The Taylor-Trotwood Magazine, Vol. IV, No. 4, January 1907

The first shock of battle is appalling. The rattle deepens into a roar as men get down to the work of loading and firing rapidly; but it is not alone the _noise_ of firing that appals, the vicious “whizz,” and “zip” past the ears; the heavy “thud” of bullets that strike the tree-trunks with the force of sledge-hammer blows,—all these make up a horrible din that has no parallel on earth. But with it all is the realization that this is but the accompaniment of a leaden blast of hell sweeping into one’s face as though it were a sort of fierce and deadly wind impossible to stand against; and the rain of leaves and twigs cut from the trees, and the occasional fall of larger branches, heightens this impression of a raging storm. After a little the smoke obscures everything and the battle goes on in an ever-increasing acrid fog that would make breathing impossible were it not for the frenzy of battle that seizes upon every other faculty, physical and mental, and makes one oblivious to all other surroundings.

Here and there a man drops his musket, throws up his hands and falls backward dead; or another lunges heavily forward on hands and knees, mortally wounded; and no one who has seen it will ever forget that look of agony unspeakable on the faces of those stricken by sudden death in battle.

For what seemed an interminable time the angry buzz of bullets clipped by our ears and overhead; and I remember, that, as I passed up and down the line assisting the commanding officer of the battalion in encouraging the men to take time in loading carefully and aiming low, a bullet struck a musket in the hands of a young Irishman of my own company, just as he was about to bring it to his shoulder, and the force of the impact shattered the stock and turned him partly about and almost threw him down. I saw the blood spurt from his arm, for he had in the excitement rolled up his sleeves to handle his piece the better. I sprang forward to assist him; but with a cry of rage he stripped off his sleeve, and with the assistance of a comrade, bound up his wound, which proved to be not serious, and seized a dead comrade’s musket beside him and went on with the fight.

But after a time the whirr and hiss of the bullets slackened and finally ceased; finally, skirmishers were ordered out to reconnoiter, while disposition was made of the dead and wounded. Soon, however the skirmishers came hastily back and reported new and heavier lines advancing, and again we saw the battle-flags among the trees, nearer than before. This time, however, the fight opened with the thunder of field guns whose missiles went shrieking overhead with a horrible sound that made the blood run cold. Then came the order to hug the ground and fire at will; and the fight went on as before except that as we had advanced a few rods down the gentle declivity of the ravine, and the line of the enemy was at a relatively higher level, the majority of bullets and the cannon shots passed above us and but few came dangerously close.

But the success of our first experience seemed to tell upon the ranks, and the coolness and deliberation of both men and officers were noticeable thenceforward; and soon the artillery discharges ceased, and after a time we knew, as before, by the lessening of the whizz of bullets, that the enemy had again yielded the ground in our front.

As I look back upon it, it seems astonishing how soon all the natural feelings of apprehension and fear give way to what has been aptly termed the “battle rage” which lifts a man up to a plane where the things of the body are forgotten. Amid the roar and din of musketry and the horrible swish and shriek of shells, the intellect seemed to be disembodied, and, while conscious of the danger of being hurled headlong into eternity at any moment, the pressure upon the brain seemed to deaden the physical senses—fear among them. Fear came later when the fight was over, just as in the waiting moments before it began; but throughout the day while the battle was on I remember having a singular feeling of curiosity about personal experiences. I seemed to be looking down upon my bodily self with a sense of impersonality and wondering why I was not afraid in the midst of all this horrible uproar and danger. I suppose this was the common experience of soldiers, for if it were not so, battles could not be fought.

[Illustration: GENERAL FORREST AND HIS CAVALRY GOING OUT TO FORT DONELSON

From “Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest.” Copyright, 1899, by Harper & Brothers.]

After repulsing the second attack, at about eight o’clock, we moved forward slowly across the brook, with skirmishers advanced, fighting at intervals, for the enemy stubbornly contested the ground. On reaching a clearing (probably the Duncan field) in the line of our advance we were met by an opposing concentration of the enemy in great force at the far side of it, who attempted a desperate charge upon us. This was met by a steady fire and an unswerving line; and the fighting that ensued is described by Judge Force, in his account of the battle published in the “Campaigns of the Civil War” by the Scribners (p. 171), as a “desperate struggle”—and indeed it was! Guenther, with a section of Terrill’s battery, arrived upon the scene, coming in upon our right, which was unprotected, at the crisis of this fight, and, as the enemy gave way at our front and ran together in a mass to pass through a gate or break in a fence in the rear, he directed his rapid discharges of canister to the same point. The effect upon the enemy was appalling and horrible beyond all description. Among our killed were Lieutenant Mitchell, a most gallant officer of the Sixteenth, and it was here also that Wykoff, then a captain of the Fifteenth, lost his eye.

I recall one striking incident of a personal character connected with this part of the battle. A sergeant of C Company, which I had commanded, was wounded in the shoulder and disabled though not vitally hurt. A moment later, as the sergeant was making his way to the rear, I was knocked down by an exploding shell, whose fragments relieved me of one boot-leg and left one leg of my pants in shreds, but fortunately left the leg intact, except for a wrench and a few bruises of no serious consequence. It so happened that my sergeant saw me fall, and, as he was among the first of the wounded taken to Cincinnati, he reported me as killed, to the great distress of my family at home. My brother, who came down a few days later, found me very much alive, though very ragged, very dirty, and very thankful that the shell that took my boot-leg took no more. I was thankful even for the limp that made me the subject of good-natured derision for some days as I performed my duties as adjutant on one leg.

We immediately followed in pursuit, after this last fight, capturing two field-guns from the enemy, and continued the advance until we had repossessed General McClernand’s headquarters of Sunday, beyond which we again met a determined resistance, but eventually drove the enemy back through a large open field into what has been termed the “water oaks thicket.”

The enemy seemed to be massed in great force at and beyond this point to oppose our further progress, and a heavy line of battle occupied the woods beyond the clearing on the hither edge of which we were halted to replenish our exhausted ammunition.

Our advance, though slow, had been continuous and resulted in projecting a sort of wedge into the enemy’s lines, of which wedge we seemed to be the apex. It resulted, therefore, naturally and necessarily that the enemy concentrated more and more in our immediate front to break the force that was gradually splitting them in two and endangering their communications in rear. Firing still continued toward the rear on both flanks, for we had considerably outstripped the general advance. Our men fixed bayonets and lay down under orders to hold the position, if attacked, at all hazards. The firing against us grew quite heavy, but no reply was made, although some were killed, among them Lieutenant Keyes, a splendid officer of the Sixteenth, with whom I was standing arm in arm at the time his summons came,—for among the regulars it was not then considered “good form” for officers to take shelter.

I have before spoken of the impact of a minie bullet against a tree as like the blow of a sledge hammer. The Keyes incident gives a very realistic illustration. As I have mentioned in another place, Lieutenant Keyes and I were standing arm in arm—my right interlocked with his left,—in rear of his company. We were, as I recall, just exchanging sorrowful remarks over the death of a Sergeant Baker—a fine man—who received a bullet through the forehead just a moment before, while Keyes was exchanging words with him. Just then the sledge hammer struck one of us—for a moment I did not know which—and hurled us both to the ground backwards. As I scrambled to a footing I saw Keyes’ blanched face and the torn garment showing the passage of the bullet through the left shoulder joint where a hasty examination showed that the bony structure of the vicinity had been shattered. He was taken to the rear and died the second day after.

Here, after a long wait, General Sherman came, and I saw him for the first time. I will let him tell you what next occurred. General Sherman is describing, in his official report of the battle, his own movements as he came up on our right; and is speaking of a battery that had reached him at the rear. He says:

“Under cover of their fire we advanced until we reached the point where the Corinth road crosses the line of McClernand camp, and here I saw for the first time the well ordered and compact columns of General Buell’s Kentucky forces whose soldierly movements at once gave confidence to our newer and less disciplined men. Here I saw Willich’s regiment advance upon a point of water oak and thicket, behind which I knew the enemy was in great strength, and enter it in beautiful style.”

(The thicket described by General Sherman, I may remark, was just beyond the field on the edge of which we were lying and through which it was necessary to pass. The Thirty-second Indiana was regarded as the crack German regiment of our western army.)

General Sherman continues:

“Then arose the severest musketry fire I ever heard, and lasted some twenty minutes when this splendid regiment had to fall back.”

(The Thirty-second, let me explain further, had passed around our left and formed in our front, in the open, in column of companies—“double column to the center,” as the formation is described by its commander in his report. The absurdity of this formation seemed to strike even the rank and file, for it drew a direct and enfilading fire from the extended line of the enemy in front that reached even the rear companies and gave rise to the claim on their part that they had been fired upon by the troops in their own rear. This claim was and is, of course, ridiculous. The regulars were at that moment engaged in replenishing their cartridge boxes in the rear of Kirke’s brigade which had been in reserve and had taken our position temporarily for this purpose. The claim was made as an excuse for a most unmilitary blunder in placing a column formation in the open in the face of a battle line, and, as it naturally resulted in a complete rout of the regiment, some excuse was sought as a salve for wounded pride).

General Sherman continues:

“This green point of timber is about five hundred yards east of Shiloh meeting house, and it was evident here was to be the struggle. The enemy could be seen also forming his lines to the south.... This was about 2 p.m. The enemy had one battery close by Shiloh and another near the Hamburg road, both pouring grape and canister upon any column of troops that advanced upon the green point of water oaks. Willich’s regiment had been repulsed, but a whole brigade of McCook’s division advanced beautifully, deployed, and entered this dreaded wood.... This I afterward found to be Rousseau’s brigade of McCook’s division.

“Rousseau’s brigade moved in splendid order steadily to the front sweeping everything before it; and at 4 p.m. we stood upon the ground of our original front line, and the enemy was in full retreat....

“I am ordered by General Grant to give personal credit where I think it is due, and censure where I think it merited. I concede that General McCook’s splendid division from Kentucky drove back the enemy along the Corinth road, which was the great center of the field of battle, where Beauregard commanded in person, supported by Bragg’s, Polk’s and Breckinridge’s divisions.”

General Sherman lived many years in the belief that he had fully and truly stated the facts in this matter, but we now know from a veracious history to which I shall refer, “compiled from the official records upon the authority of the Shiloh Battlefield Commission,” that what Sherman supposed to be a concentration of the Confederate army under Beauregard, including many divisions under distinguished leaders, was only Colonel Looney, of the Shiloh Battlefield Commission, with his regiment “augmented by a few detachments” from others, “driving back the Union line to the Purdy road” and enabling the Confederate army to “leisurely” walk away unmolested without our even suspecting it!

At the time Sherman came to us, Willich, with his large regiment, was just going into the open field and our reserve brigade—Kirke’s—was taking our position while we retired to the road to get a supply of ammunition which had come forward meantime; so that Sherman saw the advance and repulse of Willich, and the re-forming, deploying and advance of Rousseau’s brigade that so favorably attracted his attention as to merit official praise.

Between three and four o’clock in the afternoon we had pushed the enemy, still fighting, back to the vicinity of Shiloh Church. This, as afterward appeared, was Beauregard’s headquarters which he vacated about two o’clock, from prudential motives, and, manifestly by an afterthought, sought to minimize the fact of his own defeat by making it appear that an order to withdraw his army had been given long before. As a matter of fact, we know now from the records that the only order given was an order to the extreme wings of his army to fall back to this very point as a concentration of his forces against the center of our army.

Rousseau’s brigade continued its slow but relentless advance until we reached and passed the church itself, when the forces immediately in our front in the vicinity of the road broke in disorder, leaving, however, a considerable body of the enemy on our right against whom the regular battalions right-wheeled and whom we pursued half way through the former camps of Sherman’s troops lying parallel with the Shiloh branch, completing the rout of all the enemy’s forces in sight. They fled in disorder across the branch, and we were ordered to rejoin the brigade. At the final rout of the enemy at 4 o’clock p.m., we were astraddle of the camps of McDowell’s brigade of Sherman’s division, and this is what General Sherman refers to when he says in his report:

“At 4 p.m. we stood upon the ground of our original first line and the enemy were in full retreat.”

In this final movement the troops of Sherman took no part, nor was the division of General Lew Wallace or that of McClernand in sight. And this is what General Sherman admits by his frank confession that:

“General McCook’s splendid division drove back the enemy along the Corinth road which was the great center of the field of battle.”

This crisis of the battle really lasted from about noon, when we faced the point of water oaks, until four o’clock, when the enemy were routed and fleeing in confusion across Shiloh branch. If there was any rallying force at all on the other side of this branch, it made no demonstration and certainly it was not a battle line of the enemy as represented on the map of the commission. The only rear-guard stand mentioned in the reports was at a point two miles further on and a final stand by Breckinridge’s division at Mickey’s still further toward Monterey.

A few of the Confederate authorities place their final “withdrawal” at two o’clock, and a few others at three, but the overwhelming consensus of testimony of the reports place the final and complete rout of the enemy beyond the Shiloh Church at and after four o’clock; and Sherman again in his report particularizes 4 p.m. as the close of the engagement (p. 254).

After the fighting was over, General Sherman came over to us in his camps of the day before, and, speaking to Major Carpenter (of the Nineteenth), complimented most highly the work of the brigade and particularly of the regular battalions.

It was about this time also that General Thomas J. Woods arrived at the front, at the head of a brigade of his division, and, as Major Lowe reminds me, demanded in no “Sunday school language” to be allowed to go forward in pursuit of the enemy. But the darkness was approaching, and the impossibility of handling new troops in the dark in a wilderness of black jack was manifest, and the pursuit was given over for the night.

The map of the commission shows Wood’s entire division in line with us and taking part at 2 p.m. in the great and final crisis of the day, in which the musketry fire was, as described by General Force, “more severe than any that occurred on the field in either of the two days of the battle.” _Wood’s division was not there._ One brigade came upon the field _just as the fighting was over, at about four o’clock_, and the other did not leave the landing until dark. General Force’s statement, substantially to the same effect in his history of the battle (p. 177 in the Scribner’s Series) is:

“Wood’s division, arriving too late to take part in the battle, pushed to the front and engaged his skirmishers with the light troops covering the retreat.”

General Buell’s report states the fact as I give it from my recollection.

[Illustration: A TYPE OF TABLET SHOWING SHAPE ADOPTED FOR SECOND DAY’S BATTLE. THIS PARTICULAR ONE MARKS A POINT ON “HORNET’S NEST”]

In the year 1901, I addressed a letter to the Shiloh Battlefield Commission, at the invitation of its chairman, stating the substance of the personal recollections herein given, with a view to the correction of some very serious errors in its official blue print maps. In this letter I referred to between thirty and forty official reports of field organizations engaged in the battle, all showing that the errors complained of existed; but from that day to this no notice whatever has been taken of the letter.

I had not then the slightest idea that the commission intended to constitute itself the official historian of the Battle of Shiloh—for certainly the law of its appointment contemplates no such thing. But, during the year 1903, there appeared from the press of the Government Printing Office, Washington, an innocent looking work bearing on its title page the following:

“Shiloh National Park Commission. The Battle of Shiloh, and the Organizations Engaged. Compiled from the Official Records by Major D. W. Reed, Historian and Secretary, under the Authority of the Commission, 1902. Washington, Government Printing Office, 1903.”

There follows, on a subsequent page, a preface addressed by the Chairman of the Commission—

“To Shiloh Soldiers”—in which, referring to the intent of the statute establishing the Shiloh National Military Park to perpetuate the history of the battle on the ground where it was fought, he expresses the desire of the commission that “this history” (meaning this publication) “shall be complete, impartial, and correct,” etc. He then states, that, “to ensure this accuracy, _all reports have been carefully studied and compared. The records at Washington have been thoroughly searched and many who participated in the battle have been interviewed._... It is, therefore, desired that the statements of the book be earnestly studied by every survivor of Shiloh and any errors or omissions be reported to the commission with a view to the publication of a revised edition of the report.”