of, in all the
ages to come, when Shiloh was saved, and Treason was forced to turn,
faint, and stagger away from the field to which it had rushed with a
fiend's exultant eagerness, having there met only its own discomture.
The meed due for that service is a coronal of glory, that may never,
probably, be claimed as the desert of any _one_ individual exclusively;
nor is it likely that the epitaph, enchiselled upon whose tombstone
soever it might be, 'Here lies the saviour of Shiloh,' would pass one
hour unchallenged. Yet impartial history can scarcely be at fault in
recognizing as preeminent the part taken by one officer, in the events,
whose results, at least, permit so much of eulogy to be written, with
other significance than merely that of a wretched burlesque. That
officer was General Nelson, the commander of our own division.
Iron-nerved, indomitable, willfull, disdainful of pleasing with studied
phrase of unmeant compliment, but with a great, manly heart beating
strong in his bosom, and a nature grandly earnest, brave, and true--with
the very foremost of Kentucky's loyal sons will ever stand the name of
General William Nelson.

Our column had marched from Nashville out on the Franklin turnpike,
nearly three weeks previous. General McCook, as the senior divisional
commander, had claimed the advance, and had held it in our march through
that beautiful, cultivated garden spot of Middle Tennessee, as far as
Columbia, a distance of nearly fifty miles. Here the turnpike and the
railroad bridges over Duck river had both been destroyed by the rebels
in their forlorn retreat from the northward. To replace the former even
with a tottering wooden structure, was a work of time and labor.
Meanwhile the army waited wearily, General Nelson chafed at the delay,
and the rebel leaders Beauregard and Sidney Johnston were concentrating
their forces at Corinth with ominous celerity. It was their purpose to
crush, at one blow, so suddenly and so surely dealt that succor should
be impossible, the National army, which had established itself on the
borders of one of the southernmost States of the Confederacy, and was
menacing lines of communication of prime necessity to their maintenance
of the defensive line within which those commanders had withdrawn their
discomfited armies. At length, one evening, on dress parade, there were
read 'General orders, headquarters Fourth division,' for a march at
daylight the next morning. Some days would