USA > Iowa > Jasper County > Newton > Third reunion of Iowa Hornets' Nest Brigade : 2d, 7th, 8th, 12th and 14th infantry, held at Newton, Iowa, Wednesday and Thursday, August 21 and 22, 1895 > Part 4
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the rapid approach of General Buell with a reinforcing army, and the facilities for obtaining other troops, as well as the impossibility of bringing forward necessary supplies from Corinth by the Confeder- ates, precluded the possibility of any long continued attack. What was therefore needed, was not an elaborate line of intrenchments sufficient to withstand such an attack but such intrenchments as could have been quickly constructed, and which would have effectu- ally guarded against the possibility of a surprise. As this would have taken but one night, but little time for drill and discipline would have been lost, while safety would have been insured and the battle of Shiloh avoided. The battle of Shiloh has been but little understood, or rather, to speak more accurately, has been persistently misunder- stood from the standpoint of General Grant, simply because the weight of the evidence is decidedly opposed to his contention and because the excuse urged by himself and General Sherman, falls short of meeting this evidence, and of producing conviction in the mind of the thinking public. The impression has gained general acceptance that Shiloh was a surprise, and that, from its commencement until the close of the light on the first day, the efforts of the Federal divisions, brigades, and regiments were to recover from the well sus- tained advantage which had accrued to the Confederate forces from their gallant and unexpected initial attack. In no later part of the war was it necessary for either General Grant or General Sherman to offer an excuse for a duty omitted, or an opportunity unimproved. If General Grant had frankly confessed that his want of proper preparation at Shiloh was attributable to over-confidence, just as he acknowledged his mistake in ordering the last charge at Vicksburg. and the final attack at Cold Harbor, his great military reputation could have suffered little diminution and the perverse refusal to understand the battle of Shiloh would no longer have existed. Between the lines, however, there crops ont something of a confession in the following quotation from page 368 of the first volume of the Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant: "Up to the battle of Shiloh 1, as well as thousands of other citizens, believed that the rebellion against the Goverment would collapse suddenly and soon if a decis- ive victory could be gained over any of its armies. Donelson and Henry were such victories. An army of more than 21,000 men was captured or destroyed. Bowling Green, Columbus and Hickman. Ken- tucky, fell in consequence, and Clarksville and Nashville, Tennessee, the last two with an immense amount of stores, also fell into our hands. The Tennessee and Cumberland rivers from their mouths to the head of navigation were secured. But when the Confederate armies were collected, which not only attempted to hold a line further south, from Memphis to Chattanooga, Knoxville, and on to the Atlantic, `but assumed the offensive, and made anch a gallant effort to regain what had been lost. then, indeed, I gave up all idea of saving the Union. except by complete conquest." If the author of this language had frankly confessed that his reliance upon what he conceived must necessarily follow the fall of Forts Henry and Donel- son, had prevented such precautions as, in the face of the enemy he should have adopted, and that, from this oversight there had been rendered possible such a surprise that only by the determined resist- ance of all the divisions of his army, had complete disaster been averted until nightfall, there would have been expressly conceded only what is the natural, if not the necessary inference to be de- rived from the language just quoted. His admission that the battle
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of Shiloh completely destroyed his belief that the defeats which had been sustained at Henry and Donelson, would work the dissolution of the Confederacy, was an admission not only of too great confidence on his part, but that, of this confidence, Shiloh was a complete rebuke. The verdict of history upon consideration of the abundant evidence available must be that Shiloh is correctly understood. and that there is still less accuracy in the charge that this battle has been most persistently misunderstood. There exists no reason why the great thinking public should wish to deceive itself in regard to this particular battle. It is fast becoming, as each of its survivors soon must be, a thing of the past. The dispassionate historian will gather his facts from insensate records which, while they may bear witness to the present existence of prejudice and self justification, can communicate none of that virus to his narrative of events. Then, and not till then, will it be fully recognized that at Shiloh while the mistake of one general imperilled the safety of the entire Federal army, the rectification was by thousands of officers and men, perhaps raw in drill and discipline, yet united in purpose and stead- fast of faith in a noble cause the preservation of the Federal Union.
General Prentiss closed the session with a few chosen remarks stirring the andience and making a happy closing to the afternoon's exercises.
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Camp Fire.
The comrades assembled at brigade headquarters at 7:30 P. M. and escorted by the drum corps, marched to the opera house, which was rapidly filled to the utmost capacity; the citizens seeming to en- ter fully into the spirit of the occasion.
Robert Burns presided at the camp fire. After an earnest invo- cation by the Rev. E. C. Brooks, followed by a song. the first shot was fired by Colonel Moore, of Bloomfield. The speech was full of fun, interspersed with the serious side of a soldier's life and was enjoyed by the audience.
"TEN MINUTES WITH THE OLD BOYS."
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen and Comrades:
I onght not to begin my remarks with an apology but I believe it is dne this andience that I should. There was a time when I could say what I had to say to an audience, and say it the same day. But I felt the nudge of the good wife's elbow in my ribs this morn- ing at 3 o'clock and she said: It is time for you to get up if you are going to go to Newton today, you had better start. And now when you take a man of my age, almost seventy-four years old, who is kicked out of bed in the early morning, at the early hour of three o'clock, and then getting here on a freight train after three hours delay, feeling as I do, as if I had been boiled with cabbage, you must forgive me if I do not entertain you.
I promised to try to talk ten minutes with the old boys, and when I say "the old boys" you know what I mean. I mean the fellows who have grown gray with the weight of years, the men who, in the early prime of early manhood went ont, bidding farewell to everything at home, and went away to the south-land to do and dare and die for what they believed was the right. And many of them are here tonight, many of them who have grown old and it will be but a little while -and I say it, I don't know that I regret it - because there is a time when the poor wearied soul seeks rest, when the poor wearied body wants rest --- it will be but a little time un- til delicate hands, with the touch of an infant's kiss will close down the eyes of these old men, and it is for good-bye. But it will come to him as a rest, looking back over the years of his manhood and the great struggle in which he has participated, that this might be a home, a resting place for the children that were yet unborn. He will say, I have tried faithfully my duty: I have stood and looked into the face of the foe, met death a thousand times and yet never shrank from it; and then he will say, why should I shrink from it now. They will go away with the conscious reflection that the world has been some better by their having lived in it.
Now sometimes the question is asked me, why is it these old men cling together so closely? Can anybody tell you? Well, there are some things that nobody can tell anything about. I sometimes think I can tell and sometimes I am sure I don't know why it is they cling so closely together. The question was asked an Irishman one time, or he rather asked the question himself: "What is it that makes this light?" And he says, "I can't tell. I know it is what you call electricity, I know that, and I know that it makes thunder and lightning and all that, but may the divil fhly away with me if I can find out what
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makes this hair-pin burn in the bottle." You see these old men com- ing together. You see them meeting together as we are meeting this fall, everywhere, all over beautiful lowa, grand old Iowa, the beanti- ful, and everywhere amid the smiles of women, the sweetness of song, and the fragrance of flowers these old men get together and have a grand and glorious time, and tell their old stories, and fight their old battles over again, and when the time for departure comes, with heart beating to heart, and hands slow to nnclasp he says, good-bye, John, don't stay long -- and so it is. We are meeting year by year, and this old Hornets' Nest Brigade-there is something that makes our hearts cling together. While my comrade was reading tonight his article upon the battle of Shiloh, how the mind wanders back. The old men go away back and live over the time now in shadowy past. How I remember it and how I remember of getting down into that old sunken road, and I wa'n't the only one that did it. It seemed a little bit as though we were entirely too large, so to speak, as though we could not get flat enough upon that road. I remember of having a great big man beside of me and seeing who could get the nearest into the ground I remarked to the fellow, you are a great big, strong, muscular man and I am a little bit of a fellow, and lying down upon your right and the balls are coming in that direction, they could pass directly over my body and take you about in the middle. I am not the slightest protection to you in the world, not the slightest in the world, and if you want to do the fair thing by me, Pete, now what is the reason you can't be real clever and pick up just about a half bushel of this sand in your mouth and make a battery of yourself and get over on the other side? Well, Pete suggested to me that that was not a good time to swap horses when we were crossing the stream. Now there are a great many incidents connected with our army life that are amusing. There are a great many others that touch us with tears. There are times that come over me, and I have no doubt with most of my old comrades -perhaps I am a little bit more imaginative than some others, I don't know. but I know that there are times that I could go and sit down by myself, or take a walk away off into the woodland and sit down among the green leaves and upon the grass, and reflect, go back over these old dates and call up incidents and talk to myself-but I confess that I always like to hear a nice man talk [langhter] -- and talk to myself, I don't know as I ought to say this-I can talk myself to tears or I laugh like a boy. And now this some accounts to yon why these old comrades get together and talk. It is astonishing to me sometimes what an amount of stuff we can think up when we commence to talk. I know a little circum- stance that came to my mind to day when I was real cross too, and it was a blessed thing, perhaps, for it started me to laugh- ing a little. I got to thinking of one of the most ridiculous things that happened in St. Louis while we were there.
The story came through the newspaper one morning that there was a man found dead in the river-drowned. Well all at once the question came up: Was that any of our men? Now we must begin to look that matter up, but in looking down, we found that the name was Herman Schroeder, must be a German certainly, and I looked over the list of my men and satisfied myself it wasn't any of my meu. But there happened to be a Herman Schroeder in one of the regi- ments, and when Herman found that he was dead, that he had been drowned, he thought he would go up and see about it. So he gets up and goes to the morgue and goes to the gentleman that was in charge
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and he says: "I see that Herman Schroeder is dead; I want to see him; that is me." So they brought him in and there lay the dead man and he stood back, he didn't want to go close because it alarmed him. He says: "Mister, I'd like to have you look a little bit at that man; them breeches js brown, that is mine: there is a blue coat, that is this, now, Mister, I'd like to have you look at that man's eyes, please." He looked at his eyes. "What is the color of his eyes?" "They are blue." "Thank the Lord, they are blue; if they had been , black, it would have been me." Now he had wrought himself up into that state of feeling that he thought he was dead, and now, ladies and gentle- men, if you would look at one of these old gentlemen that are stand- ing beside me and behind me, who have grown gray, it would haidly occur to you that those men were at one time in the war, absolute- ly so brave, I may say, willing to take the responsibility, I may say, that awful responsibility that rests upon a single suspender button while he was climbing the fence with a rooster under each arm. (Loud applause.) There were a great many little things that served to amuse us. It oft times astomshed me at the ingenuity of our men. They were just like other people, and you take the restraint that is thrown upon a young man when he is in the ser- vice, the result is it is a very little while until the younger men tire and weary of that restraint and they want to get out from under it a little bit; he wants to feel that he is a man. They were the men coming from the schools and universities, our colleges and business houses and the young man from the farm, who had to control the business of this country in the future. And they would tire of the restraint yet after all they were willing to own a respectable discipline, and during the time they were under the orders of the officers they were true and faithful, but there were times if you gave him the opportunity, he would perform some wonder- ful feats. I remember of one of my boys who had a long, affidavit face-he would have made an excellent circuit rider in the old time days of Indiana when I used to be there and shake with the agne- that was a singular face upon that boy, but he seemed so kind of considerate when he would come to me, and I felt now, 1 would like to give him every opportunity to enjoy himself; and he used to want to go out into the country and not forage, no, no! but go to the houses of the farmers and get something that was differ- ent from the army rations and once in awhile I used to observe, someway, that the hind part of my tent lifted up and a nice plate of butter or something slipped in-and I couldn't tell for the life of me where it came from. Well, I let this boy go out and he got acquainted with a rebel family, very nice people, and he used to go from time to time- he was rather of a literary turn of mind, and he got acquainted with their girls-and go sky-larking around; but it so happened, the story came to me-he didn't tell me himself -- that one night he went back to this same house where he had been going for several days, and he had taken the lay of the land dur- ing the time and knew just how to get into the smokehouse; and sometime in the night the landlord heard a noise outside and he went out and discovered that the noise was in the smokehouse; he slipped back into the house, quietly lit his iantern, pushed the door of the smokehouse open and held up his light full in the face of this good friend of his, that had been sharing his hospitality from day to day, and there he stood with a ham in each hand. "Now look here, young man, you have come to my house from time to
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time, I have tried to give you the hospitality of my house, we have tried to be just as pleasant to you as possible, yon have sat down to my table and shared what we had and I looked upon you as my friend, notwithstanding you were in the army, notwithstanding you were fighting against us, and now 1 find you with a ham in each hand, absolutely coming and stealing from me in the dead hours of the night. Why don't you talk to me?" "Well, Iaint got nothing to say, that is about the amount of it." ( Laughter)
Another one of those fellows just comes to my mind. Now he used to want to go out and forage, and I says to him, now you want to be very careful, very considerate toward these people; there is nothing brave at all in trampling upon people because you have the power to do so. You will go home, and you will be a manly man wherever you go-so he promised faithfully he would, but after he had been going in and out for some considerable length of time, one of my men came to me and said: "That fellow has been fooling you -he has been pulling the wool over your eyes." "Well, I wouldn't doubt it. he seems to be a pretty clever fellow. Well, what is he doing?" "Well, he is going out and bringing in whiskey." Ile was then ont at that time and so I thought I would watch the fellow and when I saw him coming into the line, says 1, "Halt, stop right there. I am satisfied that you have been playing off on me; word comes to me that you are going out of here and bringing in whiskey and selling it to these boys here. Now I want to know if that isso?" He had a coffee pot and he had gone out after milk and he just simply raised up the end of the coffee pot and poured out a little stream of milk. Says I, "that will do"- - but I learned afterwards that the fellow had taken a little bit of dough and filled up the spout. (Laughter.)
Now, my comrades, Ihave talked to you enough. I propose now to give way to some of these gentlemen here. I want to say, it is a blessed thing for me to meet with the old boys; it is a pleasant thing for me to look into their faces, to fight these bat- tles over again, and as I say, it will be but a few years I will be permitted to talk to you. There is something in this that reminds me of our homes, our early homes, our early boyhood homes, and if there is anything on earth that comes into the heart of an old man, it is when he goes back to his old home and lingers around the hearth-stone. The old fashioned wheel was there and mother was spinning, and the tired boy lies down upon the naked puncheon floor and sleeps the sleep of the just while mother runs out the number of ents that was the day's work. It is a pleasant thing: it does us good; it makes us better men: it tones up the virtues and tones down the vices, and steadily, steadily guides our wayward feet, so to speak, into that path that I hope leads to a purer shrine than that simply that leads us to the shrine of manhood. Now, comrades, I want to hear something from these old friends that are behind me here. ) was delighted with the remarks of my friends here. But a thought comes to me now. Perhaps a great many men cannot comprehend and grasp the terror, the absolute terror of a battle. I cannot describe it to you, I cannot do that, no. The roar of artillery, the strains of triumphant music. the shouts of joy that comes to you from the victorious army- you can't realize it; I shall never be able to comprehend and grasp it. I just remember that terrible road in Shiloh. I had a man who was wounded at Ft. Donelson but had so far recovered that he
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thought he would be able to participate in the fight. Now at this time that the roar of the artillery was so terrific, I saw that man was suffering and suffering terribly. In this old sunken road was a little gully where the water was washed out until it was sufficiently deep to hold a man below the surface. I took that man and placed him below the surface of the ground, until his body was completely below it. with the hope that the sound of this artillery would not injure him so much, but yet it was abso- lutely so terrific and so great that the blood just leaped from his ears. Now you can comprehend it in a measure, somewhat.
Now, comrades, have a blessed good time tonight, and tomor- row. and go away from here resolved that you will meet together for a thousand years to come (Continued applause.)
After a solo, "My Soldier Boy," by Miss Le Ora Townsend, Cap- tain J. B. Morrison followed with a paper entitled "Shiloh." The Captain had recently visited the battlefield and his description of the present surroundings was very interesting:
SHILOH.
In the early spring of 1862, at a time when many of the leading men and women of today were babes in arms, there was an older growth of lowa boys who were in arms for three years, or during the war.
The great Civil war was in full blast- the army of the Potomac was making its regular weekly forward movement, interspersed with disasters and defeats, and the people of the north were wearing long faces. The slaughter at Belmont had passed; Ft. Henry had been captured on the Tennessee river; Ft. Donelson's fortified bills on the Cumberland river had been climbed, and northern confidence lifted up with the capture of that stronghold and 15,000 prisoners of war. Columbus, Kentucky, had been evacuated and Nashville, Tennessee, given up by the rebel army.
The news from the southwest was not cheering to Jeff Davis and his cabinet at Richmond. Too much territory was being lost -- the invaders were getting too far south. By both threats and entreaties the rebel generals and their soldiers were called upon to defend their firesides and drive the invaders from southern soil.
An army was massed at Corinth, Mississippi, composed of the best troops and commanded by the most able generals of the south. For two months everything was being done to get ready for the most desperate fighting. It was the flower of the rebel forces in the south- west. and contained forty thousand fighting men.
While this was going on Gen. Grant was sending up the Tennes- see river steamboats loaded with soldiers. They were debarked at Pittsburg Landing, Tenn., a point twenty-six miles northeast from Corinth, Mississippi. Some of these troops had seen service at Bel- mont, Ft. Henry and Ft. Donelson, but many were fresh from the farms and workshops of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, had never been under fire and scarcely knew the manual of arms. They marched np the hill at Pittsburg Landing and went into camp wherever they pleased; some selecting a grove, others a hillside, and others a camp nearer a creek, so that this army of 33,000 men were scattered hap- hazard over several miles, and as it happened, the rawest troops were on the front line. Gen. Grant, the commander, was at Savannah,
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seven miles below on the opposite side of the river. The division of Gen. Lew Wallace, which was not in the fight the first day, (for some reason which is in dispute) was at Crumps Landing.
On Sunday morning, April 6th, at 5 o'clock, the rebel army from Corinth, forty thousand strong, suddenly and in full force attacked this camp. They found the men asleep in their tents or in some cases were just preparing their morning meal. This sudden onset so demoralized our front that inside of three hours fully 8000 of our men were "out of the fight" leaving the remaining 25,000 to contest the further advance of the rebels. Gen. Beauregard cheered on the already victorious army and told them he would water his horse that night in the Tennessee river or in hell.
The lowa brigade, commanded by Gen. Tuttle-whose battle scarred veterans are assembled here tonight-were camped near the river. At 8 o'clock A. M. they were ordered to the front with eighty rounds of ammunition. Heavy firing had been heard all the morning, but was not understood, as no battle was expected. On the way to the front, panic stricken soldiers were met rushing to the rear, who said the whole earth was swarming with rebels and it was certain death to go to the front. We soon struck the enemy -- he wasn't hard to ilnd -and as we hastily formed a line of battle along an old road, we could see the closed columns of the enemy with flags flying and bayonets glistening in the morning sun. Their artillery unlim- bered for action and they poured shot and shell into our lines, while their infantry charged us, and the roar of battle was like the letting loose of millions of demons.
Ten o'clock came and it seemed a day had gone by; noon came, we didn't think about dinner- one o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock, four o'clock, each hour seeming longer than the one before, and still our line was held-not an inch of ground was yielded.
This was the Hornets' Nest. The reports of the rebel officers who said they couldn't dislodge that line, have made the spot famous. It has been in song and story and painted on canvas, and takes its place in American history as an example of bull dog tenacity never surpassed on this continent.
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