the utter rout or capture of Grant's army. One of Johnston's subordinates wrote: "Johnston's death was a tremendous catastrophe. Sometimes the hopes of millions of people depend upon one head and one arm. The West perished with Albert Sidney Johnston and the Southern country followed." Jefferson Davis afterward declared that "the fortunes of a country hung by a single thread on the life that was yielded on the field of Shiloh."