My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field

by Charles Carleton Coffin

Pittsburg is the nearest point to Corinth on the river. The road from the Landing winds up the bank, passes along the edge of a deep ravine, and leads southwest. As you go up the road, you come to a log-cabin about a mile from the river. There is a peach-orchard near by. There the roads fork. The left-hand road takes you to Hamburg, the middle one is the Ridge road to Corinth, and the third is the road to Shiloh Church, called also the Lower Corinth road. There are other openings in the woods,—old cotton-fields. Three miles out from the river you come to Shiloh Church. A clear brook, which is fed by springs, gurgles over a sandy bed, close by the church. You fill your canteen, and find it excellent water. On Sunday noons, the people who come to church sit down beneath the grand old trees, eat their dinners, and drink from the brook.

It is not such a church as you see in your own village. It has no tall steeple or tapering spire, no deep-toned bell, no organ, no singing-seats or gallery, no pews or carpeted aisles. It is built of logs. It was chinked with clay years ago, but the rains have washed it out. You can thrust your hand between the cracks. It is thirty or forty feet square. It has places for windows, but there are no sashes, and of course no glass. As you stand within, you can see up to the roof, supported by hewn rafters, and covered with split shingles, which shake and rattle when the wind blows. It is the best-ventilated church you ever saw. It has no pews, but only rough seats for the congregation. A great many of the churches of this section of the country are no better than this. Slavery does not build neat churches and school-houses, as a general thing. Around this church the battle raged fearfully.

Not far from the church, a road leads northeast towards Crump’s Landing, and another northwest towards the town of Purdy. By the church, along the road leading down to the Landing, at the peach-orchard, and in the ravines you find the battle-ground.

General Johnston was senior commander of the Rebel army. He had Beauregard, Bragg, Polk, Hardee, Cheatham,—all Major-Generals, who had been educated at West Point, at the expense of the United States. They were considered to be the ablest generals in the Rebel service. General Breckenridge was there. He was Vice-President under Buchanan, and was but a few weeks out of his seat in the Senate of the United States. He was, you remember, the slaveholders’ candidate for President in 1860. Quite likely he felt very sour against the Northern people, because he was not elected President.

The Rebel army numbered between forty and fifty thousand men. General Johnston worked with all his might to organize into brigades the troops which were flocking in from all quarters. It was of the utmost importance that the attack should be made before General Buell joined General Grant. The united and concentrated forces of Beauregard, Bragg, and Johnston outnumbered Grant’s army by fifteen thousand. General Van Dorn, with thirty thousand men, was expected from Arkansas. They were to come by steamboat to Memphis, and were to be transported to Corinth by the Memphis and Charleston Railroad; but Van Dorn was behind time, and, unless the attack was made at once, it would be too late, for the combined armies of Grant and Buell would outnumber the Rebels. At midnight, on the 1st of April, Johnston learned that General Buell’s advance divisions were within two or three days’ march of Savannah. He immediately issued his orders to his corps commanders, directing the routes which each was to take in advancing towards Pittsburg.

The troops began their march on Thursday morning. They were in excellent spirits. They cheered, swung their hats, and marched with great enthusiasm. The Rebel officers, who knew the situation, the ground where General Grant was encamped, believed that his army would be annihilated. They assured the troops it would be a great and glorious victory.

The distance was only eighteen miles, and General Johnston intended to strike the blow at daylight on Saturday morning, but it rained hard Friday night, and the roads in the morning were so muddy that the artillery could not move. It was late Saturday afternoon before his army was in position. It was too near night to make the attack. He examined the ground, distributed ammunition, posted the artillery, gave the men extra rations, and waited for Sunday morning.

The Union army rested in security. No intrenchments were thrown up on the hills and along the ridges. No precautions were taken against surprise. The officers and soldiers did not dream of being attacked. They were unprepared. The divisions were not in order for battle. They were preparing to advance upon Corinth, and were to march when General Halleck, who was at St. Louis, commanding the department, should take the field.

On the evening of Friday the pickets on the Corinth road, two miles out from Shiloh Church, were fired upon. A body of Rebels rushed through the woods, and captured several officers and men. The Seventieth, Seventy-second, and Forty-eighth Ohio, of General Sherman’s division, were sent out upon a reconnoissance. They came upon a couple of Rebel regiments, and, after a sharp action, drove them back to a Rebel battery, losing three or four prisoners and taking sixteen. General Lewis Wallace ordered out his division, and moved up from Crump’s Landing a mile or two, and the troops stood under arms in the rain, that poured in torrents through the night, to be ready for an attack from that direction; but nothing came of it. There was more skirmishing on Saturday,—a continual firing along the picket lines. All supposed that the Rebels were making a reconnoissance. No one thought that one of the greatest battles of the war was close at hand. General Grant went down the river to Savannah on Saturday night. The troops dried their clothes in the sun, cooked their suppers, told their evening stories, and put out their lights at tattoo, as usual.

To get at the position of General Grant’s army, let us start from Pittsburg Landing. It is a very busy place at the Landing. Forty or fifty steamboats are there, and hundreds of men are rolling out barrels of sugar, bacon, pork, beef, boxes of bread, bundles of hay, and thousands of sacks of corn. There are several hundred wagons waiting to transport the supplies to the troops. A long train winds up the hill towards the west.