[CHAPTER XIX.]
Of sallies and retires; of trenches, tents,
Of palisadoes, frontiers, parapets;
Of basilisks, of cannon, culverin;
And all the currents of a heady fight.
King Henry IV.
The Battle of Shiloh.
Simultaneously with the capture of Island Number Ten occurred the battle of Shiloh. The first reports were very wild, stating our loss at seventeen thousand, and asserting that the Union commander had been disastrously surprised, and hundreds of men bayoneted in their tents. It was even added that Grant was intoxicated during the action. This last fiction showed the tenacity of a bad name. Years before, Grant was intemperate; but he had abandoned the habit soon after the beginning of the war.
General Albert Sydney Johnson was killed, and Beauregard ultimately driven back, leaving his dead and wounded in our hands; but Jefferson Davis, with the usual Rebel policy, announced in a special message to the Confederate Congress:
"It has pleased Almighty God again to crown the Confederate arms with a glorious and decided victory over our invaders."
I went up the Tennessee River by a boat crowded with representatives—chiefly women—of the Sanitary Commissions of Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Chicago.
The Reverend Robert Colyer.
One evening, religious services were held in the cabin. A clergyman exhorted his hearers, when they should arrive at the bloody field, to minister to the spiritual as well as physical wants of the sufferers. With special infelicity, he added: