THE BATTLE ON MONDAY--DEFEAT OF THE ENEMY'S RIGHT
WING--FIRMNESS OF THE LEFT--GALLANT CONDUCT OF GEN.
HURLBUT--COL. JOHNSON IN COMMAND OF A PART OF OUR
DIVIDED BRIGADE--VICTORY--FLIGHT OF THE ENEMY AND
FAILURE TO PURSUE.
All night the troops of Buell continued to cross. Regiment after
regiment filed up the bluff, took position in line of battle, and
awaited the dawn of day. During the fore part of the night, a moist,
warm breeze blew from the south. About 10 P. M. the sky was overcast,
and there began a drizzling, uncomfortable rain. Nevertheless, the
soldiers, blanketless and weary, lay down and slept.
No one who has not experienced it knows with what a sleep a soldier
sleeps after a great battle. But ours was interrupted at regular
intervals by the jar of the gunboat howitzer, which had been ordered
to throw shells during the night to annoy the enemy. Thus awakened
and closing our eyes again to sleep, we saw in our brain-fever
all the terrible images of the day's battle--hedges of glittering
bayonets; blue masses swaying to and fro; and that last appalling
image, the army in retreat--gigantic even in ruin, sublime in its own
dismay. These images, flitting ghostlike and without effort through
our minds seemed to possess the reality of day. Could I have produced
them on canvas as I saw them in my mind that night, what a panorama
it would have been.
But the generals could not have slept, they were busy with the
preparations for the morning's battle. During the night two divisions
and a part of a third succeeded in getting across. Lines of battle
grew in the darkness and extended themselves over the hills. All
expected victory. The plan was an admirable one--to turn the enemy's
right and get possession of the Pittsburg and Corinth road, his only
line of retreat. But of this of course the men knew nothing. Buell's
men were as weary with marching as we with fighting, and all slept.
The day dawned. Our men arose and awaited the order to advance. The
enemy, too, began to form his lines of battle. To his soldiers,
who knew nothing of our being reinforced, our capture was expected
without difficulty. "We will have them by eight o'clock," said some.
Others thought we would hold out till nine and possibly later. Both
hosts were full of expectation. With what a shock, then, would they
join! Nevertheless the enemy formed his ranks slowly. His officers
had to use curses and threats to induce the men to move with
sufficient alacrity. Weary with yesterday's battle, added to their
previous fatigues, a stupor clung to their limbs which not even a
sense of their situation could dissipate.
Suddenly they heard the reports of rifles. Their pickets driven
in announced the advance of our troops. In a moment our infantry
confronted them. If the earth had sunk under their feet they could
not have been more stupified. Batteries mounted the crests of the
ridges and thundered at them. Lines of skirmishers appeared and
vanished, followed by full battalions advancing at a charge and
shouting victory! victory! It was not possible that the broken host
of yesterday had renewed its strength and were turning upon them. No,
Buell was on the field. They realized it immediately, expected the
worst, and determined to meet the shock like men.
The Fourth Division rested at this time on the bluffs as a reserve.
We listened with great impatience to the noise of battle on the
left, and to the frequent reports that came to us from that part of
the field. The firing rose and continued heavily for two or three
hours, growing the while more and more distant. The end of this
beginning is known. The enemy fought desperately, inflicting upon
us heavy loss, but he was forced back several miles, losing part of
his artillery. By nine o'clock his stragglers began to pace through
the woods towards Corinth, reporting Buell on the field and the day
lost. By twelve o'clock this part of his lines seems to have been
pushed nearly to Shiloh Springs, and crumbling and streaming through
the woods, is said to have left the field in rout. Why Buell did
not get possession of the Corinth road is more than the troops who
subsequently passed over this ground could understand. It must have
been owing to the stubborn resistance our attack met with on the
center and right. Here the battle rose as soon as it was well in
progress on the left, and raged heavily and with varying fortunes
until four o'clock in the afternoon.
About ten o'clock General Hurlbut was ordered to move forward his
division and reinforce the right. "Here," said the General, looking
at his fragments of battalions, "is what I am ordered to march
against the enemy." He then ordered the regiments to be counted. The
3d Iowa numbered one hundred and forty men, and First Lieutenant
George W. Crosley, as ranking officer, was in command. We moved by
the flank, the First Brigade in advance, and General Hurlbut and
Colonel Pugh at the head of the column. Thus this remnant of the
Fourth Division, gallant men whom nothing could dismay, led by a
general whom in one day they had learned to love, again moved forward
into the battle. Having advanced perhaps a mile, we came within range
of the enemy's shells, which fell in the rear of our line in this
part of the field with great rapidity. This firing fortunately did us
no damage. We reached the point we were ordered to support, and the
division was drawn up in front. The battle here raged heavily, and
the line in front of us which was engaged swayed to and fro.
To our right and rear, one of our batteries was engaged with one of
the enemy's, a short distance to our left and front. The duel they
kept up was rapid and revengeful. They fired shot and shell, which
flew directly over our heads and struck and burst behind us and
before us. A soldier in our ranks expressed the wonder whether the
battery on our right was ours or the enemy's. A voice from behind him
answered, "It is ours of course." Looking around us we saw General
Hurlbut, seated on his horse and smoking calmly. Such was the conduct
of this brave man. Whatever the danger, he kept constantly near his
line, inspiring us with his presence, and never omitting a word that
could encourage his meanest soldier.
In front of us we could catch glimpses of the battle. Regiments
advanced, disappeared in the thick woods, and came back in disorder.
It was a succession of successful and unsuccessful attacks. Now
fortune was with us, and now with the enemy. Behind all the Fourth
Division stood firmly, stayed the retreating battalions and held the
line. Through all, the enemy's battery held its position and kept up
its cannonade. Its shells seemed omnipresent. Its projectiles falling
far and near to right and left, scaling the tree tops or crashing
through their boughs, it seemed to overlook the field and talk to the
army's whole right wing.
General Hurlbut several times changed the disposition of his line as
circumstances seemed to dictate. A regiment retreating in confusion
by the flank, broke through it cutting it about the center of our
regiment. At this precise moment, Col. Pugh began to move the brigade
to the left. In the noise and confusion, the command was not heard
by those of the right, and one regiment thus separated from the
rest; nor was the movement known until the left of the brigade had
disappeared. This portion took position in the reserve line and
was not engaged during the day. The right of the brigade, however,
including about forty of our regiment with our colors, were to play a
very different part.
Col. Emory K. Johnson, of the 28th Illinois, assumed command, and
began immediately to advance the line. As it moved into more open
ground and discovered its length, it was evident he had command
of a greater part of the brigade. Having advanced a considerable
distance, the line halted and volunteer skirmishers were called
for. A sufficient number immediately went forward and when about a
hundred and fifty yards to the front, the line again advanced. The
skirmishers soon discovered the enemy moving by the left flank along
our front in the edge of a wide field. At the same time skirmishers
farther to the left reported him massing troops in that direction,
with the apparent design of flanking us. Col. Johnson immediately
took measures to meet this movement. He moved his line to the left
perhaps a quarter of a mile and then changed its direction to the
front.
Suddenly we confronted the enemy, standing in compact line of battle,
as if just dressed to begin an advance. We halted and both lines
began a vigorous and steady fire. On our part there was no swaying
nor straggling. It was a fair stand-up fight, the antagonists exposed
to view, and deliberately shooting each other down. The enemy must
have outnumbered us, for his right extended some distance beyond
our left. It was a splendid test of the _morale_ of the two forces.
Victory was with us. We had expended from twenty to thirty rounds of
ammunition, when the enemy's line gave way and ours followed at a
charge. We pushed him to the edge of a field, over which he fled in
disorder, suffering severely under our fire. A part of a battery fell
into our hands, around which dead men and horses lay thickly, showing
how severely it had suffered. The enemy, escaped across the field,
and began a feeble fire from the opposite side.
All at once our line was ordered to retreat. It fell back rapidly
and not without some disorder, and took position with the other
troops. I have never been able to ascertain why this retreat was
made. At the time it was commanded, the enemy's fire was so slight,
that without its being increased we could have easily crossed the
field. Neither part of our regiment was engaged during the remainder
of the day. Fresh troops went forward to reinforce the right, and
the battle raged with unvarying steadiness all along the line, the
enemy being gradually forced back till about four o'clock, when he
finally disappeared from the field, and the cavalry rode forward with
loud shouts to pursue. We who knew nothing of the ineffectiveness of
cavalry against infantry, and especially untrained cavalry, and on a
timbered field, expected them to perform prodigies in disorganizing
the retreating enemy. But when we learned they had only followed him
a short distance, picking up a few stragglers, "the man on the horse"
sunk profoundly low in our estimation. As it was, they doubtless did
all they could. Breckinridge's division covered the enemy's retreat,
and presented a strong front to them when they approached.
The soldiers now expected the order to pursue. It is now almost
useless to inquire why this was not done; but history will demand
to know why nearly two months of hardship and suffering, including
the recall of the army of the Mississippi from its theater of
successful operations, was required to force the evacuation of
Corinth, which might now have been accomplished by twenty-four
hours vigorous action. General Grant's apology for not pursuing the
enemy is expressed in his official report: "My force was too much
fatigued during two days hard fighting, and exposed in the open
air to a drenching rain during the intervening night, to pursue
immediately. Night closed in cloudy and with heavy rain, making
the roads impracticable for artillery by the next morning." This
statement admits of some qualification. None of Buell's army had been
engaged but one day; and of this but a part of Wood's Division, and
none of Thomas' had been engaged at all. The latter, though greatly
fatigued by the long and hurrying march they had made to reach the
scene of conflict, were eager to participate in the honors of the
occasion, and might have been advantageously used in the pursuit. At
least, were we not as able to pursue as the enemy to retreat? He had
suffered as much in fatigue as we, and proportionally far more in the
losses of the battle. He had marched against us expecting everything,
and had gained nothing but slaughter and defeat. His right wing
had left the field in rout. His whole army, conscious of our now
superior strength and of their utter inability to make a stand
against us, whatever the position they might take, was retreating
demoralized on a single road which defiled for twenty miles through
an almost uninterrupted forest, and which was now almost impassable
for his artillery and train. Before reaching Corinth his retreat
had degenerated into a rout, and his army had dissolved into a
disorganized and straggling multitude. If we may believe the
concurrent accounts of citizens, added to those of his own soldiers
whom we subsequently captured, such was their dismay, that a pursuit
conducted with ordinary skill and vigor, would have resulted in
immense captures of men and _materiel_. The enemy succeeded in
getting his artillery through to Corinth after the night's rain,
which General Grant avers made the road impassable for artillery. But
had this been the case, a successful pursuit could have been made
without doubt by infantry and cavalry alone. Who then shall say,
that, within the utmost scope of endurance, General Grant should not
have pursued as soon as the enemy retreated? The soldiers seemed to
think so, and murmured because it was not attempted.
Nevertheless, whole regiments dissolved into squads and scattered
over the field in search of their dead and wounded; and it was
not long before the entire field was covered with stragglers and
plunderers of the dead. To put a stop to this, the cavalry was
ordered to get up a panic among them. They rode frantically over the
field, circulating the report that the enemy's cavalry was upon them.
The effect was admirable. In a few minutes the panic communicated
itself to all parts of the field, and stragglers without number
poured through the woods toward the river like herds of frightened
brutes. No one could tell what he was running from. Each saw his
fellow straggler run and followed him, seized and mastered by an
indefinable, vague dread. At one point an officer, meeting a gang of
stragglers, advised them to congregate for their safety upon an open
field which was without a fence! The simpletons actually followed his
advice.
General Sherman pursued the enemy a short distance and returned.
The men of our regiment, after collecting their wounded and most of
their dead, assembled at our regimental camp. Through the energy and
prudence of Quartermaster Clark, during the forenoon of Monday, our
tents had been let down to the ground and our baggage hauled to the
landing. Thus the former were saved from being greatly injured by the
missiles of the battle, and the latter from capture by the enemy.
The baggage was not brought up till the next day. We divided and ate
a little food, put up our tents, and without covering lay down to
rest. With blankets for their shrouds our dead comrades lay near us.
Scattered over the field were thousands of wounded whose sufferings
we could not alleviate. Under ordinary circumstances it would seem
that men in this situation would scarcely wish to sleep at all. But
we slept a sound and joyous sleep.
All night it rained heavily and with scarcely a moment's
intermission. Storm, darkness and gloom--a fitting termination of
those two dreadful days.