The rain, which had been falling steadily since shortly after midnight,
ceased at daybreak. The morning dawned slowly and moodily, above the
wooded hilltops that rose steeply from the farther bank of the creek
close by, right over against the cornfield, in which, on the preceding
evening, we had comfortably pitched our camp. The bugle wound an early
reveille; then came the call to strike tents, though one half of the
brigade was yet busy in hurried preparations for breakfast, and
presently the assembly sounded. We were on the march again by the time
the sun would have liked to greet us with his broad, level-thrown smile
for 'good morning,' if the sky had been clear and open enough, instead
of covered, as it was on this damp, chilly April morning, with dull,
sullen masses of cloud that seemed still nursing their ill humor and
bent on having another outbreak. The road was heavy; an old, worn
stage-coach road, of a slippery, treacherous clay, which the trampings
of our advanced regiments speedily kneaded into a tough, stiff dough,
forming a track that was enough to try the wind and bottom of the best.
For some miles, too, the route was otherwise a difficult one--hilly, and
leading by two or three tedious crossings in single file over fords,
where now were rushing turbid, swollen streams, gorging and overflowing
their banks everywhere in the channels, which nine months out of the
twelve give passage to innocent brooklets only, that the natives of
these parts may cross barefoot without wetting an ankle. Spite of these
drawbacks, the men were in fine spirits; for this was the end of our
weary march from Nashville, and we were sure now of a few days' rest and
quiet.
A few minutes after midday we reached Savannah, and were ordered at once
into camp. By this time the sky had cleared, the sun was shining
brightly, though, as it seemed, with an effort; the wind, which had been
freshening ever since morning, was blowing strong and settled from out
the blue west, and the earth was drying rapidly. The Sixth Ohio and a
comrade regiment of the Tenth Brigade pitched their tents in an old and
well-cleared camping ground, on a gently sloping rise looking toward the
town from the southeastward; a little too far from the river to quite
take in, in its prospect, the landing with its flotilla of transports
and the gunboats which they told us were lying there, yet not so far but
we could easily discern the smoke floating up black and dense from the
boats' chimney stacks, and hear the long-drawn, labored puffs of the
escape pipes, and the shrill signals of the steam whistles. Altogether
our camping ground was eligible, dry, and pleasant.
It was on Saturday, the fifth day of April, 1862, that the Fourth
division, being the advance corps of the Army of the Ohio, came thus to
Savannah, and so was brought within actual supporting distance of the
forces under General Grant at Pittsburg Landing, twelve miles up the
farther bank of the Tennessee. General Crittenden's division encamped
that evening three hours' march behind us. Still farther in the rear
were coming in succession the divisions of McCook, Wood, and Thomas. It
was well that such reenforcements were at hand; otherwise, unless we
disregarded the best-established laws of probabilities in deciding the
question, the Army of the Tennessee was even then a doomed one, and the
story of Shiloh must have gone to the world a sad, tragic tale of the
most crushing defeat which had ever fallen upon an army since the days
of Waterloo. No mean service, then, was rendered the national cause, and
all which that cause will stand out as the embodiment of, in all the
ages to come, when Shiloh was saved, and Treason was forced to turn,
faint, and stagger away from the field to which it had rushed with a
fiend's exultant eagerness, having there met only its own discomture.
The meed due for that service is a coronal of glory, that may never,
probably, be claimed as the desert of any _one_ individual exclusively;
nor is it likely that the epitaph, enchiselled upon whose tombstone
soever it might be, 'Here lies the saviour of Shiloh,' would pass one
hour unchallenged. Yet impartial history can scarcely be at fault in
recognizing as preeminent the part taken by one officer, in the events,
whose results, at least, permit so much of eulogy to be written, with
other significance than merely that of a wretched burlesque. That
officer was General Nelson, the commander of our own division.
Iron-nerved, indomitable, willfull, disdainful of pleasing with studied
phrase of unmeant compliment, but with a great, manly heart beating
strong in his bosom, and a nature grandly earnest, brave, and true--with
the very foremost of Kentucky's loyal sons will ever stand the name of
General William Nelson.
Our column had marched from Nashville out on the Franklin turnpike,
nearly three weeks previous. General McCook, as the senior divisional
commander, had claimed the advance, and had held it in our march through
that beautiful, cultivated garden spot of Middle Tennessee, as far as
Columbia, a distance of nearly fifty miles. Here the turnpike and the
railroad bridges over Duck river had both been destroyed by the rebels
in their forlorn retreat from the northward. To replace the former even
with a tottering wooden structure, was a work of time and labor.
Meanwhile the army waited wearily, General Nelson chafed at the delay,
and the rebel leaders Beauregard and Sidney Johnston were concentrating
their forces at Corinth with ominous celerity. It was their purpose to
crush, at one blow, so suddenly and so surely dealt that succor should
be impossible, the National army, which had established itself on the
borders of one of the southernmost States of the Confederacy, and was
menacing lines of communication of prime necessity to their maintenance
of the defensive line within which those commanders had withdrawn their
discomfited armies. At length, one evening, on dress parade, there were
read 'General orders, headquarters Fourth division,' for a march at
daylight the next morning. Some days would yet be required to complete
the bridge, but permission had been wrung from the 'commanding general'
to cross the river by fording, and comically minute the detailed
instructions of that order were for accomplishing the feat.
So on Saturday, the twenty-ninth of March, we passed over Duck river.
Other divisions immediately followed. By his importunity and
characteristic energy, General Nelson had thus secured for us the
advance for the seventy-five miles that remained of the march, and,
incalculably more than this, had gained days of precious time for the
entire army. How many hours later the Army of the Ohio might have
appeared at Shiloh in season to stay the tide of disaster and rescue the
field at last, let those tell who can recall the scenes of that awful
Sabbath day there on the banks of the Tennessee.
General Grant had established his headquarters at Savannah, and there
immediately upon our arrival our commander reported his division. Long
before night, camp rumors had complacently decided our disposition for
the present. Three days at Savannah to allow the other corps of our army
to come up with us, and then, by one more easy stage, we could all move
together up to Pittsburg Landing, and take position beside the Army of
the Tennessee. It was a very comfortable programme, and not the least of
its recommendations was the earnest of its faithful carrying out, which
appeared in the unusual regard to mathematical precision that our
officers had shown in 'laying off camp,' and the painstaking care they
had required on our part in establishing it.
There was but an inconsiderable force here, composed for the most part
of new troops from two or three States of the Northwest. I remember,
especially, one regiment from Wisconsin, made up of great, brawny,
awkward fellows--backwoodsmen and lumbermen chiefly--who followed us to
Shiloh on the next evening, and through the whole of Monday fought and
suffered like heroes, as they were. Our first inquiries, quite
naturally, were concerning our comrade army, and the enemy confronting
it at Corinth. Varied and incongruous enough was the information that we
gleaned, and in some details requiring a simple credulity that nine
months of active campaigning had quite jostled and worried out of us. It
seemed settled, however, that our comrades up the river were a host
formidable in numbers and of magnificent armament and _material_;
altogether very well able to take care of themselves, at least until we
could join them at our leisure.
There were some things which, if we had more carefully considered them,
might, perhaps, have abated somewhat this pleasant conviction of
security. The enemy had lately grown wonderfully bold and
venturesome--skirmishing with picket outposts, bullying reconnoitring
parties, and picking quarrels upon unconscionably slight provocation
almost daily. He had even challenged our gunboats, disputing the passage
up the river in an artillery duello at the Bluffs, not far above the
Landing, whose hoarse, sullen rumbling had reached us where we were
resting on that Thursday afternoon, at the distance of thirty miles back
toward Nashville. But, then, on how few fields had Southern chivalry
ever yet ventured to attack; how seldom, but when fairly cornered, had
its champions deemed discretion _not_ the better part of valor! What
other possibility was there which was not more likely to become an
actuality than that the enemy would here dare to assume the aggressive?
Who that had the least regard for the dramatic proprieties, could ever
assign to him any other part in the tragedy than one whose featliest
display of skill and dexterity should be exhibited in executing the
movements of guard and parry, and whose noblest performance should be to
stand at bay, resolutely contending upon a hopeless field to meet a
Spartan death? So we cast aside all serious thought of immediate danger
at Pittsburg Landing, the sanguine temperaments pronouncing these
demonstrations of a foe who had shown our army only his heels all the
way from Bowling Green and Fort Donelson, really diverting from their
very audacity.
At sunset, the Sixth held dress parade--the first since our march from
Columbia; but I, on duty that day as one of the 'reserve guard,' was
merely a looker-on. I was never prouder of the old regiment; it went
through with the manual of arms so well--and then there were so many
spectators present from other regiments. Orders were given to prepare
for a thorough inspection of arms and equipments at ten o'clock on the
next morning, then parade was dismissed, and so the day ended. The wind
died away, and the night deepened, cool, tranquil, starlit, on a camp of
weary soldiery, where contentment and good will ruled for the hour over
all.
Beautifully clear and calm the Sabbath morning dawned, April 6th, 1862;
rather chilly, indeed, for it was yet in the budding time of spring. But
the sky was so blue and cloudless, the air so still, and all nature lay
smiling so serene and fair in the glad sunshine--it was a day such as
that whereon the Creator may have looked upon the new-born earth, and
'saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good;' a day
as if chosen from all its fellows and consecrated to a hallowed quiet,
the blessedness of prayer and thanksgiving, praise and worship.
Hardly a man in our division, I believe, but awoke that morning with a
happy consciousness of long hours that this day were to be his own, and
a clear idea of just how he should improve them. My programme was the
general one, and simple enough it was. First, of course, to make ready
for inspection, and, that ceremony well gotten through with, to enact
the familiar performance of every man his own washerwoman and
seamstress: the remainder of the day should be devoted to the soldier's
sacred delight of correspondence--to completing a letter to Wynne, begun
back at Columbia, and writing home. Out by the smouldering fire, where
the cooks of our mess had prepared breakfast nearly two hours before, I
was busily at work furbishing with the new dust-fine ashes the brasses
of my accoutrements, when the boom of cannon burst on the air, rolling
heavily from away to the southward up from what we knew must be the
neighborhood of the camps at Pittsburg Landing. It was after seven
o'clock. The sun was mounting over the scrubby oak copse behind our
camp, and the day grew warm apace. Another and still another explosion
followed in quick succession.
What could it mean? Only the gunboats, some suggested, shelling
guerillas out of the woods somewhere along the river bank. Impossible;
too near, too far to the right, for that. It could hardly be artillery
practice merely; for to-day was the Sabbath. And the youngest soldier
among us knew better than to give those rapid, furious volleys the
interpretation of a formal military salute. Could it really be--battle?
Every man almost was out and listening intently. Louder and fiercer the
reports came, though still irregular. Now and then, in the intervals, a
low, quick crepitation reached us, an undertone that no soldier could
fail to recognize as distant musketry. Ominous sounds they were,
portending--what? What, indeed, if not actual battle? If a battle, then
certainly an attack by the enemy. Were our comrades up at the Landing
prepared for it?
The first cannon had been fired scarcely ten minutes, when General
Nelson rode by toward headquarters, down in the busiest part of the
town, aides and orderlies following upon the gallop. Presently came
orders:
'Three days' rations in haversacks, strike tents, and pack up. Be ready
to move at a moment's notice. They are fighting up at the Landing.'
There was no need for further urging. By ten o'clock every disposition
for the march had been completed. Nearly three long hours more we waited
with feverish anxiety for the final command to start, while the roar of
that deathly strife fell distantly upon our ears almost without
intermission, and a hundred wild rumors swept through the camp. General
Grant had gone up the river on a gunboat soon after the cannonading
began. It was not long after midday when we struck tents, were furnished
with a new supply of cartridges and caps for our Enfields, and waited
several minutes longer. At length, however, the column formed, and,
though still without orders, except those which its immediate commander
had assumed the responsibility to give, the Fourth division was on the
march for Shiloh. The Tenth brigade had, as usual, the advance, and, in
our regular turn, the Sixth came the third regiment in the column. We
had just cleared the camping grounds, I well remember, when General
Nelson rode leisurely down the line, his eye taking note with the quiet
glance of the real soldier of every minutia of equipments and appearance
generally. Some natures seem to find in antagonism and conflict their
native element, their chief good--yet more, almost as much a necessity
of their moral organism as to their animal being is the air they
breathe. Such a nature was Nelson's. His face to-day wore that
characteristic expression by which every man of his command learned to
graduate his expectation of an action; it was the very picture of
satisfaction and good humor. He wheeled his horse half around as the
rear of our brigade passed him, and a blander tone of command I never
heard than when, in his rapid, authoritative manner, he rang out:
'Now, gentlemen, keep the column well closed up!' and passed on toward
the next brigade.
Gentlemen! how oddly the title comes to sound in the ears of a soldier!
From Savannah to the Tennessee, directly opposite Pittsburg Landing, is,
by the course we took, perhaps ten miles. The route was only a narrow
wagon-path through the woods and bottoms bordering the river, and the
wisdom was soon apparent which had beforehand secured the services of a
native as guide. Most of the latter half of the distance was through a
low, slimy swamp land, giving rank growth to an almost continuous forest
of sycamore, cottonwood, and other trees which love a damp, alluvial
soil, whose massive trunks were yet foul and unsightly with filth and
scum deposited by the receding waters at the subsidence of the river's
great spring freshet a month before. Stagnant ponds and mimic lagoons
lay all about us and in our very pathway, some of the deeper ones,
however, rudely bridged. Very rapid progress was impossible. It had
already been found necessary to send our artillery back to Savannah,
whence it would have to be brought up on the transports. The afternoon
wore on, warm and sultry, and the atmosphere in those dank woods felt
close, aguish, and unwholesome. Not a breath of air stirred to refresh
the heated forms winding in long, continuous line along the dark boles
of the trees, through whose branches and leafless twigs the sunlight
streamed in little broken gleams of yellow brightness, and made a
curious checkerwork of sheen and shadow on all beneath. Burdened as we
were with knapsacks and twenty extra rounds of ammunition, the march
grew more and more laborious. But the noise of battle was sharpening
more significantly every few minutes now, and the men pushed forward. It
was no child's game going on ahead of us. We _might_ be needed.
We _were_ needed. A loud, tumultuous cheer from the Thirty-sixth Indiana
came surging down through the ranks of the Twenty-fourth Ohio to our own
regiment, and away back beyond to the Twenty-second and Nineteenth
brigades in the rear. 'Forward!' and we were off on the double quick.
General Nelson was at the head of the column; there a courier had met
him--so at least runs the tradition--with urgent orders to hasten up the
reenforcements: the enemy were pressing hard for the Landing. Unmindful
of all impediments--trees and fallen logs, shallow ponds and slippery
mire shoetop deep; now again moderating our pace to the route step to
recover breath and strength; even halting impatiently for a few minutes
now and then, while the advance cleared itself from some entanglement of
the way--so the remainder of our march continued. It seemed a long way
to the Landing, the battle dinning on our ears at every step. At length
it sounded directly ahead of us, close at hand; and looking forward out
through the treetops, a good eye could easily discover a dark cloud of
smoke hanging low in mid air, as though it sought to hide from the light
of heaven the deeds that were being done beneath it. Suddenly we
debouched into a level cornfield, extending quite to the river's verge.
The clearing was not a wide one, and the farther bank of the Tennessee
was in plain sight--the landings, the bluff, and the woods above
stretching away out and back beyond.
What a panorama! The river directly before us was hidden by a narrow
belt of chaparral and the drift that had lodged along the banks, but the
smoke stacks of three or four transports were visible above the weed
stalks and bushes, and the course of one or two more could be traced by
a distant, trailing line of smoke as they steamed down toward Savannah.
The opposite bank rises from the river a steep acclivity, perhaps a
hundred and fifty feet in perpendicular height, down whose sides of
brownish yellow clay narrow roadways showed out to the landings below.
Cresting the bluff, woods overlooked the whole, and shut in the scene
far as the eye could follow the windings of the Tennessee. In their
depths, the battle was raging with unabated fury. A short distance up
the river, though completely hidden from view by an intervening bend,
the gunboats were at work, and even our unpractised ears could easily
distinguish the heavy boom of their great thirty-two pounders in the
midst of all that blaze of battle and the storm of artillery explosions.
Glorious old Tyler and Lexington! primitive, ungainly, weather-beaten,
wooden craft, but the salvation, in this crisis hour of the fight, of
our out-numbered and wellnigh borne-down left. A signal party, stationed
a little above the upper landing and halfway up the bluff, was
communicating in the mystic language of the code with another upon our
side the river. What messages were those little party-colored flags
exchanging, with their curious devices of stripes and squares and
triangles, their combinations and figures in numberless variety, as they
were waved up and down and to and fro in rapid, ever-shifting pantomime?
The steep bank was covered with a swaying, restless mass of
blue-uniformed men, too distant to be distinctly discriminated, yet
certainly numbering thousands. 'Reserves!' a dozen voices cried at once,
and the next moment came the wonder that our march had been so hurried,
when whole brigades, as it seemed, could thus be held in idle waiting.
We were soon undeceived.
Out into the cornfield filed the column, up the river, and nearly
parallel to it, halting a little below the upper one of the two
principal landings. Here there was a further delaying for ferriage.
'Stack arms; every man fill his canteen, then come right back to the
ranks!'
Not to the Tennessee for water--there was no time to go so far--but
close at hand, at a pond, or little bayou of the river; and, returning
to the line of stacks, a few more long, unquiet minutes in waiting,
speculation, and eager gazing toward the battle. And then we saw what
was that dark, turbulent multitude over the river: oh, shame! a confused
rabble, composed chiefly of men whose places were rightly on the field,
but who had turned and fled away from the fight to seek safety under the
coverture of that bluff.
Forward again, and the regiment moved, with frequent little aggravating
halts, up to the point on the river where the Thirty-sixth Indiana had
already embarked, and were now being ferried over. The Twenty-fourth
Ohio crossed at the lower landing. There were a number of country folk
here, clad in the coarse, rusty homespun common in the South, whose
intense anxiety to see every movement visible on the farther side of the
river kept them unquietly shifting their positions continually. One of
these worthies was hailed from our company:
'Say, old fellow! how's the fight going on over there?'
He was an old and somewhat diminutive specimen, grizzle haired, and
stoop shouldered, but yellow and withered from the effects of sun and
tobacco rather than the burden of years. For a moment he hesitated, as
though guarding his reply, and then, with a sidelong glance of the eyes,
answered slowly:
'Well, it aren't hardly decided yet, I reckon; but they're a drivin'
your folks--some.'
Evidently he believed that our army had been badly beaten. The emphatic
rejoinder, 'D--d old secesh!' was the sole thanks his information
brought him: the characterization, aside from the accented epithet, was
doubtless a just one, but for all that his words were in no wise
encouraging.
A minute later we passed a sergeant, whose uniform and bright-red
chevrons showed that he was attached to some volunteer battery. He was
mounted upon a large, powerful horse, and seemed a man of considerable
ability.
'Do the rebels fight well over there?' demanded a voice from the column
a half dozen files ahead of me.
'Guess they do! Anyway, _fit_ well enough to take our battery from
us--every gun, and some of the caissons.'
Another soldier met us, unencumbered with blouse or coat of any kind,
his accoutrements well adjusted over his gray flannel shirt, and his
rifle sloped carelessly back over his shoulder. His eyes were bloodshot,
and his face, all begrimed with smoke and gunpowder, wore an expression
haggard, gaunt, and very weary. He was a sharpshooter, he told us,
belonging to some Missouri regiment, and had been out skirmishing almost
ever since daylight, with not a mouthful to eat since the evening
before. His cartridges--and he showed us his empty cartridge-box--had
given out the second time, and he was 'used up.' In his hat and clothes
were several bullet holes; but he had been hit but once, he said, and
then by only a spent buckshot.
'Boys, I'm glad you're come,' he said. 'It's a fact, they _have_ whipped
us so far; but I guess we've got 'em all right _now_. How many of
Buell's army can come up to-night?'
A hurried, many-voiced reply, and hastening on past a heterogeneous
collection of soldiery--couriers, cavalry-men, malingerers, stragglers,
a few of the slightly wounded, and camp followers of all sorts--we
quickly reached the river's brink. The boat was lying close below.
Twenty feet down the crumbling bank, slipping, or swinging down by the
roots and twigs of friendly bushes, the regiment lost but little time in
embarking. The horses of our field officers were somehow got on board,
and, with crowded decks, the little steamer headed for the landing right
over against us. Two or three boats were there hugging the shore, quiet
and motionless, and there were still more at the lower landing. One or
two of these the deck hands pointed out to us as magazine boats,
freighted with precious stores of ammunition, and the remainder were
now, of necessity, being used as hospital boats. The wounded had quite
filled these latter, and several hundred more of the day's victims had
already been sent down the river to Savannah. One of the gunboats, fresh
from its glorious work up beyond the bend, shortly came in sight, moving
slowly down stream, as though reconnoitring the bank for some inlet up
which its crashing broadsides could be poured with deadliest effect, if
the enemy should again appear in sight.
An informal command to land was given us presently, but many had already
anticipated it. How terribly significant becomes the simple mechanism of
loading a rifle when one knows that it is at once the earnest of deadly
battle and the preparation for it! The few details which we could gather
from the deck hands concerning the fight were meagre and unsatisfactory.
They told us of disaster that befell our army in the morning, and which
it seemed very doubtful if the afternoon had yet seen remedied; and
their testimony was borne out by evidences to which our own unwilling
senses were the sufficient witnesses. The roar of battle sounded
appallingly near, and two or three of our guns were in vigorous play
upon the enemy so close on the crest of the bluff that every flash could
be seen distinctly. Several shells from the enemy's artillery swept by,
cleaving the air many feet above us with that peculiar, fierce, rushing
noise, which no one, I believe, can hear for the first time without a
quickened beating of the heart and an instinctive impulse of dismay and
awe.
At the landing--but how shall I attempt, in words only, to set that
picture forth? The next day's fight was my first experience in actual
battle, except so much of bushwacking as five months in Western Virginia
had brought us, but those hours have no such place in my memory as have
the scenes and sounds of this evening at the landing. I have never yet
seen told in print the half of that sad, sickening story. Wagons, teams,
and led horses, quartermaster's stores of every description, bales of
forage, caissons--all the paraphernalia of a magnificently appointed
army--were scattered in promiscuous disorder along the bluff-side. Over
and all about the fragmentary heaps thousands of panic-stricken wretches
swarmed from the river's edge far up toward the top of the steep; a mob
in uniform, wherein all arms of the service and wellnigh every
grade--for even gilt shoulder-straps and scarlet sashes did not lack a
shameful representation there--were commingled in utter, distracted
confusion; a heaving, surging herd of humanity, smitten with a very
frenzy of fright and despair, every sense of manly pride, of honor, and
duty, completely paralyzed, and dead to every feeling save the most
abject, pitiful terror. A number of officers could be distinguished amid
the tumult, performing, with violent gesticulations, the pantomimic
accompaniments of shouting incoherent commands, mingled with threats and
entreaties. There was a little drummer boy, I remember, too, standing in
his shirt sleeves and pounding his drum furiously, though to what
purpose we could none of us divine. Men were there in every stage of
partial uniform and equipment; many were hatless and coatless, and few
still retained their muskets and their accoutrements complete. Some
stood wringing their hands, and rending the air with their cries and
lamentations, while others, in the dumb agony of fear, cowered behind
the object that was nearest them in the direction of the enemy, though
but the crouching form of a comrade. Terror had concentrated every
faculty upon two ideas, and all else seemed forgotten: danger and death
were behind and pressing close upon them; on the other side of the
river, whither their eyes were turned imploringly, there was the hope of
escape and an opportunity for further flight.
Meanwhile, louder than all the din and clamor else, swelled the roar of
cannon and the sharp, continuous rattle of musketry up in the woods
above. There, other thousands of our comrades--many thousands more they
were, thank God!--were maintaining an unequal struggle, in which to
further yield, they knew, would be their inevitable destruction. Brave,
gallant fellows! more illustrious record than they made who here stood
and fought through all these terrible Sabbath hours need no soldier
crave. There has been a noble redemption, too, of the disgrace which
Shiloh fastened on those poor, trembling fugitives by the riverside.
That disgrace was not an enduring one. On many a red and stubborn battle
field those same men have proudly vindicated their real manhood, and in
maturer military experience have fought their way to a renown abundantly
enough, and more than enough, to cover the derelictions of raw,
untrained, and not too skilfully directed soldiery.
There was a rush for the boat when we neared the landing, and some,
wading out breast deep into the stream, were kept off only at the point
of the bayonet. Close by the water's edge grew a clump of sycamores. Up
into one of these and far out on a projecting limb, one scared wretch
had climbed, and, as the boat rounded to, poised himself for a leap upon
the hurricane deck; but the venture seemed too perilous, and he was
forced to give it up in despair. The plank was quickly thrown out,
guards were stationed to keep the passage clear, and we ran ashore.
Until now there had been few demonstrations of enthusiasm, but here an
eager outburst of shouts and cheers broke forth that wellnigh drowned
the thunderings of battle. The regiment did not wait to form on the
beach, the men, as they debarked, rushing up the bank by one of the
winding roadways. The gaping crowd parted right and left, and poured
upon us at every step a torrent of queries and ejaculations. 'It's no
use;' 'gone up;' 'cut all to pieces;' 'the last man left in my
company;'--so, on all sides, smote upon our ears the tidings of ill.
Fewer, but cheery and reassuring, were the welcomes: 'Glad you've come;'
'good for you;' 'go in, boys;' 'give it to 'em, Buckeyes'--which came to
us in manly tones, now and then from the lines as we passed.
We gained the summit of the bluff. A few hundred yards ahead they were
fighting; we could hear the cheering plainly, and the woods echoed our
own in response. The Thirty-sixth Indiana had already been pushed
forward toward the extreme left of our line, and were even now in
action. General Nelson had crossed half an hour earlier. The junior
member of his staff had had a saddle shot from under him by a chance
shell from the enemy, to the serious detriment of a fine dress coat, but
he himself marvellously escaping untouched. Two field pieces were at
work close upon our left, firing directly over the heads of our men in
front; only a random firing at best, and I was glad when an aide-de-camp
galloped down and put a stop to the infernal din. Amid this scene of
indescribable excitement and confusion, the regiment rapidly formed. Our
knapsacks--were we going into action with their encumbrance? The order
was shouted to unsling and pile them in the rear, one man from each
company being detailed to guard them. It was scarcely more than a
minute's work, and we formed again. A great Valkyrian chorus of shouts
swelled out suddenly along the line, and, looking up, I saw General
Nelson sitting on his big bay in front of the colors, his hat lifted
from his brow, and his features all aglow with an expression of
satisfaction and indomitable purpose. He was speaking, but Company B was
on the left of the regiment, and, in the midst of the storms of huzzas
pealing on every side, I could not catch a single word. Then I heard the
commands, 'Fix bayonets! trail arms! forward!' and at the double-quick
we swept on, up through the stumps and underbrush which abounded in this
part of the wood, to the support of the Thirty-sixth Indiana. A few
score rods were gained, and we halted to recover breath and perfect
another allignment. The firing in our front materially slackened, and
presently we learned that the last infuriate charge of the enemy upon
our left had been beaten back. We could rest where we lay, 'until
further orders.' The sun sank behind the rise off to our right, a broad,
murky red disk, in a dense, leaden-hued haze; such a sunset as in
springtime is a certain betokening of rain. By this time cannonading had
entirely ceased, and likewise all musketry, save only a feeble, dropping
fire upon our right. Those sounds shortly died away, and the battle for
this day was over. Night fell and spread its funereal pall over a field
on which, almost without cessation since the dawn of daylight, had raged
a conflict which, for its desperation and carnage, had yet had no
parallel in American history.
On that field, freely and generously had been poured of the nation's
best blood, and many a nameless hero had sealed with his life a sublime
devotion far surpassing the noblest essay of eulogy and all the
extolments which rhetoric may recount. Thank God, those sacrifices had
not been wholly fruitless! The Army of the Tennessee, although at most
precious cost, had succeeded in staying those living waves of Southern
treason until the Army of the Ohio could come up, and Shiloh was saved.
The next day saw those waves rolled back in a broken, crimson current,
whose ebb ceased only when the humiliated enemy rested safe within his
fortifications at Corinth.