Of sallies and retires; of trenches, tents, Of palisadoes,
frontiers, parapets; Of basilisks, of cannon, culverin; And
all the currents of a heady fight.--KING HENRY IV.
[Sidenote: THE BATTLE OF SHILOH.]
Simultaneously with the capture of Island Number Ten occurred the
battle of Shiloh. The first reports were very wild, stating our loss
at seventeen thousand, and asserting that the Union commander had been
disastrously surprised, and hundreds of men bayoneted in their tents.
It was even added that Grant was intoxicated during the action. This
last fiction showed the tenacity of a bad name. Years before, Grant was
intemperate; but he had abandoned the habit soon after the beginning of
the war.
General Albert Sydney Johnson was killed, and Beauregard ultimately
driven back, leaving his dead and wounded in our hands; but Jefferson
Davis, with the usual Rebel policy, announced in a special message to
the Confederate Congress:
"It has pleased Almighty God again to crown the Confederate
arms with a glorious and decided victory over our invaders."
I went up the Tennessee River by a boat crowded with
representatives--chiefly women--of the Sanitary Commissions of
Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Chicago.
[Sidenote: THE REVEREND ROBERT COLYER.]
One evening, religious services were held in the cabin. A clergyman
exhorted his hearers, when they should arrive at the bloody field, to
minister to the spiritual as well as physical wants of the sufferers.
With special infelicity, he added:
"Many of them have doubtless been wicked men; but you can, at least,
remind them of divine mercy, and tell them the story of the thief on
the cross."
The next speaker, a quiet gentleman, wearing the blouse of a private
soldier, after some remarks about practical religion, added:
"I can not agree with the last brother. I believe we shall best serve
the souls of our wounded soldiers by ministering, for the present,
simply to their bodies. For my own part, I feel that he who has fallen
fighting for our country--for your Cause and mine--is more of a man
than I am. He may have been wicked; but I think room will be found for
him among the many mansions above. I should be ashamed to tell him the
story of the thief on the cross."
Hearty, spontaneous clapping of hands through the crowded cabin
followed this sentiment--a rather unusual demonstration for a
prayer-meeting. The speaker was the Rev. Robert Colyer, of Chicago.
With officers who had participated in the battle, I visited every part
of the field. The ground was broken by sharp hills, deep ravines, and
dense timber, which the eye could not penetrate.
The reports of a surprise were substantially untrue. No man was
bayoneted in his tent, or anywhere else, according to the best evidence
I could obtain.
But the statements, said to come from Grant and Sherman, that they
could not have been better prepared, had they known that Beauregard
designed to attack, were also untrue. Our troops were not encamped
advantageously for battle. Raw and unarmed regiments were on the
extreme front, which was not picketed or scouted as it should have been
in the face of an enemy.
Beauregard attacked on Sunday morning at daylight. The Rebels greatly
outnumbered the Unionists, and impetuously forced them back. Grant's
army was entirely western. It contained representatives of nearly every
county in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin.
Partially unprepared, and steadily driven back, often ill commanded and
their organizations broken, the men fought with wonderful tenacity. It
was almost a hand-to-hand conflict. Confederates and Loyalists, from
behind trees, within thirty feet of each other, kept up a hot fire,
shouting respectively, "Bull Run!" and "Donelson!"
Prentiss' shattered division, in that dense forest, was flanked before
its commander knew that the supporting forces--McClernand on his right
and Hurlbut on his left--had been driven back. Messengers sent to him
by those commanders were killed. During a lull in the firing, Prentiss
was lighting his cigar from the pipe of a soldier when he learned that
the enemy was on both sides of him, half a mile in his rear. With the
remnant of his command he was captured.
[Sidenote: A UNION ORATOR CAPTURED.]
Remaining in Rebel hands for six months, he was enabled to indulge in
oratory to his heart's content. Southern papers announced, with intense
indignation, that Prentiss--occupying, with his officers, an entire
train--called out by the bystanders, was permitted to make radical
Union speeches at many southern railway stations. Removed from prison
to prison, the Illinois General continued to harangue the people, and
his men to sing the "Star-Spangled Banner," until at last the Rebels
were glad to exchange them.
[Sidenote: GRANT AND SHERMAN IN BATTLE.]
Throughout the battle, Grant rode to and fro on the front, smoking his
inevitable cigar, with his usual stolidity and good fortune. Horses
and men were killed all around him, but he did not receive a scratch.
On that wooded field, it was impossible for any one to keep advised of
the progress of the struggle. Grant gave few orders, merely bidding his
generals do the best they could.
Sherman had many hair-breadth 'scapes. His bridle-rein was cut off by a
bullet within two inches of his fingers. As he was leaning forward in
the saddle, a ball whistled through the top and back of his hat. His
metallic shoulder-strap warded off another bullet, and a third passed
through the palm of his hand. Three horses were shot under him. He was
the hero of the day. All awarded to him the highest praise for skill
and gallantry. He was promoted to a major-generalship, dating from
the battle. His official report was a clear, vivid, and fascinating
description of the conflict.
Five bullets penetrated the clothing of an officer on McClernand's
staff, but did not break the skin. A ball knocked out two front teeth
of a private in the Seventeenth Illinois Infantry, but did him no
further injury. A rifle-shot passed through the head of a soldier in
the First Missouri Artillery, coming out just above the ear, but did
not prove fatal. Dr. Cornyn, of St. Louis, told me that he extracted a
ball from the brain of one soldier, who, three days afterward, was on
duty, with the bullet in his pocket.
More than a year afterward, at the battle of Fredericksburg, Captain
Richard Cross, of the Fifth New Hampshire Infantry, noticed one of his
men whose skull had been cut open by the fragment of a shell, with a
section of it standing upright, leaving the brain exposed. Cross shut
the piece of skull down like the lid of a teapot, tied a handkerchief
around it, and sent to the rear the wounded soldier, who ultimately
recovered. The one truth, taught by field experience to army surgeons,
was that few, if any, wounds are invariably fatal.
[Sidenote: A GALLANT FEAT BY SWEENEY.]
At Shiloh, Brigadier-General Thomas W. Sweeney, who had lost one arm
in the Mexican War, received a Minié bullet in his remaining arm, and
another shot in his foot, while his horse fell riddled with seven
balls. Almost fainting from loss of blood, he was lifted upon another
horse, and remained on the field through the entire day. His coolness
and his marvelous escapes were talked of before many camp-fires
throughout the army.
Once, during the battle, he was unable to determine whether a battery
whose men were dressed in blue, was Rebel or Union. Sweeney, leaving
his command, rode at a gentle gallop directly toward the battery until
within pistol-shot, saw that it was manned by Confederates, turned in
a half circle, and rode back again at the same easy pace. Not a single
shot was fired at him, so much was the respect of the Confederates
excited by this daring act. I afterward met one of them, who described
with great vividness the impression which Sweeney's gallantry made upon
them.
The steady determination of Grant's troops during that long April
Sunday, was perhaps unequaled during the war. At night companies
were commanded by sergeants, regiments by lieutenants, and brigades
by majors. In several regiments, one-half the men were killed and
wounded; and in some entire divisions the killed and wounded exceeded
thirty-three per cent, of the numbers who went into battle.
I have seen no other field which gave indication of such deadly
conflict as the Shiloh ridges and ravines, everywhere covered with a
very thick growth of timber--
"Shot-sown and bladed thick with steel."
In one tree I counted sixty bullet-holes; another bore marks of more
than ninety balls within ten feet of the ground. Sometimes, for several
yards in the dense shrubbery, it was difficult to find a twig as large
as one's finger, which had not been cut off by balls.
A friend of mine counted one hundred and twenty-six dead Rebels,
lying where they fell, upon an area less than fifty yards wide and
a quarter of a mile long. One of our details buried in a single
trench one hundred and forty-seven of the enemy, including three
lieutenant-colonels and four majors.
But our forces, overpowered by numbers, fell farther and further back,
while the Rebels took possession of many Union camps. At night, our
line, originally three miles in length, was shortened to three-quarters
of a mile.
[Sidenote: BUELL'S OPPORTUNE ARRIVAL.]
For weeks the inscrutable Buell had been leisurely marching through
Kentucky and Tennessee, to join Grant. He arrived at the supreme
moment. At four o'clock on that Sunday afternoon, General Nelson, of
Kentucky, who commanded Buell's advance, crossed the Tennessee, and
rode up to Grant and his staff when the battle was raging.
"Here we are, General," said Nelson, with the military salute,
and pointing to long files of his well-clad, athletic, admirably
disciplined fellows, already pouring on the steamboats, to be ferried
across the river. "Here we are! We are not very military in our
division. We don't know many fine points or nice evolutions; but if you
want stupidity and hard fighting, I reckon we are the men for you."
That night both armies lay upon their guns, and the opposing pickets
were often within a hundred yards of each other. The groans and cries
of the dying rendered it impossible to sleep. Grant said:
"We must not give the enemy the moral advantage of attacking to-morrow
morning. We must fire the first gun."
Just at day-break, the Rebels were surprised at all points of the line
by assaults from the foe whom they had supposed vanquished. Grant's
shattered troops behaved admirably, and Buell's splendid army won
new laurels. The Confederates were forced back at all points. Their
retreat was a stampede, leaving behind great quantities of ammunition,
commissary stores, guns, caissons, small arms, supply-wagons and
ambulances. They were not vigorously followed; but as no effective
pursuit was made by either side during the entire war (until Sheridan,
in one of its closing scenes, captured Lee), perhaps northern and
southern troops were too equally matched for either to be thoroughly
routed.
[Sidenote: Beauregard Finally Routed.]
Beauregard withdrew to Corinth, as usual, announcing a glorious
victory. He addressed a letter to Grant, asking permission, under flag
of truce, to send a party to the battle-field to bury the Confederate
dead. He prefaced the request as follows:
"Sir, at the close of the conflict of yesterday, my forces
being exhausted by the extraordinary length of the time
during which they were engaged with yours on that and the
preceding day, and it being apparent that you had received
and were still receiving re-enforcements, I felt it my
duty to withdraw my troops from the immediate scene of the
conflict."
Grant was strongly tempted to assure Beauregard that no apologies for
his retreat were necessary! But he merely replied in a courteous note,
declining the request, and stating that the dead were already interred.
[Sidenote: THE LOSSES ON BOTH SIDES.]
The losses on both sides were officially reported as follows:
Killed. Wounded. Missing. Total.
Union 1,614 7,721 3,963 13,298
Rebel 1,728 8,012 959 10,699
The excess of Rebel wounded was owing to the superiority of the
muskets used by the Federal soldiers; and the excess of Union missing,
to the capture of Prentiss' division.