This crisis of the battle really lasted from about noon, when we faced the point of water oaks, until four o’clock, when the enemy were routed and fleeing in confusion across Shiloh branch. If there was any rallying force at all on the other side of this branch, it made no demonstration and certainly it was not a battle line of the enemy as represented on the map of the commission. The only rear-guard stand mentioned in the reports was at a point two miles further on and a final stand by Breckinridge’s division at Mickey’s still further toward Monterey. A few of the Confederate authorities place their final “withdrawal” at two o’clock, and a few others at three, but the overwhelming consensus of testimony of the reports place the final and complete rout of the enemy beyond the Shiloh Church at and after four o’clock; and Sherman again in his report particularizes 4 p.m. as the close of the engagement (p. 254). After the fighting was over, General Sherman came over to us in his camps of the day before, and, speaking to Major Carpenter (of the Nineteenth), complimented most highly the work of the brigade and particularly of the regular battalions. It was about this time also that General Thomas J. Woods arrived at the front, at the head of a brigade of his division, and, as Major Lowe reminds me, demanded in no “Sunday school language” to be allowed to go forward in pursuit of the enemy. But the darkness was approaching, and the impossibility of handling new troops in the dark in a wilderness of black jack was manifest, and the pursuit was given over for the night. The map of the commission shows Wood’s entire division in line with us and taking part at 2 p.m. in the great and final crisis of the day, in which the musketry fire was, as described by General Force, “more severe than any that occurred on the field in either of the two days of the battle.” _Wood’s division was not there._ One brigade came upon the field _just as the fighting was over, at about four o’clock_, and the other did not leave the landing until dark. General Force’s statement, substantially to the same effect in his history of the battle (p. 177 in the Scribner’s Series) is: “Wood’s division, arriving too late to take part in the battle, pushed to the front and engaged his skirmishers with the light troops covering the retreat.” General Buell’s report states the fact as I give it from my recollection. [Illustration: A TYPE OF TABLET SHOWING SHAPE ADOPTED FOR SECOND DAY’S BATTLE. THIS PARTICULAR ONE MARKS A POINT ON “HORNET’S NEST”]