east, falling back and fighting for every foot of ground. This movement compelled Hurlbut to retire from his first position to the north side of the Peach Orchard (Map IV). At about two o'clock, Colonel Stuart having been wounded, his two regiments having lost heavily, and having exhausted their ammunition - even after robbing the cartridge-boxes of their dead and wounded comrades- retired toward the Landing. General McArthur followed not long after; and General Hurlbut, having connected his right with General Prentiss's left, swung back until their lines were nearly at right angles. (Map V.) Hurlbut retired toward the Landing at about four or four-thirty o'clock, leaving the line from left to right in the following order: Prentiss's command, 8th Iowa of Sweeny's brigade, Tuttle's full brigade, and the 58th Illinois of Sweeny's brigade.

While this fierce struggle was in progress on the Confederate right, at about two-thirty afternoon, General Johnston received the wound from which he died a few minutes later. General Bragg then took command of the right, and General Ruggles succeeded Bragg in the center.

While the battle raged on the Union left, as described, it was not less stubborn and bloody on the right; but Sherman and McClernand were forced back to the Hamburg and Savannah road-a mile from the Landing - about four-thirty o'clock, the Confederates gradually closing in from both flanks around the center. (Map VI.) Meantime General W. H. L. Wallace had sent orders for his command to retire; but for some reason never explained four of his six regiments did not receive the order and were captured, as will be explained. As General Wallace and General Tuttle, followed by the 2nd and 7th Iowa Regiments, were fighting their way through a severe crossfire at short range, General Wallace was mortally wounded, and was left on the

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field to be recovered the next day, dying three or four days later without recovering consciousness.

THE HORNETS' NEST

This appellation owes its origin to the men who felt the sting of the hornets. William Preston Johnston in his history of his father (General A. S. Johnston) speaks of the term as a "mild metaphor", and says that "no figure of speech would be too strong to express the deadly peril of an assault upon this natural fortress whose inaccessible barriers blazed for six hours with sheets of flame, and whose infernal gates poured forth a murderous storm of shot and shell and musket-fire which no living thing could quell or withstand" 49

No more graphic description of the fight at the Hornets' Nest has been written than that of which the language quoted is a part-written from the view-point of the attacking forces, and, therefore, written with full knowledge of the results that followed from the "murderous storm of shot and shell and musket-fire." It is literally true that Duncan Field and the woods and thickets bordering it along the "sunken road" were thickly strewn with the dead and wounded. The same author tells us that "Hindwere shivered into fragments man's brilliant brigades retired and paralyzed"; that "Stewart's regiments. mangled from the field"; that "Gibson's splendid brigade recoiled and fell back"- four several times, indeed. Colonel Gibson, in his official report says of his brigade: "Four times the position was charged and four times the assault proved unavailing."

The best informed writer, living or dead, on the details and incidents of the Battle of Shiloh - Major D. W. Reed, Secretary and Historian of the Shiloh National Military

49 Johnston's Life of General A. S. Johnston, p. 620.

Park Commission and author of Campaigns and Battles Twelfth Regiment Iowa Veteran Volunteer Infantry, who was himself in the Nest during the entire day, says there were "twelve separate and distinct charges" made upon the line at the Hornets' Nest, with the result that three Confederate brigades were" entirely disorganized", and that "thirteen regiments lost their regimental organizations... and were not brought into the fight again.... during the day.''50 General Ruggles, who commanded the Confederate lines in that part of the field after the death of General Johnston, designates this as "one of the controlling conflicts of that eventful day."51 The position was of such conspicuous importance that a brief description of the ground will not be out of place.

Moving out on the Corinth road from the Landing about three-fourths of a mile one crosses the Hamburg and Savannah road. A fourth of a mile further on the road forks, the left hand branch (Eastern Corinth) bearing south of southwest; and one-fourth of a mile still further on it crosses an old abandoned road near the southeast corner of Duncan Field, and near the center of the Hornets' Nest. The right-hand road from the fork runs nearly west, crossing the north end of Duncan Field, then bearing south passes the "Little Log Meeting-house". At the point where this road, going from the Landing, strikes the east line of Duncan Field the abandoned road leads off to the southeast about a half-mile, then bending east to the Hamburg and Savannah road near Bloody Pond- another significant local name. Along this abandoned road, beginning near the north end of Duncan Field, the line of battle from right to left, was as follows: 58th Illinois (Sweeny's brig

50 Reed's Campaigns and Battles of the Twelfth Regiment Iowa Veteran Volunteer Infantry, p. 50.

51 War of the Rebellion: Official Records, Series I, Vol. X, Part I, p. 475.