Well might Grant's own stout heart have shrunk appalled from the task before him.
Wallace was held back by confused orders, pardonable at such a time.
The eager Nelson was detained at Savannah by Buell, who thought that the sounds of the engagement they heard in the Shiloh woods was a minor affair, and who wanted Nelson to wait for boats to take him there.
It seemed sometimes to Dick long afterward, when the whole of the great Shiloh battle became clear, that Fortune was merely playing a game of chess, with the earth as a board, and the armies as pawns.

Grant's army was ambushed with its general absent.

The other armies which were almost at hand were delayed for one reason or another.

While as for the South, the genius that had planned the attack and that had carried it forward was quenched in death, when victory was at its height.
But for the present the lad had little time for such thoughts as these.
The success of Sherman in holding the new position infused new courage into him and those around him.

The men in gray, wearied with their immense exertions, and having suffered frightful losses themselves, abated somewhat the energy and fierceness of their attack.
The dissolved Northern regiments had time to reform.