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As the first shock of the meeting lines of battle was near the right of the National line, an intelligible account may be given by describing the action of the divisions of Grant's army separately, beginning with the right, or Sherman's. The direction of General Johnston's advance was such as to bring him first in contact with Sherman's left and Prentiss's right.
Only the restraining hand of a neighbor upon his coat tail prevented Walt Scales from hurdling the intervening chairs to reach Toomey to thrust his shares upon him. Hope and skepticism of the genuineness of his assertions commingled in the faces upon which Toomey looked, while he waited for an answer. He saw the doubt and took Prentiss's letter from his pocket.
But in no person was the change so marked as in Toomey, who felt that he had come into his own at last. As an old and dear friend of Prentiss's his prestige was almost restored. He fairly reeled with success, while, with no one daring to refuse him credit because of the influence he was presumed to exert, he ate tinned lobster for breakfast to show that he could.
All that Toomey had claimed for him was found to be the truth he was an indisputable millionaire, with ample means to put through whatever he undertook. The effect of Prentiss's presence was noticeable throughout the town, and innumerable small extravagances were committed on the strength of what was going to happen "when the project went through."
I never found out exactly who set it on fire, but was told that in one of our batteries were some officers and men who had been made prisoners at Shiloh, with Prentiss's division, and had been carried past Jackson in a railroad-train; they had been permitted by the guard to go to this very hotel for supper, and had nothing to pay but greenbacks, which were refused, with insult, by this same law-abiding landlord.
But Buell said he had come up from the landing, and had not seen our men, of whose existence in fact he seemed to doubt. I insisted that I had five thousand good men still left in line, and thought that McClernand had as many more, and that with what was left of Hurlbut's, W. H. L. Wallace's, and Prentiss's divisions, we ought to have eighteen thousand men fit for battle.
Within a few days, Prentiss's division arrived and camped on my left, and afterward McClernand's and W. H. L. Wallace's divisions, which formed a line to our rear. Lew Wallace's division remained on the north side of Snake Creek, on a road leading from Savannah or Cramp's Landing to Purdy.
I never found out exactly who set it on fire, but was told that in one of our batteries were some officers and men who had been made prisoners at Shiloh, with Prentiss's division, and had been carried past Jackson in a railroad-train; they had been permitted by the guard to go to this very hotel for supper, and had nothing to pay but greenbacks, which were refused, with insult, by this same law-abiding landlord.
He was indignant, and with reason enough, for he had just learned that he had dined the barber futilely, since the ingrate had purchased elsewhere a sewing machine of a rival make. As Toomey was about to take his accustomed seat, his glance chanced to light upon Prentiss's distinguished back. He stopped abruptly, staring in a surprise which passed swiftly from incredulity to joy.
The other divisions were in line to meet the enemy soon after the fighting commenced on General Prentiss's front, and made a stubborn resistance to the Rebel advance. The Rebels well knew they would have no child's play in that battle. They came prepared for hot, terrible work, in which thousands of men were to fall. The field attests our determined resistance; it attests their daring advance.
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