Shiloh Church, Sunday morning, April 6, 1862. Here is a date and a locality indelibly burned into my memory. At sixteen years of age, I found myself an enlisted, fourth-class musician in the Twenty-fourth Ohio Regiment, in which my elder brother was a first lieutenant, and afterward captain and colonel. I had campaigned in Western Virginia and had seen some of the terrors and horrors of war at Philippi and Rich Mountain, and some of its actualities in a winter campaign in the Cheat Mountain district. During the winter of 1861, my command was sent to Louisville, Kentucky, where [Major General Don Carlos] Buell was organizing his splendid Army of the Ohio for active operations against Bowling Green and Nashville. My regiment was assigned to [Brigadier General William] Nelson’s command, and the early spring found us on the left flank of the army, on the north side of the Green River. With unexpected suddenness, Nelson’s division was one day in March sent hurriedly back to the Ohio River, where it was placed on transports and headed for the Cumberland River to participate in [Brigadier General Ulysses S.] Grant’s movement against Fort Donelson. Before reaching that point, intelligence was received of the capture of that stronghold, and our flotilla proceeded to Paducah, Kentucky. At that point, [Brigadier General William T.] Sherman was organizing his recruits from Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, for the forward movement up the Tennessee River.
I had been taken ill on board the steamer en route, and my father [Colonel Joseph R. Cockerill], who at that time commanded the Seventieth Ohio Regiment, stationed at Paducah, found me and took me in his personal charge. Two days later, my regiment sailed up the Cumberland River, and was with the brigade first to enter Nashville. When I reached the convalescent stage, I asked permission to rejoin my command, but General Sherman said that the armies of Grant and Buell would form a coalition somewhere up the Tennessee River, and I might as well remain where I was, for the reason that my father could give me better care in my feeble state than I could have with my own command.
Thus it happened that I was with the army of General Sherman when it felt its way up the turbid Tennessee River as far as Pittsburg Landing, and so it happened that I was at Shiloh Church on the morning of that terrible onslaught by General [Albert S.] Johnston’s army upon Sherman’s division, which held the advance of Grant’s army operating against Corinth.
John A. Cockerill (Blue and Gray)
I have often wondered what sort of soldier in blue I must have appeared at that time. I can remember myself as a tall, pale, hatchet-faced boy, who could never find in the quartermaster’s department a blouse or a pair of trousers small enough for him, nor an overcoat cast on his lines. The regulation blue trousers I used to cut off at the bottoms, and the regulation overcoat sleeves were always rolled up, which gave them the appearance of having extra military cuffs, and that was one consolation to me.
The headquarters mess of the Seventieth Regiment had finished its early breakfast, and I had just taken my place at the table on Sunday morning, April 6, when I heard ominous shots along our adjacent picket lines. In less than ten minutes, there was volley firing directly in our front, and from my knowledge of campaigning I knew that a battle was on, though fifteen minutes before, I had no idea that any considerable force of the enemy was in the immediate front of our cantonment. The Seventieth Regiment and the brigade to which I was attached, commanded by Colonel [Ralph P.] Buckland of Ohio, formed on its color lines under fire, and although composed of entirely new troops, made a splendid stand. At the first alarm, I dropped my knife and fork and ran to my father’s tent, to find him buckling on his sword. My first heroic act was to gather up a beautiful Enfield rifle, which he had saved at the distribution of arms to his regiment, because of its beautiful curly maple stock. I had been carrying it myself on one or two of the regimental expeditions to the front, and had some twenty rounds of cartridges in a box which I had borrowed from one of the boys of Company I. By the time I had adjusted my cartridge box and seized my rifle, my father was mounted outside, and with a hurried goodbye, he took his place with the regiment. By this time, the bullets were whistling through the camp, and shells were bursting overhead.
Not exactly clear in my mind what I intended to do, I ran across to the old log Shiloh Church, which stood on the flank of my father’s regiment. On my right, the battle was raging with great ferocity; and stretching away to my left and front, one of the most beautiful pageants I have ever beheld in war was being presented. In the very midst of the thick wood and rank undergrowth of the locality, was what is known as a “deadening”—a vast, open, unfenced district, grown up with rank, dry grass, dotted here and there with blasted trees, as though some farmer had determined to clear a farm for himself and had abandoned the undertaking in disgust. From out the edge of this great opening, came regiment after regiment and brigade after brigade of the Confederate troops. The sun was just rising in their front, and the glittering of their arms and equipments made a gorgeous spectacle for me. On the farther edge of this opening, two brigades of Sherman’s command were drawn up to receive the onslaught. As the Confederates, marching regimental front en echelon, sprung into this field, they poured out their deadly fire, and half obscured by their smoke, they advanced as they fired. My position behind the old log church was a good one for observation. I had just seen General Sherman and his staff pushing across to the Buckland brigade. The splendid soldier, erect in his saddle, his eye bent forward, looked a veritable war eagle, and I knew history was being made in that immediate neighborhood. Just then a German field battery from Illinois, which had been cantoned a short distance in the rear, came galloping up with six guns and unlimbered three of them between the Shiloh Church and the left flank of the Seventieth Ohio Regiment. This evolution was gallantly performed. The first shot from this battery, directed against the enemy on the right opposite, drew the fire of a Confederate battery, and the old log church came in for a share of its complements. This duel had not lasted more than ten minutes when a Confederate shell struck a caisson in our battery, and an explosion took place, which made things in that spot exceedingly uncomfortable. The captain was killed, and his lieutenant, thinking that he had done his duty, and doubtless satisfied in his own mind that the war was over so far as he was concerned, limbered up his remaining pieces, and, with such horses as he had, galloped to the rear, and was not seen at any other time, I believe, during the two days’ engagement.
By this time, the enemy was pressing closely on my left flank, and Shiloh Church, with its ancient logs, was no more a desirable place for military observation. I hurried over to the headquarters of the Seventieth Ohio Regiment, taking advantage of such friendly trees as presented themselves on the line of my movement, and there found a state of disorder. The tents were pretty well ripped with shell and bullets, and wounded men were being carried past me to the rear. As I stood there, debating in my mind whether to join my father’s command or continue my independent action, three men approached, carrying a sorely wounded officer in a blanket. They called me to assist them, and as my place really was with the hospital corps, being a noncombatant musician, I complied with their request. We carried the poor fellow some distance to the rear, through a thick wood, and found there a scene of disorder, not to say panic. Men were flying in every direction, commissary wagons were struggling through the underbrush, and the roads were packed with fugitives and baggage trains, trying to carry off the impedimenta of the army. Finding a comparatively empty wagon, we placed our wounded officer inside, and then, left at liberty, I started on down toward the Tennessee River. I had not proceeded more than a mile when I encountered a brigade of Illinois troops drawn up in battle array, apparently waiting for orders. It was [Brigadier General John] McArthur’s Highland Brigade, the members of which wore Scotch caps, and I must say that a handsomer body of troops I never saw. These fellows had been at Fort Donelson, and they counted themselves as veterans. They had their regimental band with them, their flags were all unfurled, and they were really dancing impatiently to the music of the battle in front of them. As I sauntered by, a chipper young lieutenant, sword in hand, stopped me and said, “Where do you belong?”
“Erect in his saddle, his eye bent forward” (Blue and Gray)
“I belong to Ohio,” was my reply.
“Well, Ohio is making a bad show of itself here today,” he said. “I have seen stragglers from a dozen Ohio regiments going past here for half an hour. Ohio expects better work from her sons than this.”
As I was one of Ohio’s youngest sons, my state pride was touched.
“Do you want to come and fight with us?” he said.
I responded that I was willing to take a temporary berth in his regiment. He asked me my name, and especially inquired whether I had any friends on the field. I gave him my father’s name and regiment, and saw him make a careful entry in a little passbook which he afterward placed in the bosom of his coat, as he rather sympathetically informed me that he would see, in case anything should happen to me, that my friends should know of it. Thus I became temporarily attached to Company B, of the Ninth Illinois Regiment, McArthur’s brigade. Several other men from other regiments who had been touched by this young officer’s patriotic appeals also took places in our ranks.
Rather a strange situation that for a boy enlisting on the battlefield, in a command where there was not a face that he had ever seen before, only one face, indeed, that had the least touch of sympathy in it, and that belonging to the young officer who had mustered him.
We waited here for three-quarters of an hour before receiving the command to move. During that time, one of the regimental bands played “Hail Columbia.” It was the first and only time that I heard music on a battlefield, and soon afterward I saw that heroic band playing “Over the Hills and Far Away.” That is to say, they would have gone over the hills if there had been any in that neighborhood. Finally, the order came to move to the front. By this time, the stream of fugitives on the road rendered it almost impassable; but we forced our way through them, and in due time reached the point where our men were being severely driven. At first, we were sent to strengthen the line from point to point, and twice that morning our brigade was moved up to support field batteries, which service, I must say from my brief experience, is the most annoying in modern warfare. These batteries drew not only the artillery fire of the enemy, but they furnished a point for the concentrated fire of all the infantry in front. To be in supporting position was to receive all the bullets that were aimed at the battery, and which, of course, usually vex the rear. The shells intended for the battery in your front have a habit always of flying too high or bursting just high enough in air to make it pleasant for the troops who are held in comparative inactivity. Under these conditions, we hugged the ground very closely, and fallen timber of every kind was most gratefully and thankfully recognized.
It is amazing how rapidly time flies under these circumstances. I am sure there were occasions that morning when twenty minutes’ exposure to fire behind these field batteries seemed to me an entire week. Everything looked weird and unnatural. The very leaves on the trees, though scarcely out of the bud, seemed greener than I had ever seen leaves, and larger. The faces of the men about me looked like no faces that I had ever seen on earth. Actions took on the grotesque forms of nightmares. The roar and din of the battle in all its terror outstripped my most fanciful dreams of Pandemonium. The wounded and butchered men who came up out of the blue smoke in front of us, and were dragged or sent hobbling to the rear, seemed like bleeding messengers come to tell us of the fate that awaited us.
It was with the greatest sense of relief that orders came for us to move to the left, to face again that awful wave of fire, which seemed to be all the morning moving toward our flank. The Confederate divisions came into action at Shiloh Church by the right, with a view to penetrating to the Tennessee River and taking us in flank and rear. It was along in the afternoon some time, that we were pushed over to the extreme left of the forward line. I had no watch, and could have no idea of the hour of the day, except as I saw the shadows formed by the sun. Up to this time, our command had suffered but little, but a dreadful baptism of fire was awaiting us. For a moment, I realized that we were on the extreme left of our army; that my regiment was the left of the brigade; that I was temporarily attached to Company B of the regiment, which practically placed me on the left flank of that heroic army. I know all this because there was no firing in our front, and no sound of battle to our left, but steady, steady, steady from the right of us rolled the volleys which told us that the enemy was working around to our vicinity. I saw General McArthur, our commander, at this point, and as I remember, his hand was wrapped with a handkerchief, as though he had been wounded. By his orders, we pushed across a deep ravine which ran parallel with our front, and in five minutes we had taken up a position on the bank of this ravine, facing the enemy. Everybody felt that the critical moment had come. The terrible nervous strain of that day was nothing compared with the feeling that now the time had come for us to show our mettle. The faces of that regiment were worth studying at that moment. Not one that was not pale; not a lip that was not close shut; not an eye that was not wild; not a hand that did not tremble in this awful, anxious moment. Presently the messengers came—pattering shots from out the dense growth in our front, telling of the advance of the skirmish line. On our part, no response. No enemy could be seen, but the purple wreaths of smoke here and there told of the men who were feeling their way toward our lines. A nervous man, unable to stand the strain, let off his musket in our lines. This revealed our presence. With a suddenness that was almost appalling, there came from all along our front a crash of musketry, and the bullets shrieked over our heads and through our ranks. Then we delivered our fire. In an instant, the engagement was general at this point. There were no breechloaders in that command, and the process of loading and firing was tedious. As I delivered my second shot, a musket ball struck a small bush in my front, threw the splinters in my face, and whistled over my shoulder. I may say that I was startled, but I kept loading and firing without any idea whatever as to what I was firing at. Soon the dry leaves, which covered the ground about us, were on fire, and the smoke from them added to the general obscurity. Two or three men had fallen in my vicinity. At this moment, the young lieutenant who had my descriptive list in his coat bosom, and who was gallantly waving his sword in the front, was struck by a bullet and fell instantly dead, almost at my feet. Then it was that I realized my utter isolation, and shuddered at the thought of the fate impended—“Dead and unknown.”
Battle of Shiloh (Magazine of American History)
By this time, the fire from the enemy in our front—it was the division of [Major General William J.] Hardee, turning the flank of the Federal position—became so terrible that we were driven back into the ravine. Here we were comparatively safe. We could load our pieces, crawl up the bank of the ravine, and fire and fall back, as it were. But many poor fellows who crawled up this friendly embankment fell back, dead or wounded; and in one instance, as I was crouched down loading my piece, a man who had been struck above me, fell on top of me and died by my side. It was here in this terrible moment that I, boy-like, thought of the peaceful Ohio home, where a loving, anxious mother was doubtless thinking of me; and with the thought that perhaps my father had been killed, came a natural desire to be well out of the scrape. Not withstanding, I kept firing as long as my cartridges lasted. These gone, a fierce sergeant, with a revolver in his hand, placed its muzzle close to my ear, and fiercely demanded why I was not fighting. I told him that I had no cartridges.
“Take cartridges from the box of the man there,” he said, pointing to the dead man who had just fallen upon me. Mine was an Enfield rifle, and my deceased neighbor’s cartridges were for a Springfield rifle. I had clung to this beautiful Enfield, with its maple stock, which my father had selected as his own, and I was determined that it should not leave my hands. While this scene was passing, the enemy came upon us in full charge, and looking up through the smoke of the burning leaves and beyond a washout which connected with our ravine, I saw the gray, dirty uniforms of the enemy. I heard their fierce yells, I saw their flag flapping sullenly in the grimy atmosphere. That was a sight which I have never forgotten; I can see the tiger ferocity in those faces yet; I can see them in my dreams. For what might they not have appeared to me, terrified as I was!
It was at this point that our blue line first wavered. Out of this ravine, over the bank, we survivors poured, pursued by the howling enemy. I remember my horror at the thought of being shot in the back, as I retreated from the top of the bank and galloped as gracefully as I could with the refluent human tide. Just by my side ran a youthful soldier, perhaps three years my senior, who might, for all I knew, have been recruited as I was. I heard him give a scream of agony, and turning, saw him dragging one of his legs, which I saw in an instant had been shattered by a bullet. He had dropped his rifle, and as I ran to his support he fell upon my shoulder and begged me for God’s sake to help him. I half carried him for some distance, still holding to my Enfield rifle, with its beautiful curly stock, and then, seeing that I must either give up the role of Good Samaritan or drop the rifle, I threw it down, and continued to aid my unfortunate companion. All this time, the bullets were whistling more fiercely than at any time during the engagement, and the woods were filled with flying men, who, to all appearances, had no intention of rallying on that side of the Tennessee River. My companion was growing weaker all the while, and finally I set him down beside a tree, with his back toward the enemy, and watched him for a few moments, until I saw that he was slowly bleeding to death. I knew nothing of surgery at that time, and did not even know how to stanch the flow of blood. I called to a soldier who was passing, but he gave no heed. A second came, stood for a moment, simply remarked, “He’s a dead man,” and passed on. I saw the poor fellow die without being able to render the slightest assistance.
Passing on, I was soon out of range of the enemy, and in a moment I realized how utterly famished and worn-out I was. My thirst was something absolutely appalling. I saw a soldier sitting upon the rough stump of a tree, gazing toward the battle, and observing that he had a canteen, I ran to him and begged him for a drink. He invited me to help myself. I kneeled beside the stump, and, taking his canteen, drained it to the last drop. He did not even deign to look at me during the performance, but he anxiously inquired how the battle was going in front. I gave him information which did not please him in the least, and moved on toward the point known as the Landing, toward which all our fugitives seemed to be tending. But my friend on the stump—I shall never forget him. How gratefully I remember that drink of warm water from his rusty canteen. Bless his military soul, he probably never knew what a kindness he rendered me!
A short distance beyond the place where I had obtained my water supply, I found a squadron of jaded cavalry drawn up, and engaged in the interesting work of stopping stragglers. In the crowd of fear-stricken and dejected soldiers I found there, I saw a man who belonged to my father’s regiment; I recognized him by the letters and number on his hat. Inquiring the fate of the regiment, he told me that it had been entirely cut to pieces, and that he had personally witnessed the death of my father—he had seen him shot from his horse. This intelligence filled me with dismay, and I then determined, noncombatant that I was, that I would retire from that battlefield. Watching my opportunity, I joined an ambulance which was passing, loaded with wounded, and by some means escaped the vigilance of the cavalrymen, who seemed to be almost too badly scared to be on any sort of duty. When through this line, I pushed my way on down past the point where stragglers were being impressed and forced to carry sandbags up from the river, to aid in the construction of batteries for some heavy guns which had been brought up from the transports. I passed these temporary works, by the old warehouse, turned into a temporary field hospital, where hundreds of wounded men, brought down in wagons and ambulances, were being unloaded, and where their arms and legs were being cut off and thrown out to form gory, ghastly heaps.
“I held a drumstick in each hand” (Blue and Gray)
I made my way down the plateau, overlooking the river. Below lay thirty transports at least, all being loaded with the wounded, and all around me were baggage wagons, mule teams, disabled artillery teams, and thousands of panic-stricken men. I saw, here and there, officers gathering these men together into volunteer companies, and marching them away to the scene of battle. It took a vast amount of pleading to organize even a company of fifteen or twenty, and I was particularly struck by the number of officers who were engaged in this interesting occupation. It seemed to me that they were out of all proportion to the number of fugitives in the vicinity. While sitting on the bank, overlooking the road be low, between the beach and the river, I saw General Grant. I had seen him the day before review his troops on the Purdy road, while a company of Confederate cavalrymen, a detachment of Johnston’s army, watched the performance from a skirt of woods some two miles away. When I saw him at this moment, he was doing his utmost to rally his troops for another effort. It must have been about 4:30 P.M. The general rode to the Landing, accompanied by his staff and a bodyguard of twenty-five or thirty cavalrymen. I heard him begging the stragglers to go back and make one more effort to redeem themselves, accompanying his pleadings with the announcement that reinforcements would soon be on the field, and that he did not want to see his men disgraced. Again I heard him proclaim that if the stragglers before him did not return to their commands, he would send his cavalry down to drive them out. In less than fifteen minutes, his words were made good. A squadron of cavalry, divided at either end of the Landing, and riding toward each other with drawn swords, drove away every man found between the steep bank and the river. The majority of the skulkers climbed up the bank, hanging by the roots of the trees, and in less than ten minutes after the cavalry had passed, they were back in their old places again. I never saw General Grant again until I saw him the president of the United States.
While sitting on the high bank of the river, I looked across to the opposite side and saw a body of horsemen emerging from the low canebrakes, back of the river. In a moment, I saw a man waving a white flag with a red square in the center. I knew that he was signaling, for I had seen the splendid corps of Buell’s army, and I recognized that the men with that flag were our friends. Sitting by me were two distracted fugitives, who also saw the movement on the other side of the river. Said one of them to his companion, “Bill, we are gone now. There’s the Texas cavalry on the other side of the river!” The red square had misled him.
Fifteen minutes later I saw the head of a column of blue emerge from the woods beyond, and move hurriedly down toward the river’s edge. Immediately the empty transport moved over to that side of the river, and the first boat brought over a figure which I recognized. The vessel was a peculiar one, belonging in Southern waters, and had evidently been used as a ferryboat. On its lower forward deck, which was long and protruding, sat a man of tremendous proportions, upon a magnificent Kentucky racehorse, with bobbed tail. The officer was rigged out in all his regimentals, including an enormous hat with a black feather in it. I knew that this was General Nelson, commonly known as “Fighting Bull” Nelson. I ran down to the point where I saw this boat was going to land, and as she ran her prow up on the sandy beach, Nelson put spurs to his horse and jumped him over the gunwale. As he did this, he drew his sword and rode right into the crowd of refugees, shouting, “Damn your souls, if you won’t fight; get out of the way, and let men come here who will.” I realized from the presence of Nelson that my regiment (the Twenty-fourth Ohio) was probably in that vicinity. I asked one of the boat hands to take me on board, and, after some persuasion, he did so. The boat recrossed, and as soon as I got on shore, I ran down to where the troops were embarking to cross the river to the battlefield. I soon found [Colonel Jacob] Ammen’s brigade and my regiment.
Hurrying on board one of the transports, I climbed to the hurricane deck, and there found my brother with his company. He was looking across the river, where the most appalling sight met his vision. The shore was absolutely packed with the disorganized, panic-stricken troops who had fled before the terrible Confederate onslaught, which had not ceased for one moment since early that morning. The noise of the battle was deafening. It may be imagined that my brother was somewhat surprised to see me. I made a hurried explanation of the circumstances which had brought me there, and gave him news of my father’s death. Then I asked him for something to eat. With astonishment, he referred me to his Negro servant, who luckily had a broiled chicken in his haversack, together with some hard bread. I took the chicken, and as we marched off the boat, I held a drumstick in each hand, and kept by my brother’s side as we forced our way through the stragglers, up the road from the landing and onto the plateau, where the battle was even then almost concentrating. Right there I saw a man’s head shot off by a cannonball, and saw immediately afterward an aide on General Nelson’s staff dismounted by a shot, which took off the rear part of his saddle and broke his horse’s back. At the same time, I did not stop eating. My nerves were settled, and my stomach was asserting its rights. My brother finally turned to me, and, after giving me some papers to keep, and some messages to deliver in case of death, shook me by the hand and told me to keep out of danger and, above all things, to try and get back home. This part of his advice I readily accepted. I stood and saw the brigade march by, which, in less than ten minutes, met the advance of the victorious Confederates and checked the battle for that day. It was then that the gunboats in the river and the heavy siege guns on the bank above added their remonstrating voices as the sun went down, and the roar of battle ceased entirely.
But that night on the shore of the Tennessee River was one to be remembered. Wandering along the beach among the rows of wounded men waiting to be taken on board the transports, I found another member of the Seventieth Ohio Regiment, named Silcott. He had a harrowing tale of woe to relate, in which nearly all his friends and acquaintances figured as corpses, and together we sat down on a bale of hay near the river’s edge. By this time, the rain had set in. It was one of those peculiar streaming, drenching, semitropical downpours, and it never ceased for a moment from that time until far into the next day. With darkness came untold misery and discomfort. After my companion had related the experiences of the day, I curled myself up on one side of the hay bale while he occupied one edge of it, and soon fell asleep. Every few moments I was awakened by a terrible broadside, delivered from the two gunboats which lay in the center of the river a hundred yards or so above me. They were the Lexington and the A. O. Tyler, I believe; wooden vessels, reconstructed from Western steamboats and supplied with ponderous Columbiads. These black monsters, for some reason, kept up their fire all through the night, and the roar of this cannonading and the shrieking of the shells, mingled with the thunders of the rainstorm, gave very little opportunity for slumber. Still, I managed to doze very comfortably between broadsides, and my recollection of the night is that from these peaceful naps I was aroused every now and then by what appeared to be a tremendous flash of lightning, followed by the most awful thunder ever heard on the face of the earth. These discharges seemed to me to lift me four or five inches from my water-soaked couch, and to add to the general misery the transports which were bringing over Buell’s troops had a landing within twenty feet of my lodgment.
All night long they wheezed and groaned, and came and went, with their freight of humanity, and right by my side marched all night long the poor fellows who were being pushed out to the front to take their places on the battle line for the morrow. By this time, the roadway was churned into mud knee deep, and as regiment after regiment went by with that peculiar slosh, slosh of marching men in mud, and the rattling of canteens against bayonet scabbards, so familiar to the ear of the soldier, I could hear in the intervals the low complaining of the men, and the urgings of the officers, “Close up, boys, close up,” until it seemed to me that if there was ever such a thing as Hades on earth, I was in the fullest enjoyment of it.
As fast as a transport unloaded its troops, the gangway was hauled in, the vessel dropped out, and another took the vacant place and the same thing was gone over again. Now and then a battery of artillery would come off the boat, the wheels would stick in the mud, and then a grand turmoil of half an hour follow, during which time every man found in the neighborhood was impressed to aid in relieving the embargoed gun. The whipping of the horses and the cursing of the drivers was less soothing, if anything, than those soul-shattering gunboat broadsides. There never was a night so long, so hideous, or so utterly uncomfortable.
As the gray streaks of dawn began to appear, the band of the Thirteenth Regulars, on the deck of one of the transports, came into the landing, playing a magnificent selection from “Il Trovatore.” How inspiring that music was! Even the poor wounded men lying in the front on the shore seemed to be lifted up, and every soldier seemed to receive an impetus. Soon there was light enough to distinguish objects around, and then came the ominous patter of musketry over beyond the river’s bluff, which told that the battle was on again. It began just as a shower of rain begins, and soon deepened into a terrible hailstorm, with the booming artillery for thunder accompaniment. I was up and around, and started immediately toward the front, for everybody felt now that the battle was to be ours. Those fresh and sturdy troops from the Army of the Ohio had furnished a blue bulwark, behind which the incomparable one-day fighters of Grant and Sherman were to push to victory. The whole aspect of the field in the rear changed. The skulkers of the day before seemed to be imbued with genuine manhood, and thousands of them returned to the front to render good service. In addition to this, six thousand fresh men under [Brigadier General] Lew Wallace, who had marched from Crump’s Landing, ten miles away, and who should have been on the field the day before, had arrived during the night, and the tide of battle was now setting toward Corinth. I met a comrade drying himself out by a log fire, about a quarter of a mile from the landing, who had by some process secured a canteen of what was known as commissary whiskey. He gave me one drink of it. and that constituted my breakfast. Cold, wet, and depressed as I was, that whiskey, execrable though it was, brought me such consolation as I had never found before. I have drunk champagne in Epernay, I have sipped Johannisberger at the foot of its sunny mount, I have tasted the regal Montepulsiano, but, by Jove, I never enjoyed a drink as I did that swig of ordinary whiskey on the morning of April 7, 1862.
While drying myself by this fire, I saw a motley crowd of Confederate prisoners marched past, under guard. As they waded along the muddy road, some of the cowardly skulkers indulged in the badinage, usual on such occasions, and one of our fellows called out to know what company that was. A proud young chap in gray threw his head back, and replied: “Company Q, of the Southern Invincibles, and be damned to you.” That was the spirit of that day and hour. At 10:00 A.M., the sound of the battle indicated that our lines were being pushed forward, and I made up my mind to go to the front. I started with my companion, and in a very short time we began to see about us traces of the terrible battle of the day before. We were then on the ground which had been fought over late Sunday evening. The underbrush had literally been mowed off by the bullets, and great trees had been shattered by the terrible artillery fire. In places, the bodies of the slain lay upon the ground so thick that I could step from one to the other. This without exaggeration. The pallid faces of the dead men in blue were scattered among the blackened corpses of the enemy. This to me was a horrible revelation, and I have never yet heard a scientific explanation of why the majority of the dead Confederates on that field turned black. All the bodies had been stripped of their valuables, and scarcely a pair of boots or shoes could be found upon the feet of the dead. In most instances, pockets had been cut open, and one of the pathetic sights that I remember was a poor Confederate lying on his back, while by his side was a heap of ginger cakes and sausage, which had tumbled out of the trousers pocket, cut by some infamous thief. The unfortunate man had evidently filled his pocket the day before with the edibles found in some sutler’s tent, and had been killed before he had an opportunity to enjoy his bountiful store. There was something so sad about this that it brought tears to my eyes.
Further on, I passed by the road the corpse of a beautiful boy in gray, who lay with his blond curls scattered about his face, and his hands folded peacefully across his breast. He was clad in a bright and neat uniform, well garnished with gold, which seemed to tell the story of a loving mother and sisters who had sent their household pet to the field of war. His neat little hat lying beside him bore the number of a Georgia regiment, embroidered, I am sure, by some tender fingers, and his waxen face, washed by the rains of the night before, was that of one who had fallen asleep, dreaming of loved ones who waited his coming in some anxious home. He was about my age. He may have been a drummer. At the sight of that poor boy’s corpse, I burst into a regular boo-hoo, and started on. Here beside a great oak tree I counted the corpses of fifteen men. One of them sat stark against the tree, and the others lay about as though during the night, suffering from wounds, they had crawled together for mutual assistance and there had died. The blue and the gray were mingled together. This peculiarity I observed all over the field. It was no uncommon thing to see the bodies of Federal and Confederate lying side by side as though they had bled to death while trying to aid each other. In one spot I saw an entire battery of Federal artillery which had been dismantled in Sunday’s fight, every horse of which had been killed in his harness, every tumbrel of which had been broken, every gun of which had been dismounted, and in this awful heap of death lay the bodies of dozens of cannoneers. One dismounted gun was absolutely spattered with the blood and brains of the men who had served it. Here and there in the field, standing in the mud, were the most piteous sights of all the battlefield—poor wounded horses, their heads drooping, their eyes glassy and gummy, waiting for the slow coming of death, or for some friendly hand to end their misery. How those helpless brutes spoke in pleading testimony of the horror, the barbarism, and the uselessness of war. No painter ever did justice to a battlefield such as this, I am sure.
“I burst into a regular boo-hoo” (Blue and Gray)
As I pushed onward to the front, I passed the ambulances and the wagons bringing back the wounded, and talked with the poor bleeding fellows who were hobbling toward the river along the awful roads or through the dismal chaparral. They brought news of victory. Toward evening I found myself in the neighborhood of the old Shiloh Church, but could get no tidings of the Seventieth Regiment.
Night came on, and I lay down and fell asleep at the foot of a tree, having gathered up a blanket, soaked with water, which I could only use for a pillow. It rained all night. The battle had practically ended at four o’clock that evening, and the enemy had slowly and silently withdrawn toward Corinth. Next morning I learned that my father’s regiment had been sent in pursuit of the enemy, and nobody could tell when it would return. I found the camp, and oh, what desolation reigned there! Every tent had been pillaged, and in my father’s headquarters, the gentlemen of the enemy who had camped there two nights before had left a duplicate of nearly everything they had taken. They had exchanged their dirty blankets for clean ones, and had left their old, worn brogans in the place of boots and shoes, which they had appropriated, and all about were the evidences of the feasting that had gone on during that one night of glorious possession. I remained there during the day, and late that evening the Seventieth Regiment came back to its deserted quarters after three days and two nights of most terrible fighting and campaigning.
At its head rode my father, whom I supposed to be dead—pale, and haggard, and worn, but unscathed. He had not seen me nor heard from me for sixty hours. He dismounted, and taking me in his arms, gave me the most affectionate embrace that my life had ever known, and I realized then how deeply he loved me. That night we stayed in the old bullet-ridden and shot-torn tent and told of our adventures, and the next day I had the pleasure of hearing General Sherman compliment him for his bravery, and say, “Colonel, you have been worth your weight in gold to me.”
Speaking one day to General Sherman, the last and the greatest of our warriors, I asked him, “What do you regard as the bloodiest and most sanguinary battle of our Civil War?”
“Shiloh” was the prompt response.
And in this opinion I most heartily concur.
