SOME INCIDENTS OF THE BATTLE OF SHILOH.
There were many little incidents at Shiloh that came under my personal
observation that I did not mention in the foregoing sketch. The matter
of space was important, so I passed them over. But that consideration
does not arise now, and as I am writing this for you, I will say
something here about several things that I think may be of some
interest.
I distinctly remember my first shot at Shiloh. It was fired when we were
in our first position, as described in my account of the battle. I think
that when the boys saw the enemy advancing they began firing of their
own motion, without waiting for orders. At least, I don't remember
hearing any. I was in the front rank, but didn't fire. I preferred to
wait for a good opportunity, when I could take deliberate aim at some
individual foe. But when the regiment fired, the Confederates halted and
began firing also, and the fronts of both lines were at once shrouded in
smoke. I had my gun at a ready, and was trying to peer under the smoke
in order to get a sight of our enemies. Suddenly I heard some one in a
highly excited tone calling to me from just in my rear,--"Stillwell!
shoot! shoot! Why don't you shoot?" I looked around and saw that this
command was being given by Bob Wylder, our second lieutenant, who was in
his place, just a few steps to the rear. He was a young man, about
twenty-five years old, and was fairly wild with excitement, jumping up
and down "like a hen on a hot griddle." "Why, lieutenant," said I, "I
can't see anything to shoot at." "Shoot, shoot, anyhow!" "All right," I
responded, "if you say shoot, shoot it is;" and bringing my gun to my
shoulder, I aimed low in the direction of the enemy, and blazed away
through the smoke. I have always doubted if this, my first shot, did any
execution--but there's no telling. However, the lieutenant was clearly
right. Our adversaries were in our front, in easy range, and it was our
duty to aim low, fire in their general direction, and let fate do the
rest. But at the time the idea to me was ridiculous that one should
blindly shoot into a cloud of smoke without having a bead on the object
to be shot at. I had shot squirrels and rabbits, and other small game,
in the big woods adjacent to our backwoods home, from the time I was big
enough to carry a gun. In fact, I began when I was too small to shoot
"off hand," but had to fire from a "rest,"--any convenient stump, log,
or forked bush. The gun I used was a little old percussion lock rifle,
with a long barrel, carrying a bullet which weighed about sixty to the
pound. We boys had to furnish our own ammunition,--lead (which we
moulded into bullets), gun-caps, and powder. Our principal source of
revenue whereby we got money to buy ammunition was hazel-nuts, which we
would gather, shuck, and sell at five cents a quart. And the work
incident to the gathering and shucking of a quart of hazel nuts was a
decidedly tedious job. But it made us economical in the use of our
ordnance stores, so we would never throw away a shot carelessly or
unnecessarily. And it was a standing rule never to shoot a squirrel
anywhere except in the head, save as a last resort, when circumstances
compelled one to fire at some other part of the body of the little
animal. And so I thought, at the beginning of my military career, that I
should use the same care and circumspection in firing an old musket when
on the line of battle that I had exercised in hunting squirrels. But I
learned better in about the first five minutes of the battle of Shiloh.
However, in every action I was in, when the opportunity was afforded, I
took careful and deliberate aim, but many a time the surroundings were
such that the only thing to do was to hold low, and fire through the
smoke in the direction of the enemy. I will say here that the extent of
wild shooting done in battle, especially by raw troops, is astonishing,
and rather hard to understand. When we fell back to our second line at
Shiloh, I heard an incessant humming sound away up above our heads, like
the flight of a swarm of bees. In my ignorance, I at first hardly knew
what that meant, but it presently dawned on me that the noise was caused
by bullets singing through the air from twenty to a hundred feet over
our heads. And after the battle I noticed that the big trees in our
camp, just in the rear of our second line, were thickly pock-marked by
musket balls at a distance of fully a hundred feet from the ground. And
yet we were separated from the Confederates only by a little, narrow
field, and the intervening ground was perfectly level. But the fact is,
those boys were fully as green as we were, and doubtless as much
excited. The Confederate army at Shiloh was composed of soldiers the
great majority of whom went under fire there for the first time, and I
reckon they were as nervous and badly scared as we were.
I never shall forget how awfully I felt on seeing for the first time a
man killed in battle. This occurred on our second position, above
mentioned. Our line of battle here was somewhat irregular, and the men
had become mixed up. The trees and stumps were thick, and we availed
ourselves of their protection whenever possible. I had a tree, it was
embarrassingly small, but better than none. I took to a log later. But
there was a man just on my right behind a tree of generous proportions,
and I somewhat envied him. He was actively engaged in loading and
firing, and was standing up to the work well when I last saw him alive.
But, all at once, there he was lying on his back, at the foot of his
tree, with one leg doubled under him, motionless,--and stone dead! He
probably had been hit square in the head while aiming, or peeking around
the tree. I stared at his body, perfectly horrified! Only a few seconds
ago that man was alive and well, and now he was lying on the ground,
done for, forever! The event came nearer completely upsetting me than
anything else that occurred during the entire battle--but I got used to
such incidents in the course of the day.
After rallying at our third position, we were moved a short distance to
the rear, and formed in line at right angles to the road from our camp
to the landing. While standing there I casually noticed a large wall
tent at the side of the road, a few steps to my rear. It was closed up,
and nobody stirring around it. Suddenly I heard, right over our heads, a
frightful "s-s-wis-sh,"--and followed by a loud crash in this tent.
Looking around, I saw a big, gaping hole in the wall of the tent, and on
the other side got a glimpse of the cause of the disturbance--a big
cannon ball ricochetting down the ridge, and hunting further mischief.
And at the same moment of time the front flaps of the tent were
frantically thrown open, and out popped a fellow in citizen's clothes.
He had a Hebrew visage, his face was as white as a dead man's, and his
eyes were sticking out like a crawfish's. He started down the road
toward the landing at probably the fastest gait he had ever made in his
life, his coat tails streaming behind him, and the boys yelling at him.
We proceeded to investigate the interior of that tent at once, and found
that it was a sutler's establishment, and crammed with sutler goods. The
panic-struck individual who had just vacated it was of course the
proprietor. He had adopted ostrich tactics, had buttoned himself up in
the tent, and was in there keeping as still as a mouse, thinking,
perhaps, that as he could see nobody, nobody could see him. That cannon
ball must have been a rude surprise. In order to have plenty of "han'
roomance," we tore down the tent at once, and then proceeded to
appropriate the contents. There were barrels of apples, bologna
sausages, cheeses, canned oysters and sardines, and lots of other truck.
I was filling my haversack with bologna when Col. Fry rode up to me and
said: "My son, will you please give me a link of that sausage?" Under
the circumstances, I reckon I must have been feeling somewhat impudent
and reckless, so I answered rather saucily, "Certainly, Colonel, we are
closing out this morning below cost;" and I thrust into his hands two or
three big links of bologna. There was a faint trace of a grin on the old
man's face as he took the provender, and he began gnawing at once on one
of the hunks, while the others he stowed away in his equipments. I
suspected from this incident that the Colonel had had no breakfast that
morning, which perhaps may have been the case. Soon after this I made
another deal. There were some cavalry in line close by us, and one of
them called out to me, "Pardner, give me some of them apples." "You
bet;" said I, and quickly filling my cap with the fruit, handed it to
him. He emptied the apples in his haversack, took a silver dime from his
pocket, and proffered it to me, saying, "Here." "Keep your money--don't
want it;" was my response, but he threw the coin at my feet, and I
picked it up and put it in my pocket. It came agreeably handy later.
Jack Medford of my company came up to me with a most complacent look on
his face, and patting his haversack, said, "Lee, I just now got a whole
lot of paper and envelopes, and am all fixed for writing home about this
battle." "Seems to me, Jack," I suggested, "you'd better unload that
stuff, and get something to eat. Don't worry about writing home about
the battle till it's done fought." Jack's countenance changed, he
muttered, "Reckon you're right, Lee;" and when next I saw him, his
haversack was bulging with bologna and cheese. All this time the battle
was raging furiously on our right, and occasionally a cannon ball,
flying high, went screaming over our heads. Walter Scott, in "The Lady
of the Lake," in describing an incident of the battle of Beal' an Duine,
speaks of the unearthly screaming and yelling that occurred, sounding--
"As if all the fiends from heaven that fell
Had pealed the banner-cry of hell."
That comparison leaves much for the imagination, but, speaking from
experience, I will say that of all the blood-curdling sounds I ever
heard, the worst is the terrific scream of a cannon ball or shell
passing close over one's head; especially that kind with a cavity in the
base that sucks in air. At least, they sounded that way till I got used
to them. As a matter of fact, artillery in my time was not near as
dangerous as musketry. It was noisy, but didn't kill often unless at
close range and firing grape and canister.
As stated in the preceding sketch, sometime during the forenoon the
regiment was sent to the support of a battery, and remained there for
some hours. The most trying situation in battle is one where you have to
lie flat on the ground, under fire more or less, and without any
opportunity to return it. The constant strain on the nerves is almost
intolerable. So it was with feelings of grim but heart-felt relief that
we finally heard the Colonel command, "Attention, battalion!" Our turn
had come at last. We sprang to our feet with alacrity, and were soon in
motion, marching by the flank diagonally towards the left, from whence,
for some hours, had been proceeding heavy firing. We had not gone far
before I saw something which hardly had an inspiring effect. We were
marching along an old, grass-grown country road, with a rail-fence on
the right which enclosed a sort of woods pasture, and with a dense
forest on our left, when I saw a soldier on our left, slowly making his
way to the rear. He had been struck a sort of glancing shot on the left
side of his face, and the skin and flesh of his cheek were hanging in
shreds. His face and neck were covered with blood and he was a frightful
sight. Yet he seemed to be perfectly cool and composed and wasn't
"taking on" a bit. As he came opposite my company, he looked up at us
and said, "Give 'em hell, boys! They've spoiled my beauty." It was
manifest that he was not exaggerating.
When we were thrown into line on our new position and began firing, I
was in the front rank, and my rear rank man was Philip Potter, a young
Irishman, who was some years my senior. When he fired his first shot, he
came very near putting me out of action. I think that the muzzle of his
gun could not have been more than two or three inches from my right ear.
The shock of the report almost deafened me at the time, and my neck and
right cheek were peppered with powder grains, which remained there for
years until finally absorbed in the system. I turned to Phil in a fury,
exclaiming, "What in the hell and damnation do you mean?" Just then down
went the man on my right with a sharp cry, and followed by the one on
the left, both apparently severely wounded. The thought of my shocking
conduct, in thus indulging in wicked profanity at such a time, flashed
upon me, and I almost held my breath, expecting summary punishment on
the spot. But nothing of the kind happened. And, according to history,
Washington swore a good deal worse at the battle of Monmouth,--and
Potter was more careful thereafter.
Poor Phil! On December 7, 1864, while fighting on the skirmish line near
Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and just a few paces to my left, he was
mortally wounded by a gun-shot in the bowels and died in the hospital a
few days later. He was a Catholic, and in his last hours was almost
frantic because no priest was at hand to grant him absolution.
Right after we began firing on this line I noticed, directly in my front
and not more than two hundred yards away, a large Confederate flag
flapping defiantly in the breeze. The smoke was too dense to enable me
to see the bearer, but the banner was distinctly visible. It looked
hateful to me, and I wanted to see it come down. So I held on it, let my
gun slowly fall until I thought the sights were about on a waist line,
and then fired. I peered eagerly under the smoke to see the effect of my
shot,--but the blamed thing was still flying. I fired three or four more
shots on the same line as the first, but with no apparent results. I
then concluded that the bearer was probably squatted behind a stump, or
something, and that it was useless to waste ammunition on him.
Diagonally to my left, perhaps two hundred and fifty yards away, the
Confederate line of battle was in plain sight. It was in the open, in
the edge of an old field, with woods to the rear. It afforded a splendid
mark. Even the ramrods could be seen flashing in the air, as the men,
while in the act of loading, drew and returned the rammers. Thereupon I
began firing at the enemy on that part of the line, and the balance of
the contents of my cartridge box went in that direction. It was
impossible to tell if any of my shots took effect, but after the battle
I went to the spot and looked over the ground. The Confederate dead lay
there thick, and I wondered, as I looked at them, if I had killed any of
those poor fellows. Of course I didn't know, and am glad now that I
didn't. And I will say here that I do not now have any conclusive
knowledge that during my entire term of service I ever killed, or even
wounded, a single man. It is more than probable that some of my shots
were fatal, but I don't know it, and am thankful for the ignorance. You
see, after all, the common soldiers of the Confederate Armies were
American boys, just like us, and conscientiously believed that they were
right. Had they been soldiers of a foreign nation,--Spaniards, for
instance,--I might feel differently.
When we "went in" on the above mentioned position old Capt. Reddish took
his place in the ranks, and fought like a common soldier. He had picked
up the musket of some dead or wounded man, and filled his pockets with
cartridges and gun caps, and so was well provided with ammunition. He
unbuckled his sword from the belt, and laid it in the scabbard at his
feet, and proceeded to give his undivided attention to the enemy. I can
now see the old man in my mind's eye, as he stood in ranks, loading and
firing, his blue-gray eyes flashing, and his face lighted up with the
flame of battle. Col. Fry happened to be near us at one time, and I
heard old Capt. John yell at him: "Injun fightin,' Colonel! Jest like
Injun fightin'!" When we finally retired, the Captain shouldered his
musket and trotted off with the rest of us, oblivious of his
"cheese-knife," as he called it, left it lying on the ground, and never
saw it again.
There was a battery of light artillery on this line, about a quarter of
a mile to our right, on a slight elevation of the ground. It was right
flush up with the infantry line of battle, and oh, how those artillery
men handled their guns! It seemed to me that there was the roar of a
cannon from that battery about every other second. When ramming
cartridge, I sometimes glanced in that direction. The men were big
fellows, stripped to the waist, their white skins flashing in the
sunlight, and they were working like I have seen men doing when fighting
a big fire in the woods. I fairly gloated over the fire of that battery.
"Give it to them, my sons of thunder!" I would say to myself; "Knock the
ever-lastin' stuffin' out of 'em!" And, as I ascertained after the
battle, they did do frightful execution.
In consideration of the fact that now-a-days, as you know, I refuse to
even kill a chicken, some of the above expressions may sound rather
strange. But the fact is, a soldier on the fighting line is possessed by
the demon of destruction. He wants to kill, and the more of his
adversaries he can see killed, the more intense his gratification. Gen.
Grant somewhere in his Memoirs expresses the idea (only in milder
language than mine) when he says:
"While a battle is raging one can see his enemy mowed down by the
thousand, or the ten thousand, with great composure."
The regiment bivouacked for the night on the bluff, not far from the
historic "log house." Rain set in about dark, and not wanting to lie in
the water, I hunted around and found a little brush-pile evidently made
by some man from a sapling he had cut down and trimmed up some time past
when the leaves were on the trees. I made a sort of pillow out of my
gun, cartridge box, haversack and canteen, and stretched myself out on
the brush-pile, tired to death, and rather discouraged over the events
of the day. The main body of Buell's men,--"the army of the Ohio,"--soon
after dark began ascending the bluff at a point a little above the
landing, and forming in line in the darkness a short distance beyond. I
have a shadowy impression that this lasted the greater part of the
night. Their regimental bands played continuously and it seemed to me
that they all played the tune of "The Girl I Left Behind Me." And the
rain drizzled down, while every fifteen minutes one of the big navy guns
roared and sent a ponderous shell shrieking up the ravine above in the
direction of the enemy. To this day, whenever I hear an instrumental
band playing "The Girl I Left Behind Me," there come to me the memories
of that gloomy Sunday night at Pittsburg Landing. I again hear the
ceaseless patter of the rain, the dull, heavy tread of Buell's marching
columns, the thunderous roar of the navy guns, the demoniacal scream of
the projectile, and mingled with it all is the sweet, plaintive music of
that old song. We had an army version of it I have never seen in print,
altogether different from the original ballad. The last stanza of this
army production was as follows:
"If ever I get through this war,
And a Rebel ball don't find me,
I'll shape my course by the northern star,
To the girl I left behind me."
I have said elsewhere that the regiment was not engaged on Monday. We
remained all that day at the place where we bivouacked Sunday night. The
ends of the staffs of our regimental flags were driven in the ground,
the banners flapping idly in the breeze, while the men sat or lay around
with their guns in their hands or lying by them, their cartridge-boxes
buckled on, and all ready to fall in line at the tap of the drum. But
for some reason that I never knew, we were not called on. Our division
commander, General B. M. Prentiss, and our brigade commander, Col.
Madison Miller, were both captured on Sunday with the bulk of Prentiss'
division, so I reckon we were sort of "lost children." But we were not
alone. There were also other regiments of Grant's command which were
held in reserve and did not fire a shot on Monday.
After the battle I roamed around over the field, the most of the
following two days, looking at what was to be seen. The fearful sights
apparent on a bloody battlefield simply cannot be described in all their
horror. They must be seen in order to be fully realized. As Byron,
somewhere in "Don Juan," truly says:
"Mortality! Thou hast thy monthly bills,
Thy plagues, thy famines, thy physicians, yet tick,
Like the death-watch, within our ears the ills
Past, present, and to come; but all may yield
To the true portrait of one battlefield."
There was a small clearing on the battlefield called the "Peach Orchard"
field. It was of irregular shape, and about fifteen or twenty acres in
extent, as I remember. However, I cannot now be sure as to the exact
size. It got its name, probably, from the fact that there were on it a
few scraggy peach trees. The Union troops on Sunday had a strong line in
the woods just north of the field, and the Confederates made four
successive charges across this open space on our line, all of which were
repulsed with frightful slaughter. I walked all over this piece of
ground the day after the close of the battle, and before the dead had
been buried. It is the simple truth to say that this space was literally
covered with the Confederate dead, and one could have walked all over it
on their bodies. Gen. Grant, in substance, makes the same statement in
his Memoirs. It was a fearful sight. But not far from the Peach Orchard
field, in a westerly direction, was a still more gruesome spectacle.
Some of our forces were in line on an old, grass-grown country road that
ran through thick woods. The wheels of wagons, running for many years
right in the same ruts, had cut through the turf, so that the surface of
the road was somewhat lower than the adjacent ground. To men firing on
their knees this afforded a slight natural breast-work, which was
substantial protection. In front of this position, in addition to the
large timber, was a dense growth of small under-brush, post-oak and the
like, which had not yet shed their leaves, and the ground also was
covered with layers of dead leaves. There was desperate fighting at this
point, and during its progress exploding shells set the woods on fire.
The clothing of the dead Confederates lying in these woods caught fire,
and their bodies were burned to a crisp. I have read, somewhere, that
some wounded men were burned to death, but I doubt that. I walked all
over the ground looking at these poor fellows, and scrutinized them
carefully to see the nature of their hurts and they had evidently been
shot dead, or expired in a few seconds after being struck. But, in any
event, the sight was horrible. I will not go into details, but leave it
to your imagination.
I noticed, at other places on the field, the bodies of two Confederate
soldiers, whose appearance I shall never forget. They presented a
remarkable contrast of death in battle. One was a full grown man,
seemingly about thirty years of age, with sandy, reddish hair, and a
scrubby beard and mustache of the same color. He had been firing from
behind a tree, had exposed his head, and had been struck square in the
forehead by a musket ball, killed instantly, and had dropped at the foot
of the tree in a heap. He was in the act of biting a cartridge when
struck, his teeth were still fastened on the paper extremity, while his
right hand clutched the bullet end. His teeth were long and snaggy, and
discolored by tobacco juice. As just stated, he had been struck dead
seemingly instantaneously. His eyes were wide open and gleaming with
Satanic fury. His transition from life to death had been immediate, with
the result that there was indelibly stamped on his face all the furious
rage and lust of battle. He was an ill-looking fellow, and all in all
was not an agreeable object to contemplate. The other was a far
different case. He was lying on a sloping ridge, where the Confederates
had charged a battery, and had suffered fearfully. He was a mere boy,
not over eighteen, with regular features, light brown hair, blue eyes,
and, generally speaking, was strikingly handsome. He had been struck on
his right leg, above the knee, about mid-way the thigh, by a cannon
ball, which had cut off the limb, except a small strip of skin. He was
lying on his back, at full length, his right arm straight up in the air,
rigid as a stake, and his fist tightly clinched. His eyes were wide
open, but their expression was calm and natural. The shock and the loss
of blood doubtless brought death to his relief in a short time. As I
stood looking at the unfortunate boy, I thought of how some poor
mother's heart would be well-nigh broken when she heard of the sad,
untimely fate of her darling son. But, before the war was over,
doubtless thousands of similar cases occurred in both the Union and
Confederate armies.
I believe I will here speak of a notion of mine, to be considered for
whatever you may think it worth. As you know, I am not a religious man,
in the theological sense of the term, having never belonged to a church
in my life. Have just tried, to the best of my ability, to act according
to the Golden Rule, and let it go at that. But, from my earliest youth,
I have had a peculiar reverence for Sunday. I hunted much with a gun
when a boy, and so did the people generally of my neighborhood. Small
game in that backwoods region was very plentiful, and even deer were not
uncommon. Well, it was a settled conviction with us primitive people
that if one went hunting on Sunday, he would not only have bad luck in
that regard that day, but also all the rest of the week. So, when the
Confederates began the battle on Sunday, I would keep thinking,
throughout its entire progress, "You fellows started this on Sunday, and
you'll get licked." I'll admit that there were a few occasions when
things looked so awful bad that I became discouraged, but I quickly
rallied, and my Sunday superstition--or whatever it may be called--was
justified in the end. In addition to Shiloh, the battles of New Orleans
in 1815, Waterloo, and Bull Run were fought on a Sunday, and in each
case the attacking party was signally defeated. These results may have
been mere coincidences, but I don't think so. I have read somewhere an
authentic statement that President Lincoln entertained this same belief,
and always was opposed to aggressive movements on Sundays by the Union
troops.
The wildest possible rumors got into circulation at home, about some of
the results of the battle. I have now lying before me an old letter
from my father of date April 19th, in answer to mine (which I will
mention later) giving him the first definite intelligence about our
regiment and the neighborhood boys. Among other things he said: "We
have had it here that Fry's regiment was all captured that was not
killed; pretty much all given up as lost. That Beauregard had run you
all down a steep place into the Tennessee river, * * * that Captain
Reddish had his arm shot off, that Enoch Wallace was also wounded;"--and
here followed the names of some others who (the same as Reddish and
Wallace) hadn't received even a scratch. My letter to my father,
mentioned above, was dated April 10, and was received by him on the
18th. It was brief, occupying only about four pages of the small,
sleazy note paper that we bought in those days of the sutlers. I don't
remember why I didn't write sooner, but it was probably because no
mail-boat left the landing until about that time. The old mail hack
ordinarily arrived at the Otter Creek post-office from the outside
world an hour or so before sundown, and the evening my letter came, the
little old post-office and general store was crowded with people
intensely anxious to hear from their boys or other relatives in the
61st Illinois. The distribution of letters in that office in those
times was a proceeding of much simplicity. The old clerk who attended
to that would call out in a stentorian tone the name of the addressee
of each letter, who, if present, would respond "Here!" and then the
letter would be given a dexterous flip, and went flying to him across
the room. But on this occasion there were no letters from the regiment,
until just at the last the clerk called my father's name--"J. O.
Stillwell!" and again, still louder, but there was no response.
Whereupon the clerk held the letter at arm's length, and carefully
scrutinized the address. "Well," said he finally, "this is from Jerry
Stillwell's boy, in the 61st, so I reckon he's not killed, anyhow." A
murmur of excitement went through the room at this, and the people
crowded up to get a glimpse of even the handwriting of the address.
"Yes, that's from Jerry's boy, sure," said several. Thereupon William
Noble and Joseph Beeman, who were old friends of father's, begged the
postmaster to "give them the letter, and they would go straight out to
Stillwell's with it, have him read it, and then they would come right
back with the news." Everybody seconded the request, the postmaster
acceded, and handed one of them the letter. They rushed out, unfastened
their horses, and left in a gallop for Stillwell's, two miles away, on
the south side of Otter Creek, out in the woods. As they dashed up to
the little old log cabin they saw my father out near the barn; the one
with the letter waved it aloft, calling at the top of his voice:
"Letter from your boy, Jerry!" My mother heard this, and she came
running from the house, trembling with excitement. The letter was at
once opened and read,--and the terrible reports which to that time had
prevailed about the fate of Fry's regiment vanished in the air. It's
true, it contained some sad news, but nothing to be compared with the
fearful accounts which had been rife in the neighborhood. I have that
old letter in my possession now.
Soon after the battle Gov. Richard Yates, of Illinois, Gov. Louis P.
Harvey, of Wisconsin, and many other civilians, came down from the north
to look after the comfort of the sick and wounded soldiers of their
respective states. The 16th Wisconsin Infantry was camped next to us,
and I learned one afternoon that Gov. Harvey was to make them a speech
that evening, after dress parade, and I went over to hear him. The
Wisconsin regiment did not turn out in military formation, just gathered
around him in a dense group under a grove of trees. The Governor sat on
a horse while making his speech. He wore a large, broad-brimmed hat, his
coat was buttoned to the chin, and he had big buckskin gauntlets on his
hands. He was a fine looking man, heavy set, and about forty-two years
old. His remarks were not lengthy, but were patriotic and eloquent. I
remember especially how he complimented the Wisconsin soldiers for their
good conduct in battle, that their state was proud of them, and that he,
as Governor, intended to look after them, and care for them to the very
best of his ability, as long as he was in office, and that when the time
came for him to relinquish that trust, he would still remember them with
interest and the deepest affection. His massive frame heaved with the
intensity of his feelings as he spoke and he impressed me as being
absolutely sincere in all that he said. But he little knew nor
apprehended the sad and lamentable fate then pending over him. Only a
few evenings later, as he was crossing the gang-plank between two
steamboats at the Landing, in some manner he fell from the plank, and
was sucked under the boats by the current, and drowned. Some days later
a negro found his body, lodged against some drift near our side of the
river, and he brought it in his old cart inside our lines. From papers
on the body, and other evidence, it was conclusively identified as that
of Gov. Harvey. The remains were shipped back to Wisconsin, where they
were given a largely attended and impressive funeral.