The volunteers from Ohio County anxiously expected orders this day as they watched Gen. Sherman's division weigh anchor and head about 30 miles upstream to Tyler's Landing. Sherman was to conduct a raid against the Memphis and Charleston RR at Burnsville, MS, about 19 miles to the west. Torrential rains and the flooding of Yellow Creek, however, made this journey impossible. He made his way back downstream to Pittsburg Landing and there set up camp on some elevated farmland near a one-room Methodist Church.
Steamboats at Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee.
Meanwhile, at the Cherry Mansion, Gen. Smith was suffering with a severely infected ankle he had injured during a nighttime disembarkation. Relying on Sherman's description of several open fields high above the flooded creeks, Smith decided to establish a beachhead on the western bank of the Tennessee and sent two more divisions to join him, but the 17th Kentucky Volunteers remained at Savannah aboard the
New Uncle Sam.
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