This thesis overlooks some physical, logistical, and political realities. The disease problem for unacclimated northern soldiers has already been mentioned. An unusually wet spring had turned into a disastrously dry summer. The streams and springs that supplied water for men and horses were rapidly drying up in northern Mississippi. Several cavalry and infantry brigades did pursue the Confederates twenty miles south of Corinth but could go no farther by July for lack of water.
