"AGATE'S" STORY CONTINUED.
THE CLOSE OF SUNDAY'S FIGHT--WHAT HAD BEEN LOST DURING THE DAY--
FIVE THOUSAND COWARDS ON THE RIVER BANK--OPPORTUNE ARRIVAL OF
GENERAL BUELL--THE GRAND ATTACK AND ITS GRAND REPULSE--AID
FROM THE GUNBOATS--THE NIGHT BETWEEN TWO BATTLES--DESPERATE
PREPARATIONS FOR THE MORROW--GUNBOATS ON GUARD THROUGH THE
DARKNESS.
The remainder of Sunday's desperate fighting, and the grim preparations
and anxieties of Sunday night, are rehearsed by "Agate" thus:
We have reached the last act in the tragedy of Sunday. It is half-past
4 o'clock. Our front line of divisions has been lost since half-past
10. Our reserve line is now gone, too. The Rebels occupy the camps
of every division save that of W. H. L. Wallace. Our whole army is
crowded in the region of Wallace's camps, and to a circuit of one-half
to two-thirds of a mile around the Landing. We have been falling back
all day. We can do it no more. The next repulse puts us into the river,
and there are not transports enough to cross a single division till the
enemy would be upon us.
Lew. Wallace's Division might turn the tide for us--it is made of
fighting men--but where is it? Why has it not been thundering on the
right for three hours past? We do not know yet that it was not ordered
up till noon. Buell is coming, but he has been doing it all day, and
all last week. His advance-guard is across the river now, waiting
ferriage; but what is an advance-guard, with sixty thousand victorious
foes in front of us?
We have lost nearly all our camps and camp equipage. We have lost
nearly half our field artillery. We have lost a division general and
two or three regiments of our soldiers as prisoners. We have lost--how
dreadfully we are afraid to think--in killed and wounded. The hospitals
are full to overflowing. A long ridge bluff is set apart for surgical
uses. It is covered with the maimed, the dead and dying. And our men
are discouraged by prolonged defeat. Nothing but the most energetic
exertion on the part of the officers, prevents them from becoming
demoralized. Regiments have lost their favorite field-officers;
companies the captains whom they have always looked to, with that
implicit faith the soldier learns, to lead them to battle.
Meanwhile, there is a lull in the firing. For the first time since
sunrise you fail to catch the angry rattle of musketry or the heavy
booming of the field-guns. Either the enemy must be preparing for the
grand, final rush that is to crown the day's success and save the
Southern Confederacy, or they are puzzled by our last retreat, and are
moving cautiously, lest we spring some trap upon them. Let us embrace
the opportunity, and look about the Landing. We pass the old log-house,
lately post office, now full of wounded and surgeons, which constitute
the "Pittsburgh" part of the landing. General Grant and staff are in
a group beside it. The general is confident. "We can hold them off
till to-morrow; and they'll be exhausted, and we'll go at them, with
fresh troops." A great crowd is collected around the building--all in
uniforms, most of them with guns. And yet we are needing troops in the
front so sorely!
On the bluffs above the river is a sight that may well make our cheeks
tingle. There are not less than five thousand skulkers lining the
banks! Ask them why they don't go to their places in the line: "Oh!
our regiment is all cut to pieces." "Why don't you go to where it is
forming again?" "I can't find it," and the hulk looks as if that would
be the very last thing he would want to do.
Officers are around among them, trying to hunt up their men, storming,
coaxing, commanding--cursing I am afraid. One strange fellow--a Major,
if I remember aright--is making a sort of elevated, superfine Fourth
of July speech to everybody that will listen to him. He means well,
certainly: "Men of Kentucky, of Illinois, of Ohio, of Iowa, of Indiana,
I implore you, I beg of you, come up now. Help us through two hours
more. By all that you hold dear, by the homes you hope to defend, by
the flag you love, by the States you honor, by all our love of country,
by all your hatred of treason, I conjure you, come up and do your duty,
now!" And so on for quantity. "That feller's a good speaker," was the
only response I heard, and the fellow who gave it nestled more snugly
behind his tree as he spoke.
I knew well enough the nature of the skulking animal in an army during
a battle. I had seen their performances before, but never on so large
a scale, never with such an utter sickness of heart while I look, as
now. Still, I do not believe there was very much more than the average
percentage. It was a big army, and the runaways all sought the landing.
Looking across the Tennessee we see a body of cavalry, awaiting
the transportation over. They are said to be Buell's advance, yet
they have been there an hour or two alone. But suddenly there is a
rustle among the runaways. It is! It is! You see the gleaming of
the gun-barrels, you catch amid the leaves and undergrowth down the
opposite side of the river, glimpses of the steady, swinging tramp
of trained soldiers. A Division of Buell's army is here! And the men
who have left their regiments on the field send up three cheers for
Buell. They cheering! May it parch their throats, as if they had been
breathing the simoon!
Here comes a boat across with a Lieutenant, and two or three privates
of the signal corps. Some orders are instantly given the officer, and
as instantly telegraphed to the other side by the mysterious wavings
and raisings and droppings of the flags. A steamer comes up with
pontoons on board, with which a bridge could be speedily thrown across.
Unaccountably enough, to on-lookers, she slowly reconnoiters and steams
back again. Perhaps, after all it is better to have no bridge there. It
simplifies the question, takes escape out of the count, and leaves its
victory or death--to the cowards, that slink behind the bluffs as well
as to the brave men who peril their lives to do the State some service
on the fields beyond. Preparations go rapidly forward for crossing the
Division (General Nelson's, which has the advance of Buell's army) on
the dozen or so transports that have been tied up along the bank.
We have spent but a few minutes on the bluff, but they are the golden
minutes that count for years. Well was it for that driven, defeated,
but not disgraced army of General Grant's that those minutes were
improved. Colonel Webster, Chief of Staff, and an artillery officer of
no mean ability, had arranged the guns that he could collect of those
that remained to us in a sort of semi-circle, protecting the Landing,
and bearing chiefly on our centre and left, by which the Rebels
were pretty sure to advance. Corps of artillerists to man them were
improvised from all the batteries that could be collected. Twenty-two
guns in all were placed in position. Two of them were heavy siege-guns,
long thirty-two. Where they came from I do not know; what battery they
belonged to I have no idea; I only know that they were there, in the
right place, half a mile back from the bluff, sweeping the approaches
by the left, and by the ridge Corinth road; that there was nobody to
work them; that Doctor Cornyn, Surgeon of Frank Blair's Old First
Missouri Artillery, proffered his services, that they were gladly
accepted, and that he did work them to such effect as to lay out ample
work for scores of his professional brethren on the other side of the
fight.
Remember the situation. It was half past four o'clock--perhaps a
quarter later still. Every division of our army on the field had been
repulsed. The enemy were in the camps of four out of five of them. We
were driven to within a little over half a mile of the Landing. Behind
us was a deep, rapid river. Before us was a victorious enemy. And still
there was an hour for fighting. "Oh! that night, or Blucher, would
come!" Oh! that night, or Lew. Wallace, would come! Nelson's Division
of General Buell's army evidently couldn't cross in time to do us much
good. We didn't yet know why Lew. Wallace wasn't on the ground. In the
justice of a righteous cause, and in that semi-circle of twenty-two
guns in position, lay all the hope we could see.
Suddenly a broad, sulphurous flash of light leaped out from the
darkening woods; and through the glare and smoke came whistling the
leaden hail. The Rebels were making their crowning effort for the day,
and as was expected when our guns were hastily placed, they came from
our left and centre. They had wasted their fire at one thousand yards.
Instantaneously our deep-mouthed bull-dogs flung out their sonorous
response. The Rebel artillery opened, and shell and round-shot came
tearing across the open space back of the bluff. May I be forgiven for
the malicious thought, but I certainly did wish one or two might drop
behind the bluff among the crowd of skulkers hovering under the hill at
the river's edge.
Very handsome was the response our broken infantry battalions poured
in. The enemy soon had reason to remember that, if not "still in their
ashes live the wonted fires," at least still in the fragments lived the
ancient valor that had made the short-lived Rebels' successes already
cost so dear.
The Rebel infantry gained no ground, but the furious cannonading
and musketry continued. Suddenly new actors entered on the stage.
Our Cincinnati wooden gunboats, the A. O. Taylor and the Lexington,
had been all day impatiently chafing for their time to come. The
opportunity was theirs. The Rebels were attacking on our left, lying
where Stuart's Brigade had lain on Licking Creek in the morning, and
stretching thence in on the Hamburgh Road, and across toward our old
centre as far as Hurlbut's camps. Steaming up to the mouth of the
little creek, the boats rounded to. There was the ravine, cut through
the bluff as if on purpose for their shells.
Eager to avenge the death of their commanding General (now known to
have been killed a couple of hours before) and to complete the victory
they believed to be within their grasp, the Rebels had incautiously
ventured within reach of their most dreaded antagonists, as broadside
after broadside of seven-inch shells and sixty-four-pounds shot
soon taught them. This was a foe they had hardly counted on, and the
unexpected fire in flank and rear sadly disconcerted their well-laid
plans. The boats fired admirably, and with a rapidity that was
astonishing. Our twenty-two land-guns kept up their stormy thunder;
and thus, amid a crash and roar and scream of shells and demon-like
hiss of minie-balls, the Sabbath evening wore away. We held the enemy
at bay; it was enough. The prospects for the morrow was foreboding;
but sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. We had plenty of evil
that day--of course, therefore, the text was applicable. Before dark
the Thirty-sixth Indiana, from Nelson's Advance Brigade, had crossed,
advanced into line with Grant's forces at the double-quick, and had put
in fourteen rounds as an earnest of what should be forth-coming on the
morrow.
The enemy suddenly slackened his fire. His grand object had been
defeated; he had not finished his task in a day; but there is evidence
that officers and men alike shared the confidence that their morning
assault would be final.
As the sounds of battle died away, and Division Generals drew off their
men, Buell had arrived, and Lew. Wallace had been heard from. Both
would be ready by morning. It was decided that as soon as possible
after daybreak we should attack the enemy, now snugly quartered in our
camps. Lew. Wallace, who was coming in on the new road from Crump's
Landing, and crossing Snake Creek just above the Illinois Wallace
(W. H. L.) camps, was to take the right and sweep back towards the
position from which Sherman had been driven on Sunday morning. Nelson
was to take the extreme left. Buell promised to put in Tom Crittenden
next to Nelson, and McCook next to him by a seasonable hour in the
morning. The gap between McCook and Lew. Wallace was to be filled with
the reorganized division of Grant's old army; Hurlbut coming next to
McCook, then McClernand and Sherman closing the gap between McClernand
and Lew. Wallace.
Stealthily the troops crept to their new positions and lay down in
line of battle on their arms. All through the night Buell's men were
marching up from Savannah to the point opposite Pittsburgh Landing
and being ferried across, or were coming up on transports. By an hour
after dark Lew. Wallace had his division in. Through the misdirection
he had received from General Grant at noon, he had started on the Snake
Creek road proper, which would have brought him in on the enemy's
rear, miles from support, and where he would have been gobbled at a
mouthful. Getting back to the right road had delayed him. He at once
ascertained the position of certain Rebel batteries which lay in front
of him on our right, that threatened absolutely to bar his advance in
the morning, and selected positions for a couple of his batteries, from
which they could silence the one he dreaded. Placing these in position,
and arranging his brigades for support, took him till one o'clock in
the morning. Then his wearied men lay down to snatch a few hours of
sleep before entering into the Valley of the Shadow of Death on the
morrow.
By nine o'clock all was hushed near the Landing. The host of combatants
that three hours before had been deep in the work of human destruction
had all sunk silently to the earth, "the wearied to sleep, the wounded
to die." The stars looked out upon the scene, and all breathed the
natural quiet and calm of a Sabbath evening. But presently there came
a flash that spread like sheet lightning over the ripples of the
river-current, and the roar of a heavy naval gun went echoing up
and down the bluffs, through the unnatural stillness of the night.
Others speedily followed. By the flash you could just discern the
black outline of the piratical-looking hull, and see how the gunboat
gracefully settled into the water at the recoil: the smoke soon cast
up a thin veil that seemed only to soften and sweeten the scene, from
the woods away inland you caught faintly the muffled explosion of the
shell, like the knell of the spirit that was taking its flight.
We knew nothing then of the effect of this gunboat cannonading, which
was vigorously kept up till nearly morning, and it only served to
remind us the more vividly of the day's disasters, of the fact that
half a mile off lay a victorious enemy, commanded by the most dashing
of their generals, and of the question one scarcely dared ask himself:
"What to-morrow?" We were defeated, our dead and dying were around
us, days could hardly sum up our losses. And then there came up that
grand refrain of Whittier's--written after Manassas, I believe, but
on that night, apparently far more applicable to this greater than
Manassas--"Under the Cloud and Through the Sea."
"Sons of the Saints who faced their Jordan flood,
In fierce Atlantic's unretreating wave--
Who by the Red Sea of their glorious blood
Reached to the Freedom that your blood shall save!
O, countrymen! God's day is not yet done!
He leaveth not his people utterly!
Count it a covenant, that he leads us on
Beneath the clouds and through the crimson sea?
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL BUTTERFIELD.]