"Battle of Shiloh." 299
men being now completely exhausted, and not having had anything to eat since morning." (Rebellion Records, Volume X, Part I, page
438.)
Now, as to the colonels of the regiments of this division ( Withers's), here are their statements touching the last hours of the 6th of April, statements that were before Generals Bragg and Withers when they wrote their reports. Lieutenant-Colonel W. D. Chadwick, com- manding Twenty-sixth Alabama, as early as April izth reports that :
" Having only about two hundred men left, and seeing that they must all be sacrificed it I remained, without gaining any material advantage, I withdrew them to a wood in the rear of a field and awaited orders. Finding no one to whom I could report, and the men being quite exhausted, I moved back to the enemy's camp, near where we had entered in the forenoon. * * * Colonel Collart was able to join us at that place, and ordered the regiment a few hundred yards further back, where we spent the night." (Rebellion Records, Volume X, Part I, page 546.)
Colonel Joseph Wheeler (commanding Nineteenth Alabama, Jack- son's brigade, Withers's division) states, that having been ordered to charge the enemy with his regiment to the river, after passing through the deep ravine below the lowest camp, the regiment was halted* (by whose orders he does not report) within four hundred yards of the river and remained ready to move forward for half an hour, when night came on and we were ordered to the rear. {Rebellion Records, Volume X, Part I, page 559). Colonel John C. Moore, commanding Second regiment of Texas infantry, under date of April iQth, 1862, reports to General Withers :
"After advancing about half a mile we came to a deep ravine and formed ourselves in front of a heavy battery of the enemy at the dis- tance of four hundred or five hundred yards. They opened on us a lire of shot and shell which did but little damage, as the balls gen- erally passed over our heads and across the ravine. After having kept up this fire a considerable time, they then changed the position of some of the guns, placing them so as to bring us a raking fire up the ravine from our right. Seeing this state of things, we made a rapid retreat from our unpleasant position and proceeded back to the camp last taken, having been told that we would here receive further orders. It was dark when we reached camp, and after waiting an 'hour or so we bivouacked near this encampment in a drenching rain. First Lieutenant Daniel Gallaher was sent to look for ammunition
