Adding together our own and the enemy's dead, and including those who died of wounds and disease, at least four thousand men were buried on the field of Shiloh. And here, breathing a foul atmosphere, drinking a sickening water, and surrounded by loathsome and gloomy associations, we remained for three weeks—in camp on a field of graves.
[CHAPTER XIX.]
Preparations to advance on Corinth—Morale of army and sanitary condition—Advance to Shiloh Springs—Inspection by General J——Advance to Pea Ridge—Gov. Yates—Picket skirmishing—Battle of Russellville House—Arrival of Col. Scott—A night on picket in the face of the enemy—THE EVACUATION AND OCCUPATION OF CORINTH.
Meanwhile the enemy entrenched at Corinth; Gen. Halleck arrived at Pittsburg Landing and assumed command of the army in person, and preparations were made for an advance. The troops of the two corps moved out and camped in line, Buell to the left of Grant. The Army of the Mississippi, called from its operations before Fort Randolph to reinforce us, disembarked at Hamburg and took post as the left corps of the army, thus throwing Buell in the center and Grant on the right. Grant was second, Buell third in command. McClernand and Wallace's divisions were detached as the reserve of the army under McClernand. Immense supplies were collected, and large quantities of clothing were issued to the troops. Those of the sick, who, in the opinion of the medical officers, would not be fit for duty in thirty days, were sent to the hospital boats and thence to northern hospitals. Fatigue parties under commissioned officers were detailed each day to repair and construct roads in the rear of the army.
The sanitary condition of the army was anything but flattering. Of our own regiment which, so far as we could hear, was a type of all the rest, very few were even in tolerable health. Fevers and camp diarrhœa filled the hospitals to overflowing; the sick lists increased rapidly; and the great extent to which the army was weakened in numbers by sickness, became a just source of alarm. It became painfully evident, too, that its morale was being greatly impaired by the same cause. For disease weakens the mind as well as the body; lingering, obtuse pains bring on a state of settled melancholy; the approaching heats of summer afforded no hope of an improvement in our sanitary condition; and, besides, we were beyond the reach of home comforts and the ministrations of bosom friends. It will not be surprising, then, that many good soldiers were possessed of a homesickness—a desire to be sent home on furlough or discharged, that amounted almost to a mania.
But if the troops were not buoyant in spirit, they were nevertheless determined. A beaten enemy was before us; we knew the responsibility upon us; and with what expectations the country looked to us; we had no reason to distrust the capacity of our commanding general. Under such circumstances, cravens would scarcely wish to turn back. In addition to this, it is plain to all that there was a spirit of rivalry between the army of the Tennessee and that of the Ohio. The latter army had come upon the field of Shiloh as a reinforcement, and had surprised and assisted in defeating an exhausted enemy; and for this, popular opinion at the North, forgetting Donelson and the bloody struggle of April 6th, inquiring not into causes, but looking only at results, had, with a degree of stupidity and injustice to which the age affords no parallel, awarded to them the greater share of glory. The army of the Tennessee, from its highest officers to its meanest soldiers, felt the slight most keenly, and resolved to equal at Corinth, with their decimated battalions, all that Buell could do with his full ones. The army of the Tennessee, having suffered reverses and finally triumphed in two great battles, had learned well the character of its foes, and that nothing could be achieved over them except by steady and persistent bravery. They knew their enemy, and how to fight him. They had already become veterans. The same may be said to a certain extent of the army of the Ohio. Those of this army who had not been engaged at Shiloh, together with the army of the Mississippi, which, without a test of its valor, had accomplished by endurance and the skill of its leader alone, by far the most brilliant exploit of the war, longed to win for themselves that which the other troops of the army possessed, the glory which alone is won in battle; and hence, though perhaps less reliable and much more enthusiastic, they welcomed the expected conflict with joy.
Near the middle of April, Grant and Buell moved out and camped in line. Toward the end of the month the general advance commenced. Let us now dismiss our observations concerning the army, the great whole of which, we, the Third Iowa, were but a little part, and turn to our regiment, brigade and division; for here we were at home and among comrades, now scarcely less in our regiment than in our division, where all followed and had faith in a common leader, and had a common glory won and to win.