CHAPTER XIX. SHILOH.
"The sun of Austerlitz" was neither brighter nor more glorious than the sun which arose over the field of Shiloh Sunday morning, April 6, 1862.
Around the little log chapel, wont to echo to the voice of prayer and song of praise, along the hillsides and in the woods, lay encamped the Federal army. The soldiers had lain down the night before without a thought of what this bright, sunny Sabbath would bring forth. A sense of security pervaded the whole army. From commander down to private, there was scarcely a thought of an attack.
"I have scarcely the faintest idea of an attack," wrote Grant to Halleck on April 5th.
On the evening of the same day Sherman wrote to Grant: "I do not apprehend anything like an attack upon our position."
Yet when these words were written the Confederate army was in battle array not much over three miles distant.
But there was one general in the Federal army who was uneasy, he hardly knew why. He was little known at the time, he never held a distinguished command afterward; yet it was by his vigilance that the Federal army was saved from surprise, perhaps from capture. This general was Prentiss. A vague idea that something was wrong haunted him. The ominous silence in front oppressed him, as something to be feared. Then on Saturday a curious fact occurred. An unusual number of squirrels and rabbits were noticed dodging through the line, and they were all headed in one direction—toward Pittsburg Landing. What had startled them? It set General Prentiss thinking.
To guard more surely against surprise Prentiss posted his pickets a mile and a half in front of his lines, an unusual distance. At three o'clock Sunday morning he sent three companies of the Twenty-fifth Missouri out on a reconnoitering expedition. These three companies followed a road that obliqued to the right, and a little after daylight met the enemy's advance in front of Sherman's division. Thus the battle of Shiloh opened.
When the first shots were fired, Preston Johnston, son of the Confederate commander, looked at his watch, and it was just fourteen minutes past five o'clock.
This little advance band must have made a brave fight, for Major Hardcastle, in command of the Confederate outposts, reports that he fought a thousand men an hour. It was after six o'clock when the general advance of the whole Confederate army commenced, and the pickets along the line of Prentiss' and Sherman's divisions were driven in. Preston Johnston states that it was seven o'clock when the first cannon shot was fired. It was eight o'clock before the engagement became general along the whole line, and at that time portions of Prentiss' division had been fighting for nearly three hours.