Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in to episode number 123 of our Civil War Podcast.

I'm Rich. And I'm Tracy. Hello y'all. Welcome to the podcast. As y'all will recall,

when we left off last week after the collapse of the Hornets nest, the Confederates were

endeavoring to put together a coordinated assault on the final union line just above Pittsburgh

landing, but they were running out of time. The first rebel units ready to renew the attack

were Chambers and Jackson's brigades. They began their advance against the union left about 6 pm,

when the sun was only about 20 minutes away from setting. As Chambers and Jackson's men

launched their attack, they were taken under fire by the mass tartillery that anchored grants

final line and also by the union timber cladds out on the Tennessee River. The nearby federal

infantry, positioned to support the gun line, fired blindly into the billowing clouds of dense white

smoke that hid the rebels from their sight. In his book, Shiloh, Confederate high tide in the

heartland, Stephen E. Woodworth writes, quote, on the crest of the ridge behind the big guns,

Grant sat his horse quietly for the most part, while bullets and shells whizzed past. A subordinate

wrote up and spoke to him. Then as he turned away from the general, the younger man's head disintegrated

under the impact of the Confederate shell, spraying Grant with gore but leaving him unhurt.

A few moments later, as Grant walked his horse along the line, another officer, probably

snatching a gap between detonations of the guns, said to him,

General, things are going decidedly against us today, to which Grant replied,

not at all, sir, we are whipping them there now, as he gestured toward the bucking cannon and the

enemy somewhere out of sight in the roiling white cloud beyond. End quote.

Besides help from the two timber clouds, the Tyler and Lexington out on the river,

Grant's men also by that time had received their first reinforcements from Don Carlos Bules,

...