t ignored the advantage of entrenching. But
the best line for entrenching was too far from good water; and
he thought he chose the lesser of two evils when he devoted the
time that might have been used for digging to drilling instead. His
army was raw as an army; many of the men were still rawer recruits;
and, as usual, the recruiting authorities had sent him several
brand-new battalions, which knew nothing at all, instead of sending
the same men as reinforcements to older battalions that could "learn
'em how." Grant's total effectives at first were only thirty-three
thousand. This made the odds five to four in favor of Johnston's
attack. But the rejoining of Lew Wallace's division, the great
reinforcement by Buell's troops, and the two ironclad gunboats
on the river, raised Grant's final effective grand total to sixty
thousand. The combined grand totals therefore reached a hundred
thousand--double the totals at Donelson and far exceeding those
at Bull Run.

After a horrible week of cold and wet the sun set clear and calm
on Saturday, the eve of battle. The woods were alive with forty
thousand Confederates all ready for their supreme attack on the
thirty-three thousand Federals on their immediate four-mile front.
Grant's front ran, facing south, between Owl and Lick Creeks, two
tributaries that joined the Tennessee on either side of Pittsburg
Landing. Buell's advance division, under Nelson, was just across the
Tennessee. But Grant was in no hurry to get it over. His reassuring
wire that night to Halleck said: "The main force of the enemy is at
Corinth. I have scarcely the faintest idea of an attack (general
one) being made upon us." But the skirmishing farther south on Friday
had warned Grant, as well as Sherman and the vigilant Prentiss,
that Johnston might be trying a reconnaissance in force--the very
thing that Beauregard wished the Confederates to do.

Long before the beautiful dawn of Sunday, the fateful sixth of
April, Prentiss had thrown out from the center a battalion which
presently met and drove in the vanguard of the first Confederate
line of assault. The Confederate center soon came up, overwhelmed
this advanced battalion, and burst like a storm on the whole of
Prentiss's division. Then, above the swelling roar of multitudinous
musketry, rose the thunder of the first big guns. "Note the hour,
please, gentlemen," said Johnston; and a member of his staff wrote
down: "5:14 A.M."

Johnston's admirable plan