, he
moved his division, over desperate roads, twenty-two miles, to
Savannah, and there embarked on steamboats for Pittsburg Landing.
After clearing a way with the bayonet through the army of stragglers
that swarmed upon the bank of the river, soon after daylight on the
morning of the 7th of April, the Second Division of the Army of the
Ohio advanced through the sad scenes of our defeat the day before, and
deployed, with stout hearts and cheers, upon the field of Shiloh.
General McCook fought his troops that day with admirable judgment. He
held them in hand; his line of battle was not once broken--it was not
once retired; but was steadily and determinedly advanced until the
enemy fled, and the reverse of the day before was more than redeemed
by a splendid victory.

In the movement on Corinth, a few weeks after the battle of Shiloh,
General McCook had the honor of being in the advance of General
Buell's army corps, and his skirmishers were among the first to scale
the enemy's works.

The rank of major-general of volunteers was soon after conferred upon
him, in view of his distinguished services--a promotion not
undeserved.

After the evacuation of Corinth, the command of General McCook was
moved through Northern Alabama to Huntsville, thence to Battle Creek,
where his forces remained for two months, in front of Bragg's army at
Chattanooga. Upon the withdrawal of Buell's army from Alabama and
Tennessee, General McCook moved his division, by a long march of four
hundred miles, back to Louisville.

Here he was assigned to command the First Corps in the Army of the
Ohio, and started on a new campaign, under Buell, in pursuit of Bragg.
The enemy were met and engaged near Perryville, and two divisions of
McCook's corps (one of them composed of raw recruits) bore the assault
of almost the entire army of General Bragg. The unexpected and
unannounced withdrawal of General Gilbert's forces on his right; the
sad and early loss of those two noble soldiers, Terrell and Jackson,
and the tardiness of reinforcements, made the engagement a desperate
one, and resulted in a victory, incomplete but honorable, to the Union
forces. After the battle of Chaplin Hills, Bragg's army, worn and
broken, fled in dismay from Kentucky. The army corps of Major-General
McCook was afterward moved to Nashville, and he assumed command of the
Federal forces in that vicinity.

On the 6th of November, 1862, on the arrival of Major-General
Rosecrans, wh