USA > Indiana > The soldier of Indiana in the war for the union, Vol. I > Part 31
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much to the right, and almost immediately after commencing his movement he found himself in the midst of Bragg's and Hardee's forces, which had poured in after Prentiss. He held his ground until Wallace, with the rest of his division, came to his assistance.
Now eighty thousand men were fighting in that small area, one side with the energy and the bitterness of despair, the other with the fury of a bloody and sweeping triumph. General Grant was like the demon of old Greek superstition, moving to and fro, undisturbed and cool, untouched by bullet or ball, and so quiet that none noticed him except those to whom he spoke. He said to Sherman, " Make a stubborn resistance. I will keep you supplied with ammunition;" to Prentiss, " You are doing right;" and so to one and another he gave a suggestion or a word of encouragement, seldom an order. On that wooded field it was impossible even for him to be advised of all the movements; each General, there- fore, understood he was to do the best he could.
The desperate fortunes of Prentiss could not be retrieved. He tried once more to reform his broken brigades. But he had no longer a brigade, nor a regiment, nor a whole company, except that grouped around him, were three thousand faithful men. They fought well, but they were overpowered, cap- tured and carried to the rear of the Confederate army.
With Prentiss gone, Hurlbut's right was more exposed than ever; his left also, by the falling back of Stuart. He sent two batteries to the rear, because of the death of artillerists and horses, and was obliged to call upon two pieces of Cav- ender's battalion to check the advance of the enemy on the first brigade, while he moved his third from the right to the left. These pieces were brought into action by the sur- geon of the battalion, and a Lieutenant, and effectually checked the enemy for half an hour, during which a new front was formed with the third brigade. Lauman was now in an open field, in which were a few scattered trees. The enemy came over a ridge to the right of Stuart's former line, and directly in Lauman's front, Texans waving their lone star. An hour of uninterrupted fighting followed, during which the brigade did not swerve. The color-bearer of the Forty-Fourth
367
BACK TO THE BLUFFS.
fell; another seized his flag; the second bearer was shot down; again the banner was tottering to the earth, when a third hand grasped it; soon the third heroic hand relaxed its clasp on the fatal staff; one more was bold enough to snatch the trembling colors, Lieutenant Newman, of company F. He also fell. Then, to a man, the regiment rallied round the flag, bore it to the front, and held it stoutly up while the battle lasted.
Willard's battery, under Hurlburt's direction, was thrown into position and kept up a steady discharge of artillery on the Confederates, until Lauman's brigade, first delivering a deadly volley, obstructed the line of fire by charging full up the hill. A heavy force threatened to close in between Lau- man's brigade and the river, and after allowing him to push forward three or four hundred yards, Hurlburt recalled him, and retreated quietly and steadily beyond his camp to several twenty-four pound siege guns which were in battery on the bluff.
While Hurlburt defended the left, Sherman on the right saw that what remained of his division was held by a break- ing cord. He ordered it back; and still as the struggle went on he ordered it further back; until at last his broken ranks stood where Wallace's reserves had been encamped.
Major Foster again tells the story of Veatch's brigade:
" In the afternoon our pickets reported the Rebels advancing against us on the left of General MeClernand. As soon as we had drawn them well up by our pieket skirmishers, under Captain Rheinlander, the Fourteenth Illinois flanked them, and was beginning to pour upon them a heavy fire, while we were moving up in fine style, when our whole left, which had been for eight hours steadily and stubbornly resisting the advance of the enemy in that direction, gave way, and came seeping by us in utter and total confusion-cavalry, ambu- lances, artillery and thousands of infantry, all in one mass, while the enemy was following closely in pursuit, at the same time throwing grape, cannister and shells thick and fast. It was a time of great excitement and dismay. It appeared that all was lost.
"I was cut off from Colonel Veatch by this receding move-
368
THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
ment, and as I could receive no orders from him, I saw nothing left for me to do but to withdraw. But I was unwilling to throw our regiment into the flying mass, only to be trampled to pieces and thoroughly disorganized and broken. So I held the men back in the wash on the side of the road, until the mass of the rout had passed, when I put them in the rear of the retreat. By this means I fell into a heavy cross-fire of the enemy, but I preferred it to being crushed to pieces by our own army. Here we lost a number killed and many wounded.
"Colonel Veatch acted with great courage. He was always with his brigade in the thickest of the fight. Two horses were shot under him, one was shot twice, and he was wounded, but he never left the field."
Wallace was the last division commander to yield ground. When he ordered his brigades to retreat he turned his back slowly and sadly on the lost field. Where he turned, there he fell. His men tried to snatch him from the ground, but pursuing bullets swept them back, and they left him alone on the field of his glory.
General Grant went about among his officers; he had not far to go, they were close together on the river bank, and said, "The enemy has expended the fury of his attack. We can keep him off to-day, and to-morrow go at him with fresh troops."
With General Sherman he estimated our loss and our strength. He related to his favorite division commander that at a certain stage of the battle before Fort Donelson he saw that either side was ready to give way if the other showed a bold front, and that he accordingly assumed the requisite effrontery, and won the day. He thought the position of affairs on the present field was similar, and he trusted with Lew Wallace's fresh divisjon united to the troops which had already been engaged he could assume the offensive at day- light. He gave orders accordingly.
It was a bold heart that did not quail at the thought of the morrow. The front, originally three miles in length, now extended but three-quarters of a mile. Nearly all the camps were gone. Nearly half the artillery, and more than twenty
369
"AT EVENING TIME IT SHALL BE LIGHT."
flags had fallen into the hands of the enemy. One division General, with two thousand two hundred of his men, was a prisoner. Another was among the slain. The hospitals could not hold the wounded, und surgeons pursued their work upon a long bluff in the open air. Every regiment reckoned its noblest and its best on that bloody bluff, or abandoned on the field. Hundreds of distorted dead lay not a mile from the landing. Repulse after repulse had been suffered; one more, and all that remained of the army, not nineteen thous- and men would be swept into the river. Already the enemy's balls were dropping in the water. Hours Sherman had held a bridge for the passage of Lew Wallace, who before noon was ordered from Crump's Landing, only six miles off. His division had seen service. The call to battle was to him as the blast of the bugle to the merry huntsman, but Sherman had waited in vain. No reinforcements and no word from them had arrived. Would they yet come? Was it not pos- sible they had shared the fate of Prentiss, or suffered worse ? Five thousand men, nearer ten thousand, whose heart and flesh had faild for fear, cowered on the river brink. They clung to their helpless guns, but showed no other feature of the soldier. Would their courage be restored on the morrow by the sight of the slippery and ghastly field ?*
As General Grant repeated, "To-morrow we will assume the offensive," only the heart of Sherman responded. The placid tenacity of the Commander-in-Chief seemed too like that obstinacy which will not look fact in the face. But perhaps the tide was already turning. The gunboats, Tyler and Lexington, had been all day moving up and down,
" A correspondent of the Cincinnati Commercial relates that while he was looking at officers going round among the men on the river bank, storming, coaxing, commanding, he heard a Major utter the following exhortation : "Men of Kentucky, of Illinois, of Ohio, of Indiana, of Iowa, I implore you, I beg of you, come up now. Help us through two hours more. By all that you hold dear, by the homes you hope to defend, by the flag you love, by the States you honor, by all your love of country, by all your hatred of treason, come up and do your duty now!" "That feller's a good speaker !" remarked one of the fugitives, who had so far recovered his equanimity as to be able to listen, but as he made the remark he nestled more snugly in his place of security. Life is sweet.
-
370
THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
anxious, but unable to take a part. At last, when Beaure- gard's success brought the Rebel troops near the mouth of Lick creek, into a ravine which was open to the gunboat artil- lery, Lieutenant Gwin asked leave to fire. He promptly and skillfully availed himself of the permission which was at once given him. The work was not left in his hands. Broken regiments and disordered battalions came gradually into line. The seige guns, behind which Hurlburt had fallen, were kept in play. Colonel Webster, chief of Grant's staff, collected other guns, and so directed them that they swept every approach to the landing.
All unexpectedly, on the other side of the river, came a brave sight-cavalry, banners, bayonets, long lines of men in blue, tramping gaily to the music of the cannon. Buell! Buell had come!
Ammon's brigade of Nelson's division, accompanied by thirty-five men of the Second cavalry, under Major Stewart, was immediately ferried across, together with Generals Buell and Nelson. The runaways on the bank crowded to the water's edge as the boats approached. Guards with fixed bayonets kept them from leaping aboard, but could not hush their pit- eous stories of the day's disaster. "Our regiment's all gone but sixteen; all killed!" "You'll never come back!" "Oh, I pity you!" Such exclamations may have caused some tremor, but excited more indignation and scorn on the part of the fresh soldiers. The rage of General Nelson waxed hot. Scattering curses right and left, he hastened to the presence of General Grant and requested permission "to open fire on the knaves."
The Sixth Ohio and Thirty-Sixth Indiana, Colonel Grose, advanced into line with Grant's forces about six o'clock. 'Their position was in the road directly under the fire of the Rebel artillery, and they soon became actively engaged. General Nelson ascribed to these two regiments, especially to the Thirty-Sixth Indiana, the secession of firing and speedy withdrawal of the enemy to a more distant part of the field.
General Wallace arrived shortly after dark. After stand- ing all forenoon with his forces concentrated and ready
371
NIGHT ON THE FIELD OF SHILOH.
to move, he received orders to take position on the right of Sherman, forming his line at right angles with the river. He started at once, and had almost reached Snake creek on a road which led directly to Shiloh Church, when he was overtaken by two of General Grant's aids, who informed him that our army had retreated, that the right to which he was directed to proceed was then fighting close to the river, and that the road he was pursuing would take him to the enemy's rear, where he would certainly be cut off. Wallace accordingly made a countermarch to the river road, which, following the windings of the Tennessee bottom, crosses Snake creek by the bridge Sherman had so long held for him. It was dark, but a junc- tion was effected, and, moving in silence, Wallace obtained a position which was not far in the rear of the line occupied by Sherman in the morning.
The tumult of the day was followed by a deep silence, which was broken only by the landing of troops, until it occurred to General Nelson's mind, ingenious for the contri- vance of pain, that the enemy would be refreshed by repose. He forthwith dispatched a message to Lieutenant Gwin, advising him to throw an eight-inch shell every ten minutes among the Confederates, to prevent their sleeping. Gwin immediately acted on the suggestion, and continued a regu- lar fire through the night, not only disturbing the enemy's sleep, but forcing him up towards the church, and the south- west corner of the ground.
A storm of rain came up, greatly to the discomfort of the troops, many of whom were unprovided with blankets, while all were without fires and already shivering with the cold; but as much to the refreshment of the wounded, who, thirsty, feverish and bleeding, received no consolation but from the cooling drops.
Before nightfall General Beauregard sent the following dis- patch to Richmond:
" We have this morning attacked the enemy in a strong position in front of Pittsburg, and after a severe battle of ten hours, thanks to Almighty God, gained a complete victory, driving the enemy from every position.
"The loss on both sides is heavy, including our Com-
372
THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
mander-in-Chief, Albert Sidney Johnston, who fell gallantly leading his troops into the thickest of the fight."
General Beauregard, however, could not be entirely satis- fied with the state of affairs. General Johnston was dead; General Gladden would die; Generals Cheatham, Clark, Hindman, Bushrod Johnson and Bowen were all wounded. The Provisional Governor of Kentucky, fighting in the ranks, had fallen a sacrifice to his zeal. The list of the lost and of the incapacitated for further service was long and black. The Confederate officers were ill at ease about the Army of the Ohio. The coming of Buell was not known or suspected; it was now not even fcared that he would arrive in time to unite his forces with those of Grant; the cheering of his troops as they ascended the river was heard; it was also responded to by Confederate troops who mistook the source; the strains of "Hail Columbia" were wafted over the bluffs below Pittsburg, but they excited no suspicion of the arrival of a new force. The anxiety of the Confederates rose from the probability that the Army of the Ohio would appear on the ground, and drag them into another desperate battle before they could recover from the exhaustion to which they were now reduced, and would thus cause them to lose the spoils which they had so hardly gained, and all the fruits of victory. The severity of the storm and of the fire from the gunboats robbed them of needful rest, and the impenetrable darkness of the night, added to the confusion into which the fighting of the day and especially the repulse of the evening had thrown the army. General Anderson says in his report: " With my saddle for a seat, and a blanket thrown over my head, I sat all night at the root of an apple tree. My staff and troops cheerfully partook of the same fare." Many officers, not so happy, searched all night for their troops, and many soldiers for their regiments. General Jackson's brigade in General Bragg's corps could not at all be found. Many regiments were broken into squads, which were scattered beyond possibility of concentration, and all were exhausted and partially disorganized.
General Beauregard made strenuous efforts to restore order, and his officers gallantly seconded him. A strong rear-guard
MAP OF SHILOH.
21
=
N
1722
3. McClernand.
4. Hurlbut.
5. Smith.
22. Artillery.
Evening of 6th.
6. Nelson and Crittenden.
7. Hurlbut.
8. McClernand.
9. Sherman.
23. Artillery.
Morning of 7th.
10. Nelson.
11. Crittenden.
12. McCook.
13. Hurlbut.
14. McClernand.
15. Sherman.
16. Wallace.
24. Artillery.
Evening of 7th.
25
25
1. Sherman.
17. Nelson.
417
25
Ilamburg Road.
124
-10
23
3. McClernand.
21. Wallace.
4. Hurlbut.
25. Artillery.
6
Snake.
Pitts. Land'g.
PERRINE
2
22
Owl Creek.
15
20
Snake
19
Creek.
18
13
24
5
24
111
12
7
18. Crittenden.
4
19. Wood.
20. McCook.
Lick Creek.
Positions Morning of the 6th.
1. Sherman.
2. Prentiss.
Shiloh.
E
Wallace arriving.
373
LINE OF BATTLE.
was placed to catch or shoot all stragglers. Another effective force was sent to look up thieves who were burrowing in the Federal tents. Miscellaneous regiments which did good service the following day, were formed of troops who had lost their commanders, and of commanders who had lost their troops.
General Beauregard and General Bragg snatched a few hour's sleep in Sherman's encampment, near the church, and were early at work arranging their forces with the intention of making an attack before Grant's disheartened trooys were in motion.
The Federal officers were not less busy during that gloomy night. General Buell's troops came in every hour, either on crowded steamboats or along the river banks through eight or ten miles of mud from Savannah. Tired and dripping, shocked by the sight of the pale wounded and the ghastly dead dimly descried in the darkness, and not unaffected by the prognostications of the fugitives, who renewed at each arrival their doleful explanation of their position, they yet marched steadily to the front.
" Like a cloud of dread,
Heavy and dead,
Was the sound of their earnest, anxious tread."
General Buell arranged his lines with great care. Nelson had the left, the ground over which Stuart and Hurlburt retreated. His division was in three brigades, under Colonel Ammon, Colonel Bruce, and Colonel Hazen. In Ammon's brigade, and on the extreme left, was the Thirty-Sixth Indiana and two Ohio regiments; Bruce's brigade consisted of three Kentucky regiments; Hazen's of two Ohio, one Kentucky and one Indiana, the Ninth, Colonel Moody. In front was- an open field, partially screened on the right by a skirt of woods, which extended through the enemy's line.
On Nelson's right, where Prentiss was captured, was Gen- eral Crittenden with seven Ohio and Kentucky regiments. and two batteries. In front of Crittenden's left was a thick undergrowth, before his right was an open field.
General McCook's division, which did not begin to arrive until daylight, and was not all landed until ten, was arranged, as it came up, to the right of Crittenden, where McClernand
25
374
THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
the day before made his desperate stand. An open field was in front of McCook's left, and woods with a thick under- growth before his right.
The ground, mainly level in frontof Nelson, formed a hollow in front of Crittenden, and fell into the bed of a small tribu- tary of Owl creek in front of McCook. The Hamburg road, which crosses Lick creek a mile from its mouth, passed per- pendicularly through the line of battle near Nelson's left. The distance from one extremity to the other of Buell's army was a mile and a half.
On McCook's right was Hurlburt's first brigade, McCler- nand's division, and such of W. H. L. Wallace's and Pren- tiss' troops as could be collected. Hurlburt's third brigade, the Thirty-First and Forty-Fourth Indiana, the Seventeenth and Twenty-Fifth Kentucky, was next. This brigade, though wet to the skin by the rain, though without food since the broken breakfast of Sunday, and sadly reduced in numbers, seemed neither weary nor faint. Cruft was a stoic, uncon- scious of pain, and Reed, though more ardent, was not less enduring.
Sherman's division stood still further to the right, and last was Lew. Wallace's. In the division of General Wallace were three brigades, under Colonel Smith, Colonel Thayer and Colonel Whittlesy. The first contained the Eleventh Indiana, Colonel McGinnis, the Eighth Missouri and the Twenty-Fourth Indiana, Colonel Hovey, which had joined Grant's army immediately after the fall of Donelson. The second brigade was composed of the First Nebraska, Fifty- Eighth Ohio and the Twenty-Third Indiana, Colonel San- derson. The third was composed of three Ohio regiments The division was on a steep ridge, at the western foot of which was a small creek, bordered by a low, muddy bottom.
Each brigade of Buell's army furnished its own reserve. Veatch's brigade, with several smaller bodies, was held back as reserve by General Grant.
Recapitulated, the divisions from left to right were, Nelson, Crittenden, McCook, Hurlburt, McClernand, Sherman and Wallace. The Indiana troops, in order from left to right, were the Thirty-Sixth and Ninth, the Sixth, Twenty-Ninth,
375
MORNING.
"Thirtieth, Thirty-Second and Thirty-Ninth, the Thirty-First and Forty-Fourth, the Eleventh, Twenty-Fourthi and Twenty- Third, with Thompson's and Thurber's batteries; and in the reserve the Twenty-Fifth regiment. At one end of the long curving line was the Thirty-Sixth, at the other end was the Twenty-Third, and forming the center were McCook's troops, about half of which were Indiana men.
The Confedrate officers were not able to form their army with much regularity. A part of Bragg's and a part of Polk's corps had the extreme Rebel right before Nelson. General Bragg himself with another portion of his corps was on the extreme right in front of Wallace.
Breckinridge was in front of McCook, and some of his brigades were before Wallace and Sherman. Beauregard was in the center of the Rebel line, near Shiloh, with a strong body of reserves. A battery commanded Nelson's left; another the woods in front of Crittenden's left; a third com- manded the same woods and the fields before Crittenden's right and McCook's left; a fourth was in front of McCook's right. The Confederate line was well defended by batteries, especially the center, where, beside the others, was a cele- brated New Orleans battery, the Washington Light Artillery, and in front of Wallace, where, also, with others, was a fine Louisiana battery ..
The design of the Northern commanders was to make a steady advance, especially with their right and left, the center co-operating according to circumstances. The Southern Generals determined with their left to make a steady and vehement effort to gain the right of Wallace, with their center and right to make rapid and concentrated assaults, first upon one point, then upon another.
General Nelson roused his men at four in the morning by riding quietly along his front. When the line of battle was dressed and the skirmishers were well out, he sent an aid to General Buell to inform him that he was ready for action. About half past five his division moved toward the enemy in pefect order, as if on drill. The action began slowly, but as Nelson advanced grew warm, until he was obliged to pause for the completion of Crittenden and McCook's lines.
376
THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
About the same time that Nelson made his advance on the left, Thompson's battery on the extreme right, supported by Thayer's brigade, opened fire on the Rebel battery on the opposite point. Thurber aided Thompson by a cross fire. In a short time one of the enmy's guns was dismounted, and he fell back to a strip of woods in his right and rear. Wal- lace's troops crossed the muddy hollow, forced the Rebel left back on its center, and the mass to retreat confusedly under a deadly fire. When off the point the Confederate com- mander spread out his flank again, and fought for every inch of the ridges and hollows over which, in the end, he had to retreat. Wallace changed his front to meet the change in the enemy's movements, and kept his flank still beyond that of the enemy.
General Beauregard sent from the center a detachment of apparently twelve regiments, which moved in beautiful order across the opening, in plain view of Wallace's division, evi- dently aiming at his right flank. Thompson's battery shelled the approaching column vigorously, but without checking or turning its course, and, at length, out of ammunition, was forced to retire, and give the defense of the flank to Thurber. Thurber's battery had scarcely gained a position when the Rebels attempted to charge it, first with a force of cavalry and afterwards with a body of infantry, but Wallace's third brigade advanced into a strip of woods in front of the bat- tery and protected it successfully. During these assaults on the flank, the front of the division was exposed to a severe cannonading, but by means of ravines and gullies it so shel- tered itself as to suffer little loss.
Wallace's movements were several hours restrained by the ยท necessity of keeping unbroken his connection with Sherman, whom Grant had forbidden to advance until the approach of Buell's army along the main Corinth road could be distin- guished. At length, mingling with the waves of sound on his right and his front, but plainly distinguishable, rolled along the uproar on the left. Now, free to advance, Sherman kept pace with Wallace, who pushed his division steadily forward. Skirmishers creeping along singly or grooping themselves behind hillocks commanded the force in their front while they
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