“‘I’ve had a devil of a time to find you,’ he said, in high excitement. [Illustration: JOHNSTON’S MONUMENT AT SHILOH] “‘I am sorry to have put you to trouble,’ I returned, checking my horse. ‘What is it?’ “‘The General has sent me to hurry you up.’ “‘That’s the second message of the kind in ten minutes. I don’t understand it.’ “‘Where are you going, anyhow?’ “‘To join Sherman.’ “‘Sherman!’ “‘Yes.’ “‘Come to one side with me.’ We went a little out of the road. “‘Great God!’ he said, ‘don’t you know that Sherman has been driven from his camp? And that the whole army is now within half a mile of the landing, and it’s a question if we are not all to be driven into the river?’ “To my exclamations Captain Rowley went into details. There are kinds of fear; but nothing of that nature can shoot one’s marrow so to the core as the dread of making a mistake in a situation such as Rowley then flung me. Yet I could see with astonishing distinctness that I had led my division into the rear of the rebel army, or rather that the whole victorious army was between me and Grant. “My first impulse was to go on. A vigorous assault upon the enemy’s rear might turn defeat into victory. Two years later, at City Point, General Grant told me that if he had known at Shiloh what he then knew he would have ordered me where I started to go. To which I add, if I had known the moment Rowley was talking to me that General Nelson was on the right bank of the Tennessee, with a possibility of crossing his division to the left bank at Pittsburg Landing before night, I would have continued my march at all hazards. As it was, I did not even know that General Buell was within fifty miles of Savannah. Why, in the morning at Crump’s Landing, General Grant did not tell me that a considerable part of the Army of the Ohio was within supporting distance of the Army of the Tennessee has been a mystery to me from that day to this. It must have been that he did not yet believe there was seriousness in the rebel demonstration at Pittsburg Landing. “Captain Rowley, it is to be observed, did not estimate that there was a mistake in my movement to the right of the army. I told him it was plain that I was in the rear of the rebel army, and asked categorically: ‘What does General Grant want me to do? Do you bring me an order from him?’ “‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘General Grant wants you to go to Pittsburg Landing, and he wants you there like hell.’ “‘Very well, I shall obey him,’ I said. ‘But it will be necessary for me to back out of this and find a cross road to take the column into the river road. You have just come through the swamps; stay, now, and pilot me.’