Recollections with the Third Iowa Regiment

by Seymour D. Thompson

Was there ever such an assemblage of patriots?—so much unity, so much courage, so much hope?

But when we retired to our quarters, a far different scene presented itself. Soldiers crowded together like hogs in a pen; breathing an atmosphere contaminated by the breath of hundreds of men; sleeping, sitting and eating upon filthy decks; by day continually jostled and crowded about; kicked, jammed and trodden upon by night; getting by day no exercise, by night no rest; living on raw meat and tasteless pilot bread; and in all this many suffering from sickness;—such was our condition on these transports.

With our officers, however, the case was different. They ate at the cabin table and had good fare. They slept in state rooms. They had the ladies' cabin to themselves, and guards were stationed to keep the soldiers out of it. This was just. They had a right to what they paid for. But such a contrast of comfort and misery looked decidedly bad, especially among men who at home were equals, and whom mutual hardship and peril should have made friends. To us, the soldiers, it was a convincing proof that our officers were selfish and cared little for us. We could not see where they had merited so much more than we. Had they been braver in battle, or had they exposed themselves to greater danger? They were superior to us in rank and emoluments; but this superiority we had conferred with our votes. Was this sharing the hardships of war as they had promised to do, while we were yet citizens? Moreover, rank and emolument do not always answer the question of merit. Allowing that they had always done their duty in the places assigned them, had they done it better than we? Had they been more exemplary in morals, or more attentive to duty, or more patient under suffering? Had they been so diligent in the acquisition of military knowledge as to be worthy of exemption from hardship? We could not see it. There was nothing peculiarly hard in their duties which should create this disparity. They did no fatigue duty. They did not carry a gun, a cartridge-box or a knapsack on a march. They did not have to walk the sentinel's beat in storm. The surgeon did not abuse them when they were sick. When they said they were not able to do duty, they were believed. But the Government had conferred on them these privileges. It was just. We had no right to complain. No, it was not just, for humanity is no more than justice; and there were men suffering from sickness who needed these comforts more than they. Generosity at least would have prompted them to deny themselves some comforts for the sake of alleviating the distress of others. It would certainly go far to prevent demoralization in the ranks.

There was an officer who seemed to be actuated by these motives. Let his name be printed in capitals, CAPTAIN ALBERT HOBBS. He ate with his men, and, in consequence of this, many of his brother officers made merry of him, calling him in his absence, "Mother Hobbs." He merited their opprobrium, simply by being a comrade to his men. This brave and good man was mortally wounded in the battle of Shiloh, and was buried near the spot where he fell. His memory will always be cherished by those who served under him.

Daylight of March 12th, found the great flotilla at anchor opposite Savannah, Tennessee, a dilapidated village about twenty-five miles from the Alabama line.

The citizens of Savannah were for the most part favorable to our cause. The town was full of refugees from rebel conscription, to whom our presence was really a deliverance. Their stories of sufferings under the rebel rule would fill volumes. Their patriotism was genuine and unfeigned. Many of them enlisted on the gunboat Tyler, and in the 46th Ohio regiment.

The morning after our arrival at Savannah, we heard cannonading above us. We could only conjecture the cause of it then; but learned afterwards that it was the gunboats Tyler and Lexington, which convoyed the fleet, engaging the enemy's batteries at Eastport, Miss. The same day most of the fleet moved up the river, and our regiment went ashore to allow our boats to be cleansed, and before we were allowed to go aboard again, we enjoyed the luxury of being out in a drizzling rain.

We found at Savannah another illustration of the fact, that the farther an army gets from railroads and telegraphs, the more news the country affords. The citizens informed us that a battle had been fought near Manasses, resulting disastrously to the rebels; that though losing 10,000 men in killed and wounded, McClellan had taken 60,000 prisoners! We also learned that Beauregard was concentrating a hundred thousand men a few miles above us,—a report in which there was more truth than we were willing to believe.

Here, pausing and looking around us, the movements of the enemy and the designs of our generals began, if possible, to assume a more tangible shape in our ideas. The army of General Albert Sidney Johnston had been driven from its defensive line, which stretched from Columbus to Bowling Green; and now, its right wing in full retreat before Buell, its left assailed by Pope, and its center pierced by Grant ascending the Tennessee, it was endeavoring to concentrate on a new line of defense, that of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, at the strategic point of Corinth, having at that time communication with all parts of the south, east and west, including the force which was blockading the Mississippi at Island No. Ten. With this purpose General Beauregard had probably already arrived at Corinth with a small portion of his troops, whither General Bragg was hurrying with a division from Mobile and Pensacola; and if we may credit a letter written about this time from Decatur, Alabama, by General Johnston to Jeff. Davis, the advance guard of his army had already reached that point, while the main body was crossing the Tennessee at Decatur,—a movement which he was executing contrary to the advice of his staff, and in which he had great apprehensions of being thwarted by General Grant.

Nothing would have been easier than this, had our fleet pushed on and landed the troops at a point from which they could have disembarked and seized the Memphis & Charleston Railroad east of Corinth. We could have then moved against Corinth, pushing Beauregard toward the Mississippi and preventing his junction with Johnston; or, in the event of his retreating southward, isolating him from his troops at Island No. Ten, as well as from a large portion of his forces hastening from that direction. Thus it is seen how easily a little vigor on our part would have disorganized the plans of the rebel leaders, prevented their concentration on any practicable line of defense, thrown confusion into their councils and demoralization into their ranks, disheartened their people just as they were called upon to furnish new levies, flanked the Mississippi river as far as Memphis, seized the strategic point of the West from which the armies of Grant and Buell united could have commenced a new march of victory, and, in one word, secured without bloodshed or hazard, fruits which a year of suffering and carnage scarcely sufficed to gain. These were golden hours of victory to the army of the West. All that was necessary was to march on. But just as we had reached the decisive moment, when the events of a year could have been accomplished in a week, we faltered. Just at the hour when to wait should have been our farthest thought, we halted.