Reminiscences of a Soldier of the Orphan Brigade

by Lot D. Young

CHAPTER III. RECOLLECTIONS OF THE BATTLE OF SHILOH.

(From an address delivered at the meeting of the Morgan's Men Association at Olympian Springs, September 2, 1916.)

Mr. President, Old Comrades, Ladies and Gentlemen:

I must confess that this is somewhat embarrassing attempting to talk in public at the age of seventy-two, never having attempted such a thing before. But the subject upon which I am expected to talk is certainly, to myself, at least, interesting, and the occasion I am sure is happy and inspiring, had I only the ability to do them justice. However, by reason of my inexperience in matters of this kind, I believe I can safely appeal to the charity of my audience to overlook any failure I may make to properly interest them in what I shall have to say.

You ask sir, that I shall relate some of my observations and experiences of the great battle of Shiloh. Well fifty-two years and more is a long time and takes us back to that important event in American History that transpired on the banks of the Tennessee on April 6 and 7, 1862. Some of these old veterans now seated before me can doubtless remember many of the exciting and intensely interesting scenes of these two eventful days. It is more deeply impressed upon my mind, because of the fact that it was our initial battle and early impressions are said to be always most lasting.

This was the first of a series of grand and important events in the history of that renowned little band of Kentuckians, known in history as the "Orphan Brigade," but which for the present occasion I shall designate as the Kentucky Brigade, it not receiving its baptismal or historic name until the celebrated charge of Breckinridge at Murfreesboro. But what a grand and thrilling opening chapter in the lives of these Kentucky boys, as soldiers, for we were only boys, as we now look back at things, a majority of us being under twenty-one.

Now, if I were called upon to say which in my judgment was the best planned, most thoroughly and systematically, fought battle of the war in which I took part, I would unhesitatingly say Shiloh. As time rolled on and with subsequent observations and experiences on other important fields, such as Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, Resaca, Atlanta, Jonesboro and a number of others, I am still constrained to say that Shiloh was the typical battle. I mean, of course, battles fought in the West and in which Kentucky troops took a prominent part.

If in relating my story I shall seem somewhat partial to Kentuckians, I hope I may be excused for it is of them I shall talk mainly, besides, you know I love them dearly. And in the exercise of this partiality I claim to be justified from the fact that a number of the leading characters in this grand tragedy of war were Kentuckians. First among whom was the great general and peerless leader; others were Breckinridge, Preston, Tighlman, Trabue, Helm, Morgan, Monroe, Lewis, Hunt, Hodges, Wickliffe, Anderson, Burns, Cobb and last but by no means least, Governor George W. Johnson whose patriotic example was unsurpassed and whose tragic death was one of the most pathetic incidents of the great battle. A conspicuous figure indeed was he, so much so that when found on the field mortally wounded by the enemy, they believed him to be General Breckinridge. Private John Vaughn, of my old Company H of the Fourth Regiment, relates this story in regard to this sad and lamentable incident. Vaughn was severely wounded and was lying on the field near where Governor Johnston fell and from which he had just been removed by the enemy, when General Grant rode up and inquired to what command he belonged. When told by Vaughn to what command he belonged, Grant said: "And it is Kentuckians, is it, that have been fighting my men so desperately at this point?" Here is where the four desperate charges and counter-charges were made on the Seventh and noted by Colonel Trabue as commander of the Kentucky Brigade in his official report of the great battle, the bloodiest part of the field where Kentucky gave up many of her noblest and best. This is the field to which General Grant refers in his "Memoirs," when in writing of the desperate fighting of the Confederates, he says: "I saw an open field on the second day's battle over which the Confederates had made repeated charges, so thickly covered with their dead that it might have been possible to have walked across the clearing in any direction stepping on dead bodies without touching a foot to the ground."

Here were enacted scenes of sublime courage and heroism that elicited the admiration and comment of the civilized world; here the soil of Tennessee drank freely the blood of her elder sister, Kentucky.