IT HAD BEEN A long and bitter thirteen hours, but at least most of the Southern army could take some feeling of joy in the knowledge that they had won. But at Confederate headquarters there was one group who felt only sorrow. Albert Sidney Johnston was dead.
The hero of Monterrey, the Mormon expedition, the Texas troubles, and the man who had led them to Shiloh lay wrapped in a muddy army blanket. General Beauregard had relieved Johnston’s staff officers of any duties so as to allow them to take charge of their fallen leader’s body. However, they remained with the Creole until about 9:00 p.m. that evening, when it was obvious the fighting for the day was completely over. Some of the men attempted to get a little sleep, while others sat around talking. But at dawn the next day, Colonel William Preston and the other members of the staff started for Corinth, the beginning of a long, sad journey.
In Corinth, the staff took their beloved leader’s body to the William Inge house, the structure that had served as Johnston’s headquarters during his stay in the little Mississippi town. The door to Johnston’s quarters was jammed, but a staff officer quickly forced it open, and soon the general’s body was placed on the bed in the room.
Mrs. Inge and a neighbor lady ushered the distraught officers out and began cleaning the face and uniform of the fallen commander. As Johnston had ridden from Corinth only three days earlier, Mrs. Inge had given him two sandwiches and a piece of cake to eat during his journey to the front. While washing the mud and blood away, she found one of the sandwiches and part of the cake in his coat pocket. One of the Inge neighbor’s daughters, Miss Eugenia Polk, entered the room and took two locks of hair from Johnston’s head, one of which she sent to his widow, Eliza.1
Johnston’s staff then accompanied the body to New Orleans, arriving on April 9, to be met at the railroad station by Governor Moore and General Lovell. The corpse was borne to the New Orleans city hall, where it lay in state for two days before being laid to rest in the Monroe family tomb, at the suggestion of Mayor John T. Monroe. After some years, the body was removed and taken to Austin, Texas.2
General Johnston and his staff were not the only ones traveling south on the road, toward Corinth. As soon as the Hornet’s Nest fell and Prentiss’ and Wallace’s men were all rounded up, the Southerners immediately began sending the unfortunate captives en route to Corinth, where they could be handled more easily. The first batch of prisoners headed down the road to Mississippi even before darkness ended the day’s fighting.
The captives and their captors traveled but a few yards when a shell from one of the gunboats came whistling over. Everyone, Blue and Gray alike, scrambled for cover as the big shell burst about sixty feet from the road. No one was hurt, and the men were soon on their feet, sloshing through the mud again. After marching a short distance, the troops settled down to camp for the night.
On Monday morning the prisoners and guards rose about dawn and started off without bothering with the formality of a breakfast, for the simple reason they had no food. At about 5:00 p.m., the column reached Corinth and the prisoners were assembled in front of the Inge house, where Johnston’s body had been cared for earlier in the day. One Confederate housewife remarked to the prisoners, “Well, Yanks, this is pretty good work our boys have done for a breakfast spell.” One Union prisoner answered her, “Mother, I hope before dinner you will have cause to change your mind.”3
A Confederate officer recognized one of the prisoners as a Southern deserter named Roland (or Rowland). The deserter was taken away from the others and convicted by a court-martial several days later. A detail of Rebels dug a grave and erected a thick post beside it. Guards brought the prisoner to the place of execution, but the rain had filled the grave, and things were delayed while the water was dipped out. Defiant to the bitter end, Rowland asked, “Please hand me a drink of that water, as I want to drink out of my own grave so the boys will talk about it when I am dead, and remember Rowland.”4 A soldier gave the condemned man some of the water, which he quickly drank and then asked for more, on the grounds that he had heard that water was very scarce in Hell. He was granted his wish and escorted to the post. As the firing squad made ready, Rowland cursed President Jefferson Davis, Bragg, and the whole Confederacy, winding up his tirade by saying that he would show the Southerners how a Union man could die. He was not bound to the pole, but simply knelt there of his own accord. The officer in charge of the detail gave the order, “Ready, aim, fire!” A few seconds later the deserter, or patriot, lay in his wet grave, covered with Mississippi mud.5
After standing around out in the open for some time, most of the prisoners were loaded on board box and passenger cars for a short train ride to Memphis, where they were unloaded late in the afternoon of April 8 and were confined in a three story warehouse on the wharf. The soldiers were all fed pork and crackers, but there was a shortage of containers to hold water.6 After a short stay in the Mississippi River town, the Federal soldiers were again loaded on board trains and taken to Jackson, Mississippi, and finally shipped to Mobile, Alabama, where they were confined until exchanged.
General Prentiss was not sent along with the other prisoners, but was taken to meet with General Beauregard. The fighting was still in progress when the two men confronted one another. They quickly shook hands and exchanged pleasantries. “General Beauregard,” Prentiss remarked, “we have felt your power today and been compelled to yield to it.” Beauregard, somewhat forgetting his manners, launched into a dissertation on the merits of the South and the Confederacy, proclaiming that the North would never be able to conquer it. Prentiss politely declined to argue the point, but stood by his contention that the Union was indissoluble. Beauregard finally casually asked the Union general how big the Federal army was, and Prentiss hesitated for a second, and then deciding it would do no harm, remarked that it consisted of six divisions of about seven thousand men each.7 The conversation continued for some time. Prentiss be came somewhat more un guarded in his re marks and finally let it slip that General Buell was coming. He may have said it deliberately to try and frighten the Creole, but Beauregard was seized by the thought that the Federal officer was lying.
After a lengthy conversation, the Creole turned his prisoner over to Colonels Thomas Jordan and Jacob Thompson, the latter an old pre-war friend of Prentiss. The three men made up a makeshift bed of tents and captured blankets and chatted quite amiably of their day’s experiences. Just before going off to sleep, Prentiss laughingly remarked to his Southern hosts: “You gentlemen have had your way to day, but it will be very different to-morrow. You’ll see! Buell will effect a junction with Grant to-night, and we’ll turn the tables on you in the morning.”8 The Southerners paid little attention to their prisoner’s remarks, thinking he was only trying to frighten them.
General Beauregard did not believe the captured Union general because of the receipt of a dispatch from Brigadier General Ben Hardin Helm in Northern Alabama, which stated that Buell was marching toward Decatur and not toward Pittsburg Landing. Helm’s message caused a dangerous feeling of over confidence to develop in the Southern leaders,9 who felt they could lei surely take their time in destroying Grant’s army Monday morning. A sense of lassitude settled over Beauregard’s headquarters in Sherman’s tent along side Shiloh Church.
Generals Hardee and Breckinridge went in to see Beauregard to find out the plans for the next morning. Bragg also came in. Beauregard instructed the officers to assemble their commands for action at the earliest possible moment the next morning. There would be no effort to round up the scattered Confederate commands that night. The other officers soon drifted off, leaving Beauregard and Bragg, who climbed into Sherman’s bed for some much needed sleep.10
At least one Confederate officer was not so sanguine about Buell’s exact position. Colonel Nathan Bedford Forrest sometime before midnight sent his men to infiltrate Grant’s position; they worked their way down to the Landing, where they could see fresh Federal troops disembarking from steamboats. Forrest’s scouts then worked their way back to Confederate lines, carrying this vital information. The first senior officer Forrest came across was General Cleburne, whom he awakened about midnight. Forrest asked Cleburne where headquarters were, but unfortunately the general did not know.
Offering a candid appraisal of the situation, Colonel Forrest remarked to Cleburne, “If the enemy comes on us in the morning, we’ll be whipped like hell.”11 Forrest left to continue his search for General Beauregard, Bragg, or someone in authority.
Sometime around 1:00 a.m., the cavalryman located Generals Hardee and Breckinridge. He suggested to them that the army should either launch an immediate night attack or withdraw before the reinforced Federals could assault. The Third Corps commander told Forrest to go ahead and give his information to Beauregard, but somehow in the darkness Forrest missed the Shiloh Church headquarters. He dispatched scouts to go to the river to keep an eye on the Federals, and about 2:00 a.m. they reported that Federal troops were landing. Forrest located Hardee again and was directed to keep an eye on the Yanks and to maintain a strong picket line in case of a sudden Federal surprise attack.
The condition of the Confederate rank and file was grim. Probably one-fifth of the men who had marched from Corinth were dead or wounded, and thousands more were scattered all over several thousand acres of shell and bullet scarred terrain. Even many officers were lost.12
Major F. A. Shoup wandered over the battlefield about 10:00 p.m., looking for someone it authority. After vainly searching through several bodies of sleeping men, Shoup came upon his good friend Cleburne, who was sitting on a tree stump drinking coffee from a bucket. The major tried to get some picture of what was going on and where everybody was. The Irishman candidly told him he did not know where Hardee or anyone else was, and that he wasn’t too sure where the tree stump was. The general said he had only a few of his own men left, but that he had managed to gather a large number of stragglers from a variety of other commands.
The cold and privations of the march to Shiloh dangerously weakened many of the soldiers, but thousands of them were still able to wander around the battlefield searching for food or other forms of booty. Stragglers from the First Tennessee ate a late supper of crackers and coffee, while members of Byrnes’ Kentucky Battery feasted on champagne and cheese.13 Most of the soldiers who bothered to hunt food managed to find something even if it were not champagne. Some of the Confederates found things to delight more than their taste buds. Various types of loot were picked up, including large quantities of shoes, clothing, and blankets.14
Private Jessie W. Wyatt, Company B, Twelfth Tennessee, picked up a small pocket Bible belonging to Private Samuel Lytle, Company F, Eleventh Iowa. The Iowan greatly regretted the loss, for it was a keepsake from his father; but fortunately, many years after the war, it was returned to him by C. W. Keeley, lately a private in the Seventy-third Illinois. Keeley picked off a Confederate sharpshooter near Adairsville, Georgia, on May 17, 1864. The dead man was Wyatt, and he had the Bible in his haversack. Lytle’s address was still in the Bible; thus Keeley was able to return it after the war.15
Many of the Southerners were less interested in looting and eating than in getting a little sleep. Besides the physical exertions of the march to Shiloh and the day’s horrific combat, the soldiers suffered from a lassitude, or lethargy, induced by the day’s extreme tension. Thousands of the Southern soldiers eagerly headed for captured Union tents for some rest.
About midnight, it began to rain heavily, while great thunderclaps pealed through the air. Private Sam Houston, Jr., Second Texas, pulled a complete blank for the night. Wrapping himself in his blanket, he dropped down on the muddy ground. The ice cold rain drenched him through and through, although he did not notice it until he awakened the next morning.16 Like Private Houston, Lieutenant Dent, Robertson’s Battery, was unable to find a captured Union tent so he simply wrapped up in his blanket, stretched out in the mud be side his guns, and dozed off, cold rain or not. Fifteen year old Private Thomas Duncan, For rest’s Cavalry, spent the night sitting up with his back against a tree to keep from drowning. Private Anderson Jetton, First Tennessee, wandered around in the rain until he finally found part of his regiment sleeping in some captured Union tents. Jetton very quietly and quickly slipped into an un occupied section of the tent, but was forced to spend the night awkwardly sprawled on his stomach, a Minie ball having passed through the back of his trousers at their tightest point. Troops from the Twenty-second Alabama slept in Union tents, but the canvas was so bullet-riddled it kept very little rain out; how ever, the men slept soundly in spite of it.17
The Lexington and Tyler fired shells in the general direction of the Confederates at the rate of one every fifteen minutes, but most of the Southern soldiers slept through the fitful bombardment.18
There was very little activity on the battle field except for an occasional nervous picket’s shot. Colonel Forrest’s fifteen-year old son Willie and two other daring young Confederates slipped quietly across no-man’s-land into Union lines, where they surprised a group of tired Federals. The three boys fired their shotguns at the Yanks and charged. A worried Colonel Forrest found out later that night that the three boys had brought in fifteen prisoners.19
Some enlisted men from the Eighteenth Louisiana were on picket duty so close to the Federals that they could hear the enemy talking. Tired of standing guard in the cold rain, two of the Louisianans slipped over past the Union picket post and rounded up a large quantity of pork, potatoes, and blankets, which helped make picket duty slightly less irksome.20
If the rain and cold and fear were not depressing enough, the night added its own little touches of macabre horror. Two Texans filled their canteens in the darkness from what they supposed was a little spring. The water tasted a little peculiar, but they drank it anyway.
The next morning one of them started drinking from the canteen again, only to find the water reddish in color. In disgust and repugnance, he poured the bloody water on the ground.21 Private Johnny Green went to Shiloh Branch to fill a bucket with water to make coffee early in the night. Green stepped over a log half way in the water, only upon taking a second look, he discovered it was a body of a soldier, his blood staining the water. After a few seconds of thought, Green filled his bucket anyway, and he walked on back to his regiment.22
As thousands of Southern soldiers went to sleep Sunday night, they had different weapons from the ones they had cradled in their arms Saturday night. All day long, as the Confederates drove the Federals back toward the Landing, these soldiers exchanged their shotguns and antiquated muskets for the Enfield, Springfield, Austrian, and Belgian rifles dropped by the dead, wounded, or fleeing Yanks.23
To one group of men in particular, the night offered no opportunity for rest. Confederate chaplains, Catholic and Protestant alike, went about their dreary duties of administering sacraments and offering comfort to the dying and wounded, who were scattered over the Shiloh battlefield.24
Across in the Union lines, conditions were probably even worse, since the Southerners had most of the Federal tents. Grant spent the first part of the night under a tree a few hundred yards from the river bank. His injured ankle was still aching badly, and the cold rain drenched his face and body. The general decided to limp back to the log cabin near the Landing. He reached the building in a few minutes, but found it was being used as an emergency hospital. Several doctors busily dressed wounds or sawed off arms and legs as the case called for. Wounded and delirious soldiers screamed and shrieked in their agony, while orderlies carried outside the amputated limbs. After a few minutes of this, Grant decided he preferred the rain, and he returned to the comparative sanity of his tree.25
Grant’s soldiers were in little better shape than their commanding general. Many of his soldiers could not resist wandering off, trying to find food or hunting for word of missing relatives or friends. Orders were for the men to stay on the alert, how ever, and to be prepared in case of a Rebel night attack. The rainfall only added to the miseries of the hungry, unhappy Union soldiers, while gun fire from the Lexington and Tyler interrupted the sleep of many of the fellows who tried to nap in the mud.26
Much of the ammunition supplies that lay around at the Landing became completely watersoaked, while the many individual soldiers were hard pressed to keep their muskets and cartridges dry. The only light was from bolts of lightning, and the men who tried to move around in the darkness tripped and stumbled over broken down wagons, holes, or bodies. Wounded horses and wounded men added cries of terror and pain to the loud thunderclaps and the sharp explosions of the naval guns.27
The only cheering note for the Union army at Pittsburg was the arrival of massed reinforcements. Just after dark Lew Wallace’s tardy division arrived along the Federal right. After the initial confusion caused by Grant’s order to Wallace Sunday morning, the Third Division finally left Crump’s Landing along the Shunpike Road. Wallace believed he was supposed to follow this route and move in to the battlefield at about this point, where he assumed Sherman was engaged near Shiloh Church. With all of his division, except a small detachment to guard Crump’s Landing, Wallace made a fairly quick march toward the battlefield. Grant apparently assumed the Third Division would come by the road nearest the river, the Hamburg and Savannah Road, instead of by the longer and more circuitous route they actually took.
When Wallace failed to arrive at the battlefield in what Grant assumed to be adequate time, he sent messengers to hurry Wallace. These aides, notably his aide de camp, thirty-eight year old Captain William Rowley, finally found Wallace on what they assumed was the wrong road. When Rowley demanded to know what the Indianan was doing, Wallace became slightly rattled and agreed to countermarch his division, using some short country roads, and link up with Grant across the Snake Creek Bridge on the Hamburg and Savannah Road. Ironically by following the Grant-Rowley urgings, Wallace did the Union army a major disservice. If Wallace had ignored Grant’s urgings and continued along his original line of march, he would have struck the Confederate army on its exposed left flank. At the very least, Johnston would have been forced to divert Breckinridge’s troops toward the Shiloh Church position to contain the Union Third Division. It is even possible that Wallace might have routed the Southern army.28
About 6:30 p.m., the advance elements of Wallace’s men crossed over Snake Creek Bridge and within a few minutes joined up with the main Union army.29 Nelson’s division was already being ferried across the Tennessee, the last units crossing the river around 8:30 or 9:00 p.m. This gave Grant two fresh divisions al ready in position, and still more troops arriving every few minutes.
During the long Sunday, Grant apparently forgot he had troops in Savannah other than Nelson’s. Around 9:00 p.m., one of Grant’s staff officers reached Savannah and ordered David Wood’s Fourteenth Wisconsin Infantry to disembark at once and proceed to Pittsburg Landing. The regiment, which had been under arms all day, waiting for orders to move, was immediately drawn up in line. Colonel Wood announced to his men that he had permission to move. He then asked them if they were ready. The men shouted, “Yes,” although Private Elisha Stockwell, Jr. kept his mouth shut, thinking that he would rather remain where he was. The regiment quickly boarded a steamer, reaching Pittsburg around 11:00 p.m., where the men were quickly disembarked.30
Where was the rest of Buell’s army? The Second, Fifth, and Sixth divisions were badly strung out along the road to Savannah early Sunday morning. About eight or nine o’clock in the morning, the soldiers, privates and generals alike, were alarmed by the sounds of artillery fire in the distance. The troops were ordered to drop everything except their muskets and to increase their pace. The Fifth Division began straggling into Savannah around 8:30 p.m. or 9:00 p.m. Sunday night. By midnight or a little after, all of Brigadier General T. L. Crittenden’s Fifth Division was in Savannah, either already on steamers heading for Pittsburg or waiting at the landing for an empty steamer.31
About midnight, Brigadier General Alexander McCook’s unit started arriving in Savannah, the last troops reaching the town about 3:00 or 4:00 a.m. A sizeable traffic jam developed in downtown Savannah, as the soldiers arrived too fast for the steamers to transport them to Pittsburg. Even Grant’s headquarters vessel, the Tigress, was pressed into the service of hauling troops and equipment; but the snarl-up in the town continued.
Some of the steamboats’ captains had little enthusiasm for their jobs, probably fearing their boats would be damaged if caught under fire at the Landing. Many of the vessels brought loads of cowardly stragglers to Savannah, while others arrived filled with wounded. Between the stragglers and the wounded, it proved a slow and difficult process to empty them and then reload transports at the comparatively small Savannah landing.32
Around midnight it started raining, then hailing. Most of the town’s houses were filled with wounded, so many of the army had to lie down to sleep in the backyards, gardens, and streets. Sleeping in the mud would ordinarily have been counted as a hardship, but most of Buell’s men were so tired from the hot march that day they quickly dozed off. A few of the more finicky tried to find an unoccupied porch or shed to sleep under.33
About 4:00 a.m., a steamer carried part of the Sixteenth U. S. Infantry Regiment to Pittsburg, and the men scrambled ashore, pushing back a crowd of stragglers who tried to force their way on the boat. Many of Buell’s regiments had trouble with stragglers at the Landing, but one by one the units of the Army of the Ohio disembarked and were gradually moved into position.34
Buell’s men had a bad time trying to find their assigned positions in the dark, for the ground seemed to be literally covered with Grant’s sleeping soldiers. The new arrivals kept stepping on the sleeping beauties, causing a certain amount of bad language to be exchanged. One Indianan tripped and landed on top of a group of sleeping men. Awakened from his slumber so suddenly, one bruised and startled Federal yelled, “There is a horse lose in camp; he has just passed right over us, and I believe has broke some of my ribs.”35 Another sleeping soldier, possibly a member of the Forty-third Illinois, woke up with a man standing on his leg.36
Besides stumbling over Grant’s sleeping men, some of the new arrivals ran into trees, banging their heads and bloodying their noses thoroughly. In the confusion and darkness, some of Grant’s soldiers accidentally captured General Buell while he was trying to guide some of his troops into position.37
The landing of troops and artillery lasted all night and on into the morning, with the combat strength of the Union forces at Pittsburg steadily increasing. Grant and Buell do not seem to have discussed any coordinated counterattack plan, but by common consent both the Army of the Ohio and the Army of the Tennessee prepared to advance at first light of day.
None of Buell’s regiments had been in a major battle before, although many participated in minor actions in Tennessee, Kentucky, and western Virginia. Troops from the Thirty-fourth Illinois had clashed with John Hunt Morgan’s Confederate Raiders near Nashville in March, while the Fifteenth Ohio had fought in actions at Philippi, Laurel Hill, and Carrick’s Ford, Virginia, and at Woodsonville, Kentucky.38
All of Buell’s regiments were well trained, well equipped, and itching for a fight with the wicked “rebs.” As the sun rose, those of Buell’s soldiers who were already at Pittsburg munched hard tack and drank bad coffee in preparation for what was obviously going to be an exciting morning.
Only a few hundred yards away, Confederate soldiers began waking, up at the orders of their officers. Most of the Southerners were about to get the shock of their lives.
On Sunday afternoon, after receiving Beauregard’s order to withdraw, the Confederate army pulled back an average of one-half mile. Just about every brigade in the Southern army had lost its organizational integrity during the day-long fight, and during the hours of darkness little was or could be done to patch up the various scattered units. At dawn, Monday morning, the Southern army was stretched out in a confused line running from Jones Field to the edge of the Cantrell Field. There was no particular order of battle. Rebel units would fight on Monday in about the order they camped the night before. From right to left, Beauregard’s line of battle was very roughly Chalmers’ Mississippians, some scattered units from the rest of Withers’ Division, the Crescent Regiment, Maney’s First Tennessee, the remnants of Stewart’s Brigade, reinforced by Bate’s Second Tennessee and Tappan’s Thirteenth Arkansas, Cleburne, with fragments of three of his regiments and a large number of stragglers from other commands, Statham’s Brigade, Trabue’s command, Anderson’s command, Gibson’s Brigade (which was in comparatively good shape), Wood’s and fragments of Russell’s Brigade, and Pond’s Louisianans on the extreme Confederate left.
Partly by accident and partly by design, Grant’s army took over the right third of the battlefield, with Buell’s army assuming the responsibility of the center and left. Lew Wallace’s fresh division occupied Grant’s extreme right. Sherman, with fragments of his division, was to Wallace’s left. McClernand had perhaps forty percent of his April 5 effectives in position on Sherman’s left, while Hurlbut’s division held the left of the Army of the Tennessee. The Fourth Division was probably in the best shape of those participating in Sunday’s fighting. Prentiss’ and W. H. L. Wallace’s units simply no longer existed, except as scattered fragments attached to units of other divisions, including some in Buell’s army. Many of Grant’s other regiments were so badly battered that they could not be deployed in the battle line and were held in what was euphemistically called the reserve.39 Nelson’s division, which was the first to land at Pittsburg, held the extreme Union left, while the rest of Buell’s troops were deployed in roughly the same order of disembarkation. Crittenden’s division was on Nelson’s right, while McCook’s division was gradually deployed on Crittenden’s right, as it reached the front.