Page:Irish In America.djvu/665

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APPENDIX.
643

and it is not too much to add that his fall was a greater loss to the cause he espoused than that of any other Confederate leader, after Stonewall Jackson. In the camp of the army which Albert Sydney Johnston assembled at Bowling Green, Kentucky, in the autumn of 1861, Cleburne had an opportunity in the drill and organisation of the raw troops, of which that army was then composed, of proving his qualifications as a disciplinarian and commander. His natural abilities in this respect had probably been fostered by his early tuition in the British army; and upon his becoming a soldier a second time, were perfected by unremitting study and labour. These qualities secured his promotion to brigadier-general. In April. 1862, Albert Sydney Johnston concentrated his forces at Corinth, Mississippi, to attack General Grant, who had landed an army at Pittsburg. on the Tennessee river, which was now encamped near Shiloh Church, about three miles from the landing. The attack was made on the morning of the 6th of April. Cleburne s brigade was of my corps, which formed the front line of attack. The enemy were steadily driven for three miles through their encampments, past the rich spoils with which a luxurious soldiery had surrounded themselves, and over the heaps of their dead and dying, until the broken and demoralised masses sought the shelter of the river s banks, and the cover of their gunboats. Albert Sydney Johnston had fallen in action about 2 o clock P.M. His successor in command, General Beauregard. deemed it best, late in the evening, to recall the pursuit. At the moment of recall, Cleburne was pressing on, within 400 yards of Pittsburg Landing, behind the cliffs of which cowered the masses of hopeless and helpless fugitives. That night the enemy were reinforced by the arrival of a fresh army under Buell; and, on the evening of the 7th, the Southern forces, after maintaining, through the day, the now unequal struggle, withdrew, unpursued, to Corinth. In this battle Cleburne s brigade sustained a heavier loss in killed and wounded than any other in the army.

At the initiation of General Bragg's Kentucky campaign, in the summer of 1862, Cleburne's brigade, with one other, was detatched and united with Kirby Smith s column, which, starting from Knoxville, Tennessee, was to penetrate Kentucky through Cumberland Gap and form a junction with the main army under General Bragg, which moved from Chattanooga into Kentucky by a different rout. Kirby Smith's forces encountered opposition at Richmond, Kentucky, in September. There Cleburne directed the first day's fighting, and in his first handling of an independent command was mainly instrumental in winning a victory, which, in the number of prisoners and amount of stores captured, and in the utter dispersion and destruction of the opposing force, was one of the most complete of the war. For