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Pittsburg Landing
Here was the key to Union strategy -- a good troop landing and staging area for an attack on the Southern army at Corinth, a strategic rail center. But the Confederates struck first, driving the surprised Federals from their camps back toward the landing.
On Sunday afternoon thousands of Union stragglers congregated along the banks here and refused to fight, while reports of disaster filtered in from the battlefield.
Late Sunday afternoon the tide began to turn. Cheers went up when the first Union reinforcements appeared on the opposite shore. Throughout the night, additional troops poured into the landing by steamboat and by road -- 24,000 in all. The next morning the revitalized Union forces won back all the ground they had lost, and sent the Confederates reeling back to Corinth. |