The Confederate Retreat to Corinth

In the morning twilight of the 7th, Wallace opened the contest anew on the Confederate left, where Beauregard commanded in person. Others soon joined in the battle, and it became general all along the line. The Confederates fought gallantly, but were speedily pushed back by a superior force; and when they perceived that all was lost, they fled, under a storm of blinding sleet and cold rain, to the heights of Monterey in the direction of Corinth. They were covered, in their retreat, by a rear-guard of twelve thousand men commanded by Ex-President Breckenridge. The Confederates had lost over ten thousand men in the engagement, of whom full three thousand died during the retreat of nine miles. Fifteen thousand Nationals were killed, wounded, or made prisoners. The slain on the battle-field were soon buried, the dead horses were burnt, and the hospital-vessels sent down the Tennessee by the Nationals were crowded with the sick and maimed. Beauregard's shattered army fell back to Corinth, and Grant was about to pursue and capture it, when General Halleck, his superior in rank, who had come up from St. Louis and took the supreme command, caused the impatient troops to loiter until the Confederates, recuperated, were prepared for another contest.

Twenty days after the battle, Halleck and his army had advanced nine miles toward Corinth; and a week later (May 3) they were near that place, making vigorous use of pickaxe and spade in piling up fortifications for prosecuting a siege. This labor continued twenty-seven days longer, interrupted by frequent sorties from Corinth, when the Confederates were driven from their advanced batteries, and Halleck prepared for a sanguinary conflict the next day. The Confederates had been much strengthened by delay; but Beauregard was not disposed to fight the Grand Army of the Tennessee, as it was now called. All the night of the 29th of May, the National sentinels had heard and reported the unceasing roar of moving cars at Corinth; and at daybreak, just as Halleck sent out skirmishers to "feel the enemy," the earth was shaken by a series of explosions, and dense columns of smoke rose above the town. There was no enemy to "feel." Beauregard had evacuated Corinth during the night, burnt and blown up whatever of stores he could not carry away, and fled, in haste, to Tupelo, many miles southward from Corinth, where he left General Bragg in command, and retired to mineral springs in Alabama, for the restoration of his impaired health. Halleck took possession of Corinth, and was soon afterward called to Washington to perform the duties of General-in-Chief of all the armies of the Republic. He left General Thomas in command at Corinth, and General Grant of his old army, with enlarged powers.

When General Buell moved from Nashville to join Grant, he sent the energetic General Mitchel southward, as we have observed. After Mitchell left the more cautious Buell, his was a sort of independent command, and he pushed on vigorously. On the 4th of April, he was at Shelbyville, Tennessee, sixty miles from Nashville, where he established a depository of supplies. There he left the railway, and after rapid marches with a light supply-train, he crossed the State line on the 10th into Alabama, and was in front of Huntsville on the morning of the 11th before the dawn. Fatigue parties tore up the railway at each end of the town, while the cavalry marched directly into the place. The unsuspicious sleepers were awakened by the clatter of the horses' hoofs in the streets. The surprise was complete. The inhabitants, wrote an eye-witness, "flocked to door and window, exclaiming, with blanched cheek and faltering tongue, 'They come! they come! the Yankees come!' Men rushed into the streets half-dressed, the women fainted, the children screamed, the darkies laughed, and for a time a scene of perfect terror reigned." The spoils of this bloodless victory were seventeen locomotives, more than a hundred passenger cars, and a large amount of supplies of every kind; also one hundred and sixty prisoners. By it Mitchel secured the control of the Charleston and Memphis Railway from Tuscumbia on the west to Stevenson on the east, a distance of about one hundred miles. He also won the control of the Tennessee River for about the same distance.

This work was accomplished without the loss of a single man; and when Corinth fell into the possession of the Nationals at the beginning of June, all Kentucky, western and middle Tennessee, and northern Mississippi and northern Alabama, were recovered from the Confederates. It was confidently expected that East Tennessee would be immediately released from the power of the insurgents; but General Buell, who had now joined Mitchel, would not listen to the earnest entreaties of that officer, to add that loyal and sorely oppressed region to the emancipated territory. The way had been prepared by General Negley and others. Negley had climbed over the almost impassable mountains northeast of Stevenson, driven the Confederates from Jasper (June 7), and appeared on the Tennessee River opposite Chattanooga. He needed only a little help to enable him to seize and hold that key to East Tennessee and Northern Georgia. The help was refused by General Buell. When, at the middle of June, the East Tennesseeans saw the insurgents evacuate Cumberland Gap, voluntarily, they surely expected the long hoped-for deliverance, by the advent of National troops; but Buell refused to walk in at that open door. That cautious leader and the fiery Mitchel could not work in harmony, and the latter was now transferred to another field of duty.