As a result of the fall of Forts Henry and Donelson, Confederate General Johnston was forced to fall back, giving up Kentucky and much of West and Middle Tennessee. He chose Corinth, Mississippi, a major transportation center, as the staging area for an offensive against Major General Ulysses S. Grant before the Army of the Ohio, under Major General Buell, could join it. Grant, with about 40,000 men, mounted a southern offensive along the Tennessee River, toward Pittsburg Landing. Grant received orders to await Buell at Pittsburg Landing. Johnston, attacking the Union troops on the morning of April 6th, surprised them, routing many by evening. Johnston had been mortally wounded earlier and his second in command, General Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard, took over. The Union troops established another line covering Pittsburg Landing, anchored with artillery and augmented by Buell's men who began to arrive and take up positions. Fighting continued until after dark, but the Federals held. By the next morning, the combined Federal forces numbered about 40,000, outnumbering Beauregard's army of less than 30,000. Beauregard was unaware of the arrival of Buell's army and launched a counterattack in response to a two-mile advance by William Nelson's division of Buell's army at 6:00 am, which was, at first, successful. Union troops stiffened and began forcing the Confederates back. Beauregard ordered a counterattack, which stopped the Union advance but did not break its battle line. At this point, Beauregard realized that he could not win and, having suffered too many casualties, he retired from the field and headed back to Corinth. On April 8th, Grant sent Brigadier General William T. Sherman, with two brigades, and Brigadier General Thomas J. Wood, with his division, in pursuit of Beauregard. They ran into the rebel rearguard, commanded by Colonel Nathan Bedford Forrest, at Fallen Timbers whose aggressive tactics, although eventually contained, prompted the Union troops to return to Pittsburg Landing. The Confederates continued to fall back until launching their mid-August offensive. About the Artist: Born in Berlin, Prussia in 1829, Henri Lovie became portrait and landscape painter. In the 1850s, he illustrated The Ohio Railroad Guide, Zoe: or the Quadroon's Triumph, Brother Mason, the Circuit Rider; or Ten Years a Methodist Minister, The Gallows, the Prison, and the Poor-House. Among other illustrator positions held, Lovie was a 'special artist' for Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper.
