If Grant had pursued, the Confederates would have been in trouble for the march to Corinth quickly devolved into a nightmare. The roads were clogged as the retreating host wound out in a jerky line seven or eight miles long. The crude country roads were already in bad condition from the march to Shiloh, and the additional rain that fell Saturday and Sunday night made them nearly impassable. Soldiers often sank nearly to their knees in the mud; wagons and guns were engulfed up to their axles. Cursing and sweating, the hungry teamsters lashed their mules and horses, trying to move with their cargos of supplies and wounded.

Only the worst shot-up Southerners were accorded a crude bed in the ambulances, country wagons, and carts. When these were all filled, some of the more mangled men were loaded on stretchers and carried the twenty-two miles by hand. Men with smashed eyes, deafened ears, and mangled arms trudged through the mud along with the weary but unwounded soldiers. Everything was in a state of turmoil. Each time a wagon hit a rut, the delirious wounded groaned and screamed in agony.

About 6:30 p.m. it started to rain, and soon the temperature began dropping. The rain turned into hail, and marble-sized balls lacerated and bruised the pitifully tired, animals and soldiers alike. Most of the wounded did not even have a blanket to protect them from the barrage in their open vehicles. Many of the unwounded were in almost as bad shape. The exertions of the battle and the privations of the past five days had materially weakened them. Each step was harder than the last, for many of the men had badly blistered feet inside soggy and cracked shoes.³⁶

Breckinridge halted his command at Mickey’s to see what would turn up, while the rest of the Southern army tramped onward into Corinth, dumping out along the route three hundred wounded who had died.³⁷

As the first wounded reached the little Mississippi town, the whole place was converted into a gigantic hospital. Churches, homes, schools, and every other conceivable structure was taken over for the mangled men, while hundreds had to be placed out on porches, sidewalks, and platforms at the railroad depot. There were not enough doctors and nurses to go around, and available medical supplies were inadequate to meet the demand. Soon the doctors were busy sawing off mangled and torn arms and legs, limbs hopelessly smashed by Minie balls or shell fragments. With their crude nineteenth century medical skill, surgeons could do little but amputate. Weakened by their ordeal, many of the soldiers could not stand the shock of amputation, and many expired within a few hours. Tetanus stalked through Corinth, while the faint sickening smell of gangrene was vividly detected on many of the Rebel soldiers.³⁸

Twenty-two miles away the Union army faced a similar medical crisis. Only regimental medical units were available to care for their wounded, and these were quickly overtaxed by the sheer volume of the task. Even before the fighting ceased, volunteer nurses, male and female, labored with the wounded, applying temporary bandages. Ambulances carried hundreds to emergency tent hospitals or to the few permanent structures available, but on Tuesday the majority still lay where they had fallen, pitifully crying for succor.

People passing by the medical centers were often sickened by the sounds and odors. Amputated limbs lay in large piles unburied, while there was the sweet smell of blood everywhere. Grant telegraphed for emergency medical aid, and a number of transports were soon busy evacuating thousands of soldiers to Northern cities.

One of Buell’s surgeons, B. J. D. Irwin, worked medical miracles on the bloody battlefield. Working at least twenty hours a day, he constructed a modern field hospital composed of commandeered army tents capable of housing two thousand five hundred soldiers. The patients were segregated according to their ailments, while the medical staff was assigned specialized functions. Irwin organized a central administration to handle food, drugs, laundry, and admittance—a streamlined method of hospital administration far in advance of existing practices.³⁹