THE GREAT BATTLE OF SHILOH AND THE SOUTH’S IRREPARABLE LOSS IN
THE DEATH OF GENERAL JOHNSTON.
War, fifty years ago, was bad enough, but it wasn’t the plain,
cold-blooded deviltry that it is to-day. When men met face to face
and leaders led, in fact as well as theory, I can understand the
inspiration, the enthusiasm, the wild love of glory, that invited the
best blood to a military life. But now, when victories are to be won
by pressing buttons, switching on or off electric currents or dropping
bombs from the sky on the heads of helpless women and children, while
it may attract those of a mechanical turn of mind, it has ceased to be
a business that should interest a gentleman.
My recollection is of the old fighting days. I said that when I arrived
in Corinth on April 4, 1862, not more than five thousand men were
assembled there. But all that night and the next day troop trains were
unloading enormous reinforcements and some were arriving by forced
marches on foot. By the night of April 5, between twenty-five and
thirty thousand soldiers were in camp, the flower of the fighting
army of the South. General Albert Sidney Johnston, with his heroic
figure and magnetic presence, roused the men to a height of martial
exultation very hard to describe. Everyone knew that a great battle was
impending. Most of them guessed that the morrow would be the day. But
they hardly seemed able to wait. They were like war dogs tugging at the
leash, confident in themselves, confident in their cause. One would
have thought they were bound for a holiday excursion instead of a death
grapple from which many would never emerge.
Very much to my disappointment, I was assigned to the staff of General
Beauregard, second in command. I had hoped to be with General Johnston,
where the fighting would be the fiercest. Nevertheless, I had enough.
The troops retired at an early hour on the night of April 5. But in the
darkness flitted shadows of alert men, making busy preparations for
a great event. At two o’clock in the morning, the troops were roused
from their sleep, had hasty refreshment in the darkness, and then fell
in, company after company, like so much clock work, and the march to
Pittsburg Landing, or Shiloh, nine miles away, began. The infantry was
well in front, separated by perhaps half a mile from the artillery and
more noisy equipment.
The nature of the country was admirable for a secret movement. It was
well wooded, with abundant cover to screen our presence, and it seemed
almost uncanny how the thousands of men marched forward with scarce
noise enough to stir the early morning air. Not a word was spoken.
[Illustration: MRS. CHAS. S. FAIRFAX
Wife of Lord Fairfax, niece of John C. Calhoun
[Reproduced from an old photograph.]]
It was just daylight when we drove in the Federal pickets. Before us
lay the army of General Grant. It seems to me that it was not more than
two hundred yards away. Breakfast was being cooked, the officers and
men totally off their guard. Nothing in the nature of surprise could
be imagined more terrible and complete. Quick commands were given,
there was a rattle of musketry, the “rebel” yell rang out--a sound that
might well start the resurrection of the dead--and the next instant I
saw what appeared a long line of racing apparitions in gray, with fixed
bayonets, clear the intervening space and fall like a cloudburst on the
men in blue.
Nothing saved the army of General Grant from utter destruction but
the presence of several gunboats in the Tennessee river. These were
splendidly handled, and the fire was deadly and precise. It gave the
Union forces an opportunity to recover somewhat and put up a gallant
fight. Field artillery was concentrated on the gunboats. Sharpshooters
climbed into nearby trees and picked off the gunners at their posts.
The fire became less frequent, less precise.
Anyone could see the line of General Johnston’s strategy. Grant’s army
was encamped on rising ground beyond the Tennessee. Behind it the
ground fell off rather abruptly to a narrow plain along the river bank,
beyond which was no retreat. The object of the attack was to force the
Federal line to the river bank and then drive in the wings until the
Union army became a huddled mass on the low ground where it could not
fight effectively, and be at the mercy of artillery fire. Then it must
either surrender or be wiped out. The first step was accomplished by
the initial bayonet charge. The second required more time.
The battle raged into the afternoon. The field was covered with dead
and dying, but the strategy of General Johnston was rapidly bearing
fruit. The gunboats were almost silenced, the Federal columns showed
apparent signs of disintegration. Another hour would have seen a total
rout. General Johnston had been everywhere, the directing genius,
exposing himself to needless dangers. Just in the moment of triumph, he
fell headlong from his horse.
It seemed as if the news of this irreparable loss spread through the
army like wildfire and caused, not a demoralization, but a general
pause. Beauregard took command, evidently under a great mental strain.
To the surprise of many, he gave orders to retire. I heard him say:
“To-morrow we will be across the Tennessee river, or in hell.”
He had another guess. Early the next morning General Buell crossed the
Tennessee with thirty-five thousand fresh troops, and all day we were
fighting our way back to the strong position at Corinth. The great
opportunity was lost.
[Illustration: CHARLES S. FAIRFAX
Last Lord Fairfax in direct male descent
[Reproduced from an old photograph.]]
Thus I saw the bloodiest battle of the war and I think the most
decisive--far more so than Gettysburg. Had Johnston overwhelmed Grant
at Shiloh, met Buell with an army flushed with victory, with no
gunboats to contend with, there might have been another tale to tell.
With Tennessee liberated, Kentucky and Missouri might have joined the
Confederate cause and influenced the final outcome profoundly. When I
look back at the long series of mishaps and unforeseen misfortunes that
seemed to haunt the Lost Cause, I cannot but conclude that God’s will
was there. After many years of bitter recollections, we are all of
one mind--that the outcome was best for the country, and best of all
for the South.
I saw General Johnston’s body on the field, where he fell. The wound
that caused his death was of a trifling nature. A rifle ball had cut an
artery in his leg. A surgeon with a tourniquet could have stopped the
hemorrhage. But he never sought assistance. He stood by his post like a
true soldier, and slowly bled to death.
History has classed Johnston as a great military genius. Years after,
the Government of the United States erected a shaft with a suitable
inscription on the spot where he fell at Shiloh. His tomb, with a noble
equestrian statue, is in New Orleans. Most of his direct descendants
live in California, the State that he saved from the desolation of war.
Concerning the battle of Shiloh, I have better testimony than my
own. A score of years later, I met General Grant in New York. Out of
an acquaintance, an intimate friendship developed. During his first
financial embarrassment, of which the world never knew, I piloted him
to a safe haven. Grant’s genius was entirely one-sided. In matters
of business, he was the veriest child. He had tied himself up in
Wall Street ventures and was facing ruin when he sought my advice. I
took his account to my brokers, Henry Clews & Company, where I had a
balance of nearly two millions to my credit, and, by careful nursing,
brought him out, not only even, but ahead. The General and I often
spoke of Shiloh, and he admitted, with a soldier’s frankness, that only
Johnston’s death saved his command. He also added that he learned
a lesson in war that fateful day, the most important in his long
experience.
In this era of good-will and reconciliation, when the old boys in blue
and gray are meeting in comradeship on the scenes of their former
struggle, why cannot someone write a trustworthy and impartial history
of the great drama--the greatest of our national life--which our boys
and girls may read and learn the truth? The text-books of our schools
are still deformed by a spirit of intolerance and prejudice, most
unfortunate and misleading in an age that has happily outlived the
bitterness that divided us in the past.
[Illustration: U. S. monument and marker on battlefield of Shiloh,
indicating spot where General Johnston fell.]