THE FIELD OF SHILOH.
Daylight next morning shone in through the chinks of the bridal chamber
(for window it had none), and I awoke refreshed, after sound sleep. The
dawn was enlivened by pleasing old-time sounds,—the farmer chopping wood
at the door, crowing cocks, gossiping geese, and the new-made fire
snapping and crackling in the next room.
The morning was very cold. The earth was covered with white frost, like
snow. We had breakfast at the usual hour. “Farmers commonly get their
breakfases by sun-up,” said mine host. At table (both doors open, and
everybody shivering) Mrs. —— remarked that if it was any colder in my
country she would not like to live there. I said to her,—
“We should call this cold weather, though we have some much colder. But,
allow me to tell you, I have suffered more from the cold since I have
been in Tennessee, than I have for ten years in the North. There, when
we go out of doors in winter, we go clad to meet the inclemencies of the
season; and we know how to make ourselves comfortable in our houses.
Here your houses are open. The wind comes in through the cracks, and you
do not even think of shutting the doors. My people at home would think
they would perish, if they had to breakfast with the wind blowing on
them, as you have it blowing on you here.” In short, I said so much that
I got one of the doors closed, which I considered a great triumph.
Zeek brought our animals to the gate; and I called for my bill. Mr. ——
said it appeared like he ought not to charge me anything; he had been
very glad of my company. As I insisted on discharging my indebtedness,
he named a sum so modest that I smiled. “You haven’t heard of the rage
for high prices, nor learned the art of fleecing the Yankees.” I gave
him twice the sum, but it was with difficulty I could prevail upon him
to accept it, for he said it would trouble his conscience. A simple,
thoroughly good and upright man,—would there were more like him!
I mounted my horse at the gate, and in company with Zeek and his mule,
set out for the battle-field. We struck Owl Creek, but instead of
crossing immediately, followed a cattle-path along its bank. On our
right were woods, their tops just flushing with the new-risen sun; on
our left, cornfields, in some of which the corn had not yet been
gathered, while in others I noticed winter wheat, (ploughed in between
the rows of stalks, still standing,) covering the ground with its green
mat, now hoary with frost. Fording the creek at a safe place, and
pushing in an easterly direction through the woods, we came to an army
road, made by Wallace’s division moving on towards Corinth, after the
battle.
It was a pleasant, still morning, such as always brings to the
susceptible spirit a sense of exhilaration. Leisurely we rode among the
wooded hills, which I could scarcely believe were ever shaken by the
roar of battle. Only the blue jay and the woodpecker made the brown
vistas of the trees echo with their drumming and screaming, where had
been heard the shriek and whiz of missiles and bullets tapping the
trunks.
A little back from the cleared fields we came to a nice-looking new
log-hut. It had no window, and but one door. This was closed; by which
token Zeek knew the folks were away. This was the abode of his sister
and her interesting husband; this the bridal home. Something tender and
grateful swelled up in my heart as I looked at the little windowless
log-cabin, and thought of the divine gift of love, and of happiness,
which dwells in humble places as well as in the highest.
Quitting Wallace’s road at its junction with a neighborhood road, we
struck another cow-path, which led in a northeasterly direction through
the woods. We soon came upon evidences of a vast encampment. Here our
right wing had intrenched itself after the battle. In this place I may
remark that the astonishing fact about this field is, that our army did
not intrench itself _before_ the battle. Three weeks it lay at Shiloh,
menaced by the enemy; Grant himself pronounced an attack probable, and
the sagacious Sherman expected it; yet when it came, it proved a perfect
surprise; it found our lines badly arranged, weak, and undefended by a
single breastwork.
Beyond was a magnificent field, swept of its fences, but stuck all over
with abandoned tent-supports, showing where our finally victorious
legions had lain. “This field was just like a city after the fight,”
said Zeek. I noticed that the trees in the surrounding groves were
killed. “The Yankees skinned ’em for bark to lay on,” Zeek explained.
Crossing Shiloh Branch,—a sluggish little stream, with low, flat shores,
covered with yellow sedge and sentinelled by solemn dead trees,—we
ascended a woody hill, along the crest of which a row of graves showed
where Hildebrand’s picket line was attacked, on that disastrous Sunday
morning. Each soldier had been buried where he fell. The boughs, so
fresh and green that April morning, waving over their heads in the sweet
light of dawn, though dismantled now by the blasts of winter, had still
a tranquil beauty of their own, gilded and sparkling with sunshine and
frost. Fires in the woods had burned the bottoms of the head-boards. I
stopped at one grave within a rude log-rail enclosure. “In memory of L.
G. Miller,” said the tablet; but the remainder of the inscription had
been obliterated by fire. I counted eighteen graves in this little row.
We rode on to Shiloh Church,—formerly a mere log-cabin in the woods, and
by no means the neat white-steepled structure on some village green,
which the name of country church suggests to the imagination. There
Beauregard had his head-quarters after Sunday’s battle. It was
afterwards torn down for its timbers, and now nothing remained of it but
half-burnt logs and rubbish.
Below the hill, a few rods south of the church, Zeek showed me some
Rebel graves. There many a poor fellow’s bones lay scattered about,
rooted up by swine. I saw an old half-rotted shoe, containing a skeleton
foot. But the most hideous sight of all, was a grinning skull pushed out
of a hole in the ground, exposing the neck-bone, with a silk cravat
still tied about it in a fashionable knot.
A short distance southeast of the church we visited the ruins of the
Widow Ray house, burned to the ground in the midst of its blasted
orchard and desolated fields. “A girl that lived hyere fell mightily in
love with a Yankee soldier. Saturday night, he allowed there was going
to be a battle, and come to bid her good-bye. He got killed; and she
went plumb distracted. She’s married now to a mighty clever feller.”
Zeek had another romantic story to tell, as we returned to the church.
“Hyere’s whur the bale of hay was. When the Rebs was brushing out the
Yankees, an old Reb found a Yankee soldier nigh about this spot, that
had been wounded, and was perishing for a drink of water. He just took
him, and got him behind a bale of hay that was hyere, and give him drink
out of his canteen, just like he’d been his own brother. Some of the
time he’d be nussing him behind the hay, and the rest he’d be shooting
the Yankees over it.” Some one asked him why he took such a heap of
pains to save one Yankee life, while he was killing as many mo’e as he
could. “They’re fighting enemies,” he said; “but a wounded man is no
longer an enemy, he’s a feller being.”
Members of one family after all, though at war. Some were so in a
literal sense. I recall the story of two Kentucky regiments that fought
on this field, one for the bad cause and one for the good. Two brothers
met, and the Federal captured the Rebel. The former recommenced firing,
when the latter said, “Don’t shoot there; that’s daddy behind that
tree.”
Cantering over the hills towards the northeast, we came to the scene of
a severe infantry fight in the woods. There was a wild burial-place,
containing some fifty patriot graves, originally surrounded by a fence
of stakes wattled with saplings Both the fence and the head-boards had
been broken down and partly burned. All around us were sheep feeding in
the open woods; and withdrawn to the seclusion of the little
burial-ground was a solitary ewe and a pair of new-born lambs.
“All these hills are just lined with graves,” said Zeek. Not far away
was a fence surrounding the resting-places of “two officers and
seventeen private Rebels,” as an inscription cut in the side of a
black-jack informed us. There was a story connected with these graves. A
Federal soldier found on the dead body of one of the officers, a watch,
his likeness, his wife’s likeness, a letter from his wife, and a letter
written by himself requesting that, in case he should fall, these relics
might be sent to her. The soldier faithfully fulfilled this duty; and at
the close of the war the wife, following the directions he forwarded to
her with them, came and found his grave.
We rode a mile due north through what Zeek termed “the long avenue,” a
broad, level opening through the woods, at the farther end of which, “on
the elevatedest part,” a Yankee battery had been posted, doing terrible
execution, if one might judge by the trunks and boughs of trees lopped
off by shot and shell. The Rebels charged this battery repeatedly, and
it was captured and recaptured.
Leaving the sedgy hills, and pursuing our course towards the Landing, we
were stopped by a trench in the woods. It was one hundred and fifty feet
long, and four deep. For some reason both ends had been left open. Two
feet from the bottom, planks were laid across, the trench being filled
with earth over them. Beneath the planks the dead were buried. Their
bones could be seen at one of the open ends of the trench. A row of
head-boards indicated the graves of Illinois volunteers.
We rode on to the spot which has given the battle its northern name.
Under high bluffs, on what Zeek called a “bench,”—a shelf of land on the
river bank,—approached from the land side by a road running down through
a narrow ravine, stood the two log-huts, a dwelling and a grocery, which
constituted the town of “Pittsburgh.” There was not so much as a wharf
there, but steamers made their landing against the natural bank. There
was absolutely nothing there now, the two huts having been burned. Wild
ducks sat afloat on the broad, smooth breast of the river. It was not
easy looking down from those heights upon the tranquil picture, to call
up that other scene of battle-panic and dismay,—the routed Federal
troops pouring through the woods, disorganized, beaten, seeking the
shelter of the bluffs and the protection of the gun-boats; the great
conflict roaring behind them; the victorious Rebels in wild pursuit;
God’s solemn Sabbath changed to a horrible carnival of mad passions and
bloodshed.
“The Rebels just fanned ’em out,” said Zeek. “The Yankees put up white
flags under the bluff, but the Rebels didn’t come near enough to see
’em; they tuke a skeer,—the Federals fell back so easy, they was afraid
of some trick. Thar was such a vast amount of ’em they couldn’t all get
to the Landing. Some got drowned trying to swim Snake Creek. Numbers and
numbers tried to swim the river. A Federal officer told me he saw his
men swim out a little ways, get cold, then wind up together, and go to
hugging each other, and sink.” Such are the traditions of the fight
which have passed into the memory of the country people; but they should
be taken with considerable allowance.
On the level river bottom opposite the Landing we found an extensive
cornfield, bounded by heavy timber beyond. Under that shore the
gun-boats lay where they shelled the advancing Rebels. It was there,
emerging from the timber into the open field, that our defeated army
saw, that Sunday evening, first the advanced cavalry, then a whole
division of Buell’s army coming to the rescue,—banners flying and
bayonets glittering among the trees. Glad sight! No wonder the runaways
under the bluffs made the welkin ring with their cheers! If Buell did
not arrive in time to save that day, he was in time to save the next,
and turn defeat into victory.
Taking the Hamburg Road up the river, we reached the scene of General
Prentiss’s disaster. The Rebels were in our camps that Sunday morning
almost before the alarm of attack was given. First came the wild cries
of the pickets rushing in, accompanied by the scattering shots of the
enemy, and followed instantly by shells hurtling through the tents, in
which the inmates were just rousing from sleep; then, sweeping like an
avalanche through the woods, the terrible resistless battlefront of the
enemy.
“Into the just-aroused camps thronged the Rebel regiments, firing sharp
volleys as they came, and springing towards our laggards with the
bayonet. Some were shot down as they were running, without weapons,
hatless, coatless, toward the river. Others fell as they were
disentangling themselves from the flaps that formed the doors to their
tents; others as they were buckling on their accoutrements; a few, it
was even said, as they were vainly trying to impress on the
cruelly-exultant enemy their readiness to surrender. Officers were
wounded in their beds, and left for dead, who, through the whole two
days’ struggle, lay there gasping in their agony, and on Monday evening
were found in their gore, inside their tents, and still able to tell the
tale.”[13]
The houses all along the road were burned. In Prentiss’s front was a
farm, all laid waste, the orchard shot to pieces and destroyed by balls.
The woods all around were killed, perforated with countless holes, as by
the bills of woodpeckers.
Striking the Hamburg and Purdy road, we went west to the spot where the
Rebel General Sydney A. Johnston fell, pierced by a mortal wound. Zeek
then piloted me through the woods to the Corinth Road, where, time
pressing, I took leave of him, sorry I could not accept his invitation
to go home with him to dinner. It was five miles to his father’s house;
it was twenty miles to Corinth; and the day was already half spent.
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Footnote 13:
“Agate,” in the _Cincinnati Gazette_, who furnished the best
contemporaneous account of this battle.