About 2:00 p.m., the corps commanders started the withdrawal. Breckinridge moved first, forming a rear guard position near Shiloh Church. Beauregard told him that the army must be saved at all costs, adding that “this retreat must not be a rout.”²⁹

A little past 2:00 p.m., General Thomas J. Wood’s division reached the field. His Twentieth Brigade under Brigadier General (and later President) James A. Garfield moved up in time to catch some scattered fire from retreating enemy troops. The men were excited and ready to fight. They could hear triumphant shouts and yells, which seemed to indicate a Union victory. Walking wounded from other brigades straggled past the fast moving new arrivals exuberantly exclaiming, “We’ve got ‘em on the run, boy! Go for ‘em! Give ‘em the best you’ve got in the shop.” None of Garfield’s men were killed or wounded, although several were bruised by spent enemy slugs. Much to their dismay, they were unable to catch up with the retreating Southerners.³⁰

Wood’s Twenty-first Brigade, under Colonel George Wagner, marched swiftly across the battlefield but failed to make contact. Colonel Cyrus Hines, Fifty-seventh Indiana, was detached from the brigade and sent to support Hurlbut’s Fourth Division. The regiment loaded its muskets, fixed bayonets, and charged the retiring Confederates. Small arms fire peppered the regiment, wounding four men, and several Confederate artillery rounds passed overhead, but the Indianans were able to round up some forty stragglers, including a chaplain.³¹

Confederate batteries unlimbered around Shiloh Church continued pouring a noisy fusillade in the general direction of the Union arms to keep up the illusion that the main Confederate force was still present and in action. Gun crews poured rounds at the Federals in an extravagant and spectacular display of destructiveness. The Federals made no attempt to overwhelm the rear guard force, however, and around 3:30 p.m. the last of the guns were hitched up and hauled off down the long road toward Corinth. Except for a few scattered shots between Confederate stragglers and a few zealous Union skirmishers, the battle of Shiloh had ended.³²

There was no pursuit. Why did Grant remain quietly on the battlefield instead of leading his men after the battered Confederates? His actions have never adequately been explained. In his Memoirs, Grant claimed that he did not have the “heart to order the men who had fought desperately for two days” to pursue, and that he did not order Buell to, since they were so nearly the same in seniority.³³

Grant’s argument remains a little shaky. As an old regular army officer, Grant knew full well that his few weeks army seniority did give him command on the field. This was standard army procedure, and Buell, as another army officer, knew it also. Buell maintained that Grant and his army did not want to pursue, and that he did not want to make such an effort on his own authority.³⁴

Certainly the ultimate responsibility rested on Grant. Perhaps Sherman summed the matter up best in a conversation some years later after the war. When asked why Beauregard was not pursued, he replied, “I assure you, my dear fellow, we had had quite enough of their society for two whole days, and were only too glad to be rid of them on any terms.”³⁵