Your ever affectionate mother,
Jane Bass
In February, 1862, Buell attempted to march his army northward to
reinforce General Grant’s Army of the Tennessee in the attack on Fort
Donelson. Adverse weather conditions and impassable roads forced the men
to return to camp after an advance of only fourteen miles. In March
General Buell received orders from General Halleck to join Grant and the
Army of the Tennessee at Pittsburg Landing near Shiloh. General Grant
and his forces were to remain in camp at Pittsburg Landing while
awaiting Buell’s arrival. It was planned that the two armies would join
forces and then advance on Corinth. The delay thus necessitated in the
Union advance afforded the scattered Confederate forces an opportunity
to consolidate their strength. On the sixth of April, under the able
leadership of General Albert Sidney Johnston, the Confederate troops
launched a surprise attack against Grant’s encampment.
The roar of cannon could be heard by the men of Buell’s advancing army
although they were still many miles distant from the battlefield. Hour
after hour, the men of the Thirtieth followed their commander southward
through swampland to Savannah, Tennessee. Boats ferried them from that
city across the Tennessee River to Pittsburg Landing. On the morning of
the seventh, the Fifth Brigade, which included Colonel Bass’s regiment,
was ordered into battle as a replacement for General Rousseau’s brigade,
which had undergone murderous fire in defense of the road leading from
the landing to the battlefield. The Thirtieth was engaged in mortal
combat with the enemy. Confederate artillery to the right, left, and
center maintained a continuous fire which inflicted heavy casualties.
Colonel Bass led his regiment into battle and encouraged the men by his
presence. Three times he led them impetuously against the foe; thrice
his men were repelled. Yet at each command of its gallant Colonel, the
Thirtieth again moved forward.
Suddenly, the Colonel’s horse was wounded and became almost
unmanageable. Colonel Bass dismounted to examine the wound. Just as he
reached the ground, he was struck in the upper thigh by a musket ball.
Nevertheless, he soothed his horse, remounted, and continued to fight.
He rode calmly among his men and exhorted them to still greater efforts.
But soon he became faint and could no longer sit in the saddle. The
wound was a mortal one, but death did not come immediately. Colonel Bass
was carried from the battlefield to a Tennessee River steamer and
transported to Paducah, Kentucky. He passed away at St. Mark’s Hospital
in that city a week after he had been wounded. His wife, mother, and
brother were present at his bedside.
After news of his death reached Fort Wayne, a meeting was called at the
courthouse for the purpose of paying due honor to his memory. A
committee of fifteen was appointed to meet the remains at Peru and to
act as an escort to Fort Wayne. Mr. W. H. Withers proposed the following
motion which was adopted:
“RESOLVED, that while the remains are passing from the cars to his late
residence, and during the funeral ceremonies of the lamented Colonel
Bass, this meeting requests that all secular business be suspended, that
the bells of the city be tolled, that the flags be hung at half-mast,
and that the business houses of the city be closed during the funeral
obsequies.”
Another committee was appointed to draft resolutions expressing the loss
sustained by the country and the community in the death of Colonel Bass.
On April 21, 1862, these resolutions were published in DAWSON’S DAILY
TIMES AND UNION:
[Illustration: _Colonel Bass was struck by a musket ball_....]
“RESOLVED, That the death of Colonel Sion S. Bass, distinguished alike
for his social qualities, his noble and unselfish impulses, his
stainless morality in private life, and his ability, humanity, and
gallantry as a soldier, is a severe affliction to the community in which
he lived. It is a calamity to the officers and privates under his
command, for their confidence in him as a leader was equaled only by
their love for him as a man. And it is a heavy loss to the country which
he served and to the cause which he had so heartily espoused.
“RESOLVED, That our grief for the death of Colonel Bass is aggravated by
the reflection that perhaps he and thousands of other Federal soldiers
who were slain or wounded in the Battle of Pittsburg Landing might today
be standing with arms in their hands. They might still be ready to do
battle in their country’s cause had it not been for the apparently
inexcusable and unparalleled neglect of the commanding generals in not
using those precautions against a ‘surprise’ which are always used by
trustworthy commanders at the head of armies in the presence of active
and powerful foes. Courage is only one qualification for a commander; to
personal bravery there should be united military science and skill,
vigilance, prudence, and self-control. Whenever it shall be discovered
that any general in command of Federal forces is deficient in those
indispensable qualifications, it is the imperative duty of the
Administration to relieve him of his command.
“RESOLVED, That, as Indiana has given without stint her noble and
cherished sons to the nation to aid in crushing a monstrous and
causeless rebellion, and as their blood has been freely shed on nearly
every battlefield where success has attended the Federal arms, she has a
right to demand and will demand that those who are still at their posts
shall not be unnecessarily sacrificed through the incompetency or
carelessness of commanding generals.
“RESOLVED, That the citizens of this county, while they mourn over the
untimely death of Colonel Bass, have the proud satisfaction of knowing
that, although he was born and raised in a state of doubtful loyalty and
although many of his early friends had joined in the great rebellion
against the Constitution and the Union, his loyalty never faltered. He
received his death wound while in the act of leading his men into the
thickest of the fight and while cheering them on to danger and to
victory.
“RESOLVED, That, while the death of Colonel Bass is a deep affliction to
all those who knew him, a calamity to the regiment he so ably commanded,
and a heavy loss to the nation in whose service and in whose defense he
so gloriously died, it is a terrible bereavement to his grief-stricken
family. We tender to his widow, to his father and mother, the hearty
sympathy of the entire community, which will ever cherish a fond
interest in their welfare and in the welfare of his orphaned children.
“RESOLVED, That the death of such soldiers as Colonel Bass, who have
been slain in the dreadful war into which the government of the United
States has been forced for the preservation of its existence, indicates
the value that should be placed upon our free institutions.
“RESOLVED, That, while lamenting the death of Colonel Bass and the
officers and soldiers under his command who have fallen in defense of
their country and its flag, and while congratulating the survivors on
the reputation they so dearly earned on the bloody field of Pittsburg
Landing, we are not unmindful of our fellow citizens of the Forty-fourth
Regiment, who on that same field and at Fort Donelson proved their
gallantry by deeds and losses almost unparalleled in modern warfare. We
lament, also, their noble dead. We tender to their wounded and bereaved
our sincere sympathy, and to their fearless and noble Colonel, Hugh B.
Reed, and to the remnant of his regiment which still remains at the post
of danger, our admiration for their valor and our gratitude for their
services.
“RESOLVED, That, with the daily accumulating proofs of the desolation
and woe which mark the existence of civil war, we earnestly invoke the
God of love and peace again to dispose the hearts of all the people of
the United States to obedience to lawful authority, to fidelity to the
Constitution and laws, and to the fraternal love and peace which in
other years united them as fellow citizens and sharers of a once happy
and prosperous but now deeply afflicted country.
“RESOLVED, That a copy of this report and these resolutions, signed by
the committee, be delivered to the widow and the father of the deceased
Colonel Bass; and that the same be published in the newspapers of Fort
Wayne and of the Tenth Congressional District of Indiana.
HUGH McCULLOCH
ALLEN HAMILTON
J. K. EDGERTON
SAMUEL HANNA
I. D. G. NELSON
Colonel Bass had won the confidence, love, and admiration of the people
of his adopted city. The tragedy of his death was felt by the entire
populace. An excerpt from DAWSON’S DAILY TIMES AND UNION, published on
April 18, 1862, describes the arrival of the funeral train in the city:
“The remains of Colonel Sion S. Bass reached here today at eleven
o’clock over the Toledo and Western Railway. The committee in charge was
sent from here and met the train at Huntington. A large concourse of
people was at the depot to pay that mark of respect due their late
fellow citizen. The coffin and hearse were properly decorated with the
national colors. When the funeral cortege moved, guns were fired, bells
tolled, and drums beat. The procession came down Calhoun Street to Wayne
Street, and then turned in the direction of his residence.”
He was interred in Lindenwood Cemetery on the following day. His final
resting place is marked by a sandstone monument which bears the
following inscription:
IN MEMORY OF
SION S. BASS
COL. OF 30TH REG’T. IND. VOL.
BORN AT SALEM, LIVINGSTON CO. KY.
JAN’Y 6, 1827:
DIED AT PADUCAH, KENTUCKY,
APRIL 14, 1862,
OF WOUNDS RECEIVED
WHILE GALLANTLY LEADING HIS REGIMENT
AT THE BATTLE OF SHILOH,
APRIL 7, 1862
ERECTED BY
HIS REGIMENT AND FRIENDS.