“I asked myself, to be sure, if we are beating the enemy, and he is on the run, why the want of me? And why the order to form my line at right angles with the river? I could not answer, but rested implicitly on the order. Grant was on the ground—he knew—that was enough. The idea of defeat never entered my mind; and starting, as I was, with intelligence of a victory already won by our army, what ground is there for the imputation that I had the achievement of some special glory in purpose? “The road we were pursuing had been well repaired. The cavalry had done its work substantially, and we bowled along. By the firing we could tell we were nearing the battle. We took no note of time. Somewhere about half after one o’clock—I remember the head of the column was reported in the vicinity of the Owl Creek bridge—a cavalry officer, quite young and capless, covered with mud, slashed across the forehead, rode up from the rear and asked: “‘Are you General Wallace?’ “Without pulling rein, I replied. “‘General Grant,’ he said, ‘has sent me to tell you to hurry up.’ “Up? To the right of the army, of course; so I returned: ‘Give General Grant my compliments, and tell him I will be up in a few minutes.’ “The courier rode off the way he came—a circumstance which, if I had had the slightest suspicion that my movement was in error, would have prompted calling him back for question. “So, in absolute unconsciousness of mistake, I pushed on. Several times officers came to me and remarked upon the firing so far down on our left. And it was curious. Had we been repulsing the enemy, he should have been in the south, not so nearly in the southeast. But I settled the point, at least to my own satisfaction. ‘The fighting has ceased on front of Sherman; but they are keeping it up away over on our left.’ From the position my column was then in, the left of our army should have been well down toward the river in an almost easterly direction—certainly far enough in that direction to dispose of the only mistake General Grant attributes to me in the footnote corrective of the text in his ‘Memoirs.’ [Illustration] “Finally the revelation overtook me. A second messenger came up from the rear. It was Captain Rowley, well known as of General Grant’s staff. He it was who reported to his chief that he found me marching to Purdy and several miles farther from the battlefield than when I started. From ‘Stoney Lonesome,’ Purdy lies west; whereas the road upon which he overtook me runs almost due south, and Shiloh Church, marking the left of Sherman’s camp, could not have been to exceed two miles from where Rowley and I held the conversation, which I will give very nearly in exact words. The fact is, he was himself out of his reckoning, if not lost.