The Guns of Shiloh: A Story of the Great Western Campaign

THE RED DAWN OF SHILOH

Dick stood appalled when he heard that terrible shout in the dawn, and the crash of cannon and rifles rolling down upon the Union lines.  It was already a shout of triumph and, as he gazed, he saw through the woods the red line of flame, sweeping on without a halt.

The surprise had been complete.  Hardee, leading the Southern advance, struck Peabody’s Northern brigade and smashed it up instantly.  The men did not have time to seize their rifles.  They had no chance to form into ranks, and the officers themselves, as they shouted commands, were struck down.  Men killed or wounded were falling everywhere.  Almost before they had time to draw a free breath the remnants of the brigade were driven upon those behind it.

Hardee also rushed upon Sherman, but there he found a foe of tough mettle.  The man who had foreseen the enormous extent of the war, although taken by surprise, too, did not lose his courage or presence of mind.  His men had time to seize their arms, and he formed a hasty line of battle.  He also had the forethought to send word to the general in his rear to close up the gap between him and the next general in the line.  Then he shifted one of his own brigades until there was a ravine in front of it to protect his men, and he hurried a battery to his flank.

Never was Napoleon’s maxim that men are nothing, a man is everything, more justified, and never did the genius of Sherman shine more brilliantly than on that morning.  It was he, alone, cool of mind and steady in the face of overwhelming peril, who first faced the Southern rush.  He inspired his troops with his own courage, and, though pale of face, they bent forward to meet the red whirlwind that was rushing down upon them.

Like a blaze running through dry grass the battle extended in almost an instant along the whole front, and the deep woods were filled with the roar of eighty thousand men in conflict.  And Grant, as at Donelson, was far away.

The thunder and blaze of the battle increased swiftly and to a frightful extent.  The Southern generals, eager, alert and full of success, pushed in all their troops.  The surprised Northern army was giving away at all points, except where Sherman stood.  Hardee, continuing his rush, broke the Northern line asunder, and his brigades, wrapping themselves around Sherman, strove to destroy him.

Although he saw his lines crumbling away before him, Sherman never flinched.  The ravine in front of him and rough ground on one side defended him to a certain extent.  The men fired their rifles as fast as they could load and reload, and the cannon on their flanks never ceased to pour shot and shell into the ranks of their opponents.  The gunners were shot down, but new ones rose at once in their place.  The fiercest conflict yet seen on American soil was raging here.  North would not yield, South ever rushed anew to the attack, and a vast cloud of mingled flame and smoke enclosed them both.

Dick had stood as if petrified, staring at the billows of flame, while the thunder of great armies in battle stunned his ears.  He realized suddenly that he was alone.  Colonel Kenton had said the night before that he did not know what to do with him, but that he would find a way in the morning.  But he had been forgotten, and he knew it was natural that he should be.  His fate was but a trifle in the mighty event that was passing.  There was no time for any one in the Southern army to bother about him.

Then he understood too, that he was free.  The whole Orphan Brigade had passed on into the red heart of the battle, and had left him there alone.  Now his mind leaped out of its paralysis.  All his senses became alert.  In that vast whirlwind of fire and smoke no one would notice that a single youth was stealing through the forest in an effort to rejoin his own people.

Action followed swift upon thought.  He curved about in the woods and then ran rapidly toward the point where the fire seemed thinnest.  He did not check his pace until he had gone at least a mile.  Then he paused to see if he could tell how the battle was going.  Its roar seemed louder than ever in his ears, and in front of him was a vast red line, which extended an unseen distance through the forest.  Now and then the wild and thrilling rebel yell rose above the roar of cannon and the crash of rifles.

Dick saw with a sinking of the heart—­and yet he had known that it would be so—­that the red line of flame had moved deeper into the heart of the Northern camp.  It had passed the Northern outposts and, at many points, it had swept over the Northern center.  He feared that there was but a huddled and confused mass beyond it.

He saw something lying at his feet.  It was a Confederate military cloak which some officer had cast off as he rushed to the charge.  He picked it up, threw it about his own shoulders, and then tossed away his cap.  If he fell in with Confederate troops they would not know him from one of their own, and it was no time now to hold cross-examinations.

He took a wide curve, and, after another mile, came to a hillock, upon which he stood a little while, panting.  Again he was appalled at the sight he beheld.  Bull Run and Donelson were small beside this.  Here eighty thousand men were locked fast in furious conflict.  Raw and undisciplined many of these farmer lads of the west and south were, but in battle they showed a courage and tenacity not surpassed by the best trained troops that ever lived.

The floating smoke reached Dick where he stood and stung his eyes, and a powerful odor of burned gunpowder assailed his nostrils.  But neither sight nor odors held him back.  Instead, they drew him on with overwhelming force.  He must rejoin his own and do his best however little it counted in the whole.

It was now well on into the morning of a brilliant and hot Sunday.  He did not know it, but the combat was raging fiercest then around the little church, which should have been sacred.  Drawing a deep breath of an air which was shot with fire and smoke, and which was hot to his lungs, Dick began to run again.  Almost before he noticed it he was running by the side of a Southern regiment which had been ordered to veer about and attack some new point in the Northern line.  Keeping his presence of mind he shouted with them as they rushed on, and presently dropped away from them in the smoke.

He was conscious now of a new danger.  Twigs and bits of bark began to rain down upon him, and he heard the unpleasant whistle of bullets over his head.  They were the bullets of his own people, seeking to repel the Southern charge.  A minute later a huge shell burst near him, covering him with flying earth.  At first he thought he had been hit by fragments of the shell, but when he shook himself he found that he was all right.

He took yet a wider curve and before he was aware of the treacherous ground plunged into a swamp bordering one of the creeks.  He stood for a few moments in mud and water to his waist, but he knew that he had passed from the range of the Union fire.  Twigs and bark no longer fell around him and that most unpleasant whizz of bullets was gone.

He pulled himself out of the mire and ran along the edge of the creek toward the roar of the battle.  He knew now that he had passed around the flank of the Southern army and could approach the flank of his own.  He ran fast, and then began to hear bullets again.  But now they were coming from the Southern army.  He threw away the cloak and presently he emerged into a mass of men, who, under the continual urging of their officers, were making a desperate defense, firing, drawing back, reloading and firing again.  In front, the woods swarmed with the Southern troops who drove incessantly upon them.

Dick snatched up a rifle—­plenty were lying upon the ground, where the owners had fallen with them—­and fired into the attacking ranks.  Then he reloaded swiftly, and pressed on toward the Union center.

“What troops are these?” he asked of an officer who was knotting a handkerchief about a bleeding wrist.

“From Illinois.  Who are you?”

“I’m Lieutenant Richard Mason of Colonel Arthur Winchester’s Kentucky regiment.  I was taken prisoner by the enemy last night, but I escaped this morning.  Do you know where my regiment is?”

“Keep straight on, and you’ll strike it or what’s left of it, if anything at all is left.  It’s a black day.”

Dick scarcely caught his last words, as he dashed on through bullets, shell and solid shot over slain men and horses, over dismantled guns and gun carriages, and into the very heart of the flame and smoke.  The thunder of the battle was at its height now, because he was in the center of it.  The roar of the great guns was continuous, but the unbroken crash of rifles by the scores of thousands was fiercer and more deadly.

The officer had pointed toward the Kentucky regiment with his sword, and following the line Dick ran directly into it.  The very first face he saw was that of Colonel Winchester.

“Dick, my lad,” shouted the Colonel, “where have you come from?”

“From the Southern army.  I was taken prisoner last night almost within sight of our own, but when they charged this morning they forgot me and here I am.”

Colonel Winchester suddenly seized him by the shoulders and pushed him down.  The regiment was behind a small ridge which afforded some protection, and all were lying down except the senior officers.

“Welcome, Dick, to our hot little camp!  The chances are about a hundred per cent out of a hundred per cent that this is the hottest place on the earth today!”

The long, thin figure of Warner lay pressed against the ground.  A handkerchief, stained red, was bound about his head and his face was pale, but indomitable courage gleamed from his eyes.  Just beyond him was Pennington, unhurt.

“Thank God you haven’t fallen, and that I’ve found you!” exclaimed Dick.

“I don’t know whether you’re so lucky after all,” said Warner.  “The Johnnies have been mowing us down.  They dropped on us so suddenly this morning that they must have been sleeping in the same bed with us last night, and we didn’t know it.  I hear that we’re routed nearly everywhere except here and where Sherman stands.  Look out!  Here they come again!”

They saw tanned faces and fierce eyes through the smoke, and the bullets swept down on them in showers.  Lucky for them that the little ridge was there, and that they had made up their minds to stand to the last.  They replied with their own deadly fire, yet many fell, despite the shelter, and to both left and right the battle swelled afresh.  Dick felt again that rain of bark and twigs and leaves.  Sometimes a tree, cut through at its base by cannon balls, fell with a crash.  Along the whole curving line the Southern generals ever urged forward their valiant troops.

Now the courage and skill of Sherman shone supreme.  Dick saw him often striding up and down the lines, ordering and begging his men to stand fast, although they were looking almost into the eyes of their enemies.

The conflict became hand to hand, and assailant and assailed reeled to and fro.  But Sherman would not give up.  The fiercest attacks broke in vain on his iron front.  McClernand, with whom he had quarreled the day before as to who should command the army while Grant was away, came up with reinforcements, and seeing what the fearless and resolute general had done, yielded him the place.

The last of the charges broke for the time upon Sherman, and his exhausted regiment uttered a shout of triumph, but on both sides of him the Southern troops drove their enemy back and yet further back.  Breckinridge, along Lick Creek, was pushing everything before him.  The bishop-general was doing well.  Many of the Northern troops had not yet recovered from their surprise.  A general and three whole regiments, struck on every side, were captured.

It seemed that nothing could deprive the Southern army of victory, absolute and complete.  General Johnston had marshalled his troops with superb skill, and intending to reap the full advantage of the surprise, he continually pushed them forward upon the shattered Northern lines.  He led in person and on horseback the attack upon the Federal center.  Around and behind him rode his staff, and the wild rebel yell swept again through the forest, when the soldiers saw the stern and lofty features of the chief whom they trusted, leading them on.

But fate in the very moment of triumph that seemed overwhelming and sure was preparing a terrible blow for the South.  A bullet struck Johnston in the ankle.  His boot filled with blood, and the wound continued to bleed fast.  But, despite the urging of his surgeon, who rode with him, he refused to dismount and have the wound bound up.  How could he dismount at such a time, when the battle was at its height, and the Union army was being driven into the creeks and swamps!  He was wounded again by a piece of shell, and he sank dying from his horse.  His officers crowded around him, seeking to hide their irreparable loss from the soldiers, the most costly death, with the exception of Stonewall Jackson’s, sustained by the Confederacy in the whole war.

But the troops, borne on by the impetus that success and the spirit of Johnston had given them, drove harder than ever against the Northern line.  They crashed through it in many places, seizing prisoners and cannon.  Almost the whole Northern camp was now in their possession, and many of the Southern lads, hungry from scanty rations, stopped to seize the plenty that they found there, but enough persisted to give the Northern army no rest, and press it back nearer and nearer to the marshes.

The combat redoubled around Sherman.  Johnston was gone, but his generals still shared his resolution.  They turned an immense fire upon the point where stood Sherman and McClernand, now united by imminent peril.  Their ranks were searched by shot and shell, and the bullets whizzed among them like a continuous swarm of hornets.

Dick was still unwounded, but so much smoke and vapor had drifted about his face that he was compelled at times to rub his eyes that he might see.  He felt a certain dizziness, too, and he did not know whether the incessant roaring in his ears came wholly from the cannon and rifle fire or partly from the pounding of his blood.

“I feel that we are shaking,” he shouted in the ears of Warner, who lay next to him.  “I’m afraid we’re going to give ground.”

“I feel it, too,” Warner shouted back.  “We’ve been here for hours, but we’re shot to pieces.  Half of our men must be killed or wounded, but how old Sherman fights!”

The Southern leaders brought up fresh troops and hurled them upon Sherman.  Again the combat was hand to hand, and to the right and left the supports of the indomitable Northern general were being cut away.  Those brigades who had proved their mettle at Donelson, and who had long stood fast, were attacked so violently that they gave way, and the victors hurled themselves upon Sherman’s flank.

Dick and his two young comrades perceived through the flame and smoke the new attack.  It seemed to Dick that they were being enclosed now by the whole Southern army, and he felt a sense of suffocation.  He was dizzy from such a long and terrible strain and so much danger, and he was not really more than half conscious.  He was loading and firing his rifle mechanically, but he always aimed at something in the red storm before them, although he never knew whether he hit or missed, and was glad of it.

The division of Sherman had been standing there seven hours, sustaining with undaunted courage the resolute attacks of the Southern army, but the sixth sense warning Dick that it had begun to shake at last was true.  The sun had now passed the zenith and was pouring intense and fiery rays upon the field, sometimes piercing the clouds of smoke, and revealing the faces of the men, black with sweat and burned gunpowder.

A cry arose for Grant.  Why did not their chief show himself upon the field!  Was so great a battle to be fought with him away?  And where was Buell?  He had a second great army.  He was to join them that day.  What good would it be for him to come tomorrow?  Many of them laughed in bitter derision.  And there was Lew Wallace, too!  They had heard that he was near the field with a strong division.  Then why did he not come upon it and face the enemy?  Again they laughed that fierce and bitter laugh deep down in their throats.

The attack upon Sherman never ceased for an instant.  Now he was assailed not only from the front, but from both flanks, and some even gaining the rear struck blows upon his division there.  One brigade upon his left was compelled to give way, scattered, and lost its guns.  The right wing was also driven in, and the center yielded slowly, although retaining its cohesion.

The three lads were on their feet now, and it seemed to them that everything was lost.  They could see the battle in front of them only, but rumors came to them that the army was routed elsewhere.  But neither Sherman nor McClernand would yield, save for the slow retreat, yielding ground foot by foot only.  And there were many unknown heroes around them.  Sergeant Whitley blazed with courage and spirit.

“We could be worse off than we are!” he shouted to Dick.  “General Buell’s army may yet come!”

“Maybe we could be worse off than we are, but I don’t see how it’s possible!” shouted Dick in return, a certain grim humor possessing him for the moment.

“Look!  What I said has come true already!” shouted the sergeant.  “Here is shelter that will help us to make a new stand!”

In their slow retreat they reached two low hills, between which a small ravine ran.  It was not a strong position, but Sherman used it to the utmost.  His men fired from the protecting crests of the hills, and he filled the ravine with riflemen, who poured a deadly fire upon their assailants.

Now Sherman ordered them to stand fast to the last man, because it was by this road that the division of Lew Wallace must come, if it came at all.  But Southern brigades followed them and the battle raged anew, as fierce and deadly as ever.

Although their army was routed at many points the Northern officers showed indomitable courage.  Driven back in the forest they always strove to form the lines anew, and now their efforts began to show some success.  Their resistance on the right hardened, and on the left they held fast to the last chain of hills that covered the wharves and their stores at the river landing.  As they took position here two gunboats in the river began to send huge shells over their heads at the attacking Southern columns, maintaining a rapid and heavy fire which shook assailants and strengthened defenders.  Again the water had come to the help of the North, and at the most critical moment.  The whole Northern line was now showing a firmer front, and Grant, himself, was directing the battle.

Fortune, which had played a game with Grant at Donelson, played a far greater one with him on the far greater field of Shiloh.  The red dawn of Shiloh, when Johnston was sweeping his army before him, had found him at Savannah far from the field of battle.  The hardy and vigorous Nelson had arrived there in the night with Buell’s vanguard, and Grant had ordered it to march at speed the next day to join his own army.  But he, himself, did not reach the field of Shiloh until 10 o’clock, when the fiercest battle yet known on the American continent had been raging for several hours.

Grant and his staff, as they rode away from his headquarters, heard the booming of cannon in the direction of Shiloh.  Some of them thought it was a mere skirmish, but it came continuously, like rolling thunder, and their trained ears told them that it rose from a line miles in length.  One seeks to penetrate the mind of a commanding general at such a time, and see what his feelings were.  Again the battle had been joined, and was at its height, and he away!

Those trained ears told him also that the rolling thunder of the cannon was steadily moving toward them.  It could mean only that the Northern army had been driven from its camp and that the Southern army was pushing its victory to the utmost.  In those moments his agony must have been intense.  His great army not only attacked, but beaten, and he not there!  He and his staff urged their horses forward, seeking to gain from them new ounces of speed, but the country was difficult.  The hills were rough and there were swamps and mire.  And, as they listened, the roar of battle steadily came nearer and nearer.  There was no break in the Northern retreat.  The sweat, not of heat but of mental agony, stood upon their faces.  Grant was not the only one who suffered.

Now they met some of those stragglers who flee from every battlefield, no matter what the nation.  Their faces were white with fear and they cried out that the Northern army was destroyed.  Officers cursed them and struck at them with the flats of their swords, but they dodged the blows and escaped into the bushes.  There was no time to pursue them.  Grant and his staff never ceased to ride toward the storm of battle which raged far and wide around the little church of Shiloh.

The stream of fugitives increased, and now they saw swarms of men who stood here and there, not running, but huddled and irresolute.  Never did Fortune, who brought this, her favorite, from the depths, bring him again in her play so near to the verge of destruction.  When he came upon the field, the battle seemed wholly lost, and the whole world would have cried that he was to blame.

But the bulldog in Grant was never of stauncher breed than on that day.  His face turned white, and he grew sick at the sight of the awful slaughter.  A bullet broke the small sword at his side, but he did not flinch.  Preserving the stern calm that always marked him on the field he began to form his lines anew and strengthen the weaker points.

Yet the condition of his army would have appalled a weaker will.  It had been driven back three miles.  His whole camp had been taken.  His second line also had been driven in.  Many thousands of men had fallen and other thousands had been taken.  Thirty of his cannon were in the hands of the enemy, and although noon had now come and gone there was no sound to betoken the coming of the troops led by Wallace or Nelson.  Well might Grant’s own stout heart have shrunk appalled from the task before him.

Wallace was held back by confused orders, pardonable at such a time.  The eager Nelson was detained at Savannah by Buell, who thought that the sounds of the engagement they heard in the Shiloh woods was a minor affair, and who wanted Nelson to wait for boats to take him there.

It seemed sometimes to Dick long afterward, when the whole of the great Shiloh battle became clear, that Fortune was merely playing a game of chess, with the earth as a board, and the armies as pawns.  Grant’s army was ambushed with its general absent.  The other armies which were almost at hand were delayed for one reason or another.  While as for the South, the genius that had planned the attack and that had carried it forward was quenched in death, when victory was at its height.

But for the present the lad had little time for such thoughts as these.  The success of Sherman in holding the new position infused new courage into him and those around him.  The men in gray, wearied with their immense exertions, and having suffered frightful losses themselves, abated somewhat the energy and fierceness of their attack.

The dissolved Northern regiments had time to reform.  Grant seized a new position along a line of hills, in front of which ran a deep ravine filled with brushwood.  He and his officers appreciated the advantage and they massed the troops there as fast as they could.

Now Fortune, after having brought Grant to the verge of the pit, was disposed to throw chances in his way.  The hills and the ravine were one.  Another, and most important it was, was the presence of guns of the heaviest calibre landed some days ago from the fleet, and left there until their disposition could be determined.  A quick-witted colonel, Webster by name, gathered up all the gunners who had lost their own guns and who had been driven back in the retreat, and manned this great battery of siege guns, just as the Southern generals were preparing to break down the last stand of the North.

Meanwhile, a terrible rumor had been spreading in the ranks of the Southern troops.  The word was passed from soldier to soldier that their commander, Johnston, whom they had believed invincible, had been killed, and they did not trust so much Beauregard, who was left in command, nor those who helped.  Their fiery spirit abated somewhat.  There was no decrease of courage, but continuous victory did not seem so easy now.

Confusion invaded the triumphant army also.  Beauregard had divided the leadership on the field among three of his lieutenants.  Hardee now urged on the center, Bragg commanded the right, and Polk, the bishop-general, led the left.  It was Bragg’s division that was about to charge the great battery of siege guns that the alert Webster had manned so quickly.  Five minutes more and Webster would have been too late.  Here again were the fortunes of Grant brought to the very verge of the pit.  The Northern gunboats at the mouth of Lick Creek moved forward a little, and their guns were ready to support the battery.

The Kentucky regiment was wedged in between the battery and a brigade, and it was gasping for breath.  Colonel Winchester, slightly wounded in three places, commanded his men to lie down, and they gladly threw themselves upon the earth.

There was a momentary lull in the battle.  Wandering winds caught up the banks of smoke and carried most of them away.  Dick, as he rose a little, saw the Southern troops massing in the forest for an attack upon their new position.  They seemed to be only a few yards away and he clearly observed the officers walking along the front of the lines.  It flashed upon him that they must hold these hills or Grant’s army would perish.  Where was Buell?  Why did he not come?  If the Southerners destroyed one Northern army today they would destroy another tomorrow!  They would break the two halves of the Union force in the west into pieces, first one and then the other.

“What do you see, Dick?” asked Warner, who was lying almost flat upon his face.

“The Confederate army is getting ready to wipe us off the face of the earth!  Up with your rifle, George!  They’ll be upon us in two minutes!”

They heard a sudden shout behind them.  It was a glad shout, and well it might be.  Nelson, held back by Buell’s orders, had listened long to the booming of the cannon off in the direction of Shiloh.  Nothing could convince him that a great battle was not going on, and all through the morning he chafed and raged.  And as the sound of the cannon grew louder he believed that Grant’s army was losing.

Nelson obtained Buell’s leave at last to march for Shiloh, but it was a long road across hills and creeks and through swamps.  The cannon sank deep in the mire, and then the ardent Nelson left them behind.  Now he knew there was great need for haste.  The flashing and thundering in front of them showed to the youngest soldier in his command that a great battle was in progress, and that it was going against the North.  His division at last reached Pittsburg Landing and was carried across the river in the steamers.  One brigade led by Ammen outstripped the rest, and rushed in behind the great battery and to its support, just as the Southern bugles once more sounded the charge.

Dick shouted with joy, too, when he saw the new troops.  The next moment the enemy was upon them, charging directly through a frightful discharge from the great guns.  The riddled regiments, which had fought so long, gave way before the bayonets, but the fresh troops took their places and poured a terrible fire into the assaulting columns.  And the great guns of the battery hurled a new storm of shell and solid shot.  The ranks of the Southern troops, worn by a full day of desperate fighting, were broken.  They had crossed the ravine into the very mouths of the Northern guns, but now they were driven back into the ravine and across it.  Cannon and rifles rained missiles upon them there, and they withdrew into the woods, while for the first time in all that long day a shout of triumph rose from the Union lines.

Another lull came in the battle.

“What are they doing now, Dick?” asked the Vermonter.

“I can’t see very well, but they seem to be gathering in the forest for a fresh attack.  Do you know, George, that the sun is almost down?”

“It’s certainly time.  It’s been at least a month since the Johnnies ran out of the forest in the dawn, and jumped on us.”

It was true that the day was almost over, although but few had noticed the fact.  The east was already darkening, and a rosy glow from the west fell across the torn forest.  Here and there a dead tree, set on fire by the shells, burned slowly, little flames creeping along trunk and boughs.

Bragg was preparing to hurl his entire force upon Sherman and the battery.  At that moment Beauregard, now his chief, arrived.  But a few minutes of daylight were left and the swarthy Louisianian looked at the great losses in his own ranks.  He believed that the army of Buell was so far away that it could not arrive that night and he withheld the charge.

The Southern army withdrew a little into the woods, the night rushed down, and Shiloh’s terrible first day was over.