“Observe, if you please, that the words by the lower or river road to Pittsburg Landing are omitted, leaving nothing but a naked direction for me to march and form junction with the right of the army. “Do I deny General Grant’s version of the order? I believe he ordered me to Pittsburg Landing by the river road because he says he did, and because at 10 o’clock, when the whole army was slowly and sullenly retiring to the river, it was the order logically right and first to present itself. Moreover, by inserting in the body of the order actually brought to me the words ‘to Pittsburg Landing by the lower or river road,’ we have sense in the other direction to ‘form my line of battle at right angles with the river,’ otherwise without sense. At the right of the army, out three miles from the Landing, how was the angle to be ascertained? Why, then, did I not lead my column to Pittsburg Landing? And I answer, because the order Captain Baxter delivered to me contained no mention of Pittsburg Landing or of any road. Satisfied that I comprehended it, I passed the paper to Colonel Thayer; others about us at the moment read it. I gave it finally to Captain Kneffler, my Adjutant-General, who probably stuck it under his sword belt. It was lost during the day. On account of its informality, he attached no importance to it, and, as I shared the opinion, I never blamed him. “My first thought was, where is the right of the army? Captain Baxter’s good news settled the point. If not where it was in the morning, then Sherman must have advanced. In short, Sherman’s camp was now my goal, and I knew it was just beyond the bridge at the junction of Owl and Snake Creeks, on the road from Pittsburg Landing to Purdy. To get to it by the shortest route and in the quickest time from the corner of the V my brigades were in, I must take the right-hand road. General Grant has said in a footnote of his ‘Memoirs’ that, in the absence of an express direction, if I had been an older soldier I would have marched to Pittsburg Landing, and thence, as from a base, out to Sherman. I think not. He forgot the news I had from Baxter as to the condition of the battle; besides which, by taking the right line of the road fork, the distance of the march would be reduced nearly, if not quite, three miles; in addition to which, again, the column would be on the very road Myers had bridged and corduroyed for me. So I sent word to Myers to lead out for the Owl Creek bridge next to Sherman’s camp.