As soon as General Beauregard was apprised of General Johnston’s death, he gathered his bleeding forces and hurled regiment after regiment against the “Hornet’s Nest,” with its “sunken road” of destiny, sweeping all supporting artillery of the enemy from that portion of the field; but the gray troops could not see the hidden line of blue until they were within a few feet of the old road. The Union troops would suddenly rise out of the ground, fire, and sink from view again.
Only after a long and concentrated fire from sixty-two pieces of Confederate artillery under General Ruggles did the blue line of the “sunken road” abandon its fateful trench of chance and fall back. Then both of its flanks were turned. General Wallace was mortally wounded, and General Prentiss, with more than two thousand troops, was captured. But—alas!—the hours wasted before that “sunken road” brought us in weariness too near the edge of the approaching night; and, with a seeming victory in our grasp, with the brave, though depleted and disorganized army of blue at bay at the river’s brink, we saw the battle cease for that day; and in the early falling shadows and through the long, long night came the troops of Lew Wallace and of Buell, unscathed and fresh, and twenty-five thousand strong.
This was a sad development to our tired army that had fought without ceasing for eleven hours; and at about 6 o’clock we were withdrawn to the Union camps, where we fell into the obliterating sleep of exhaustion: I was lying on my rubber blanket, and about midnight there was such a downpour of rain as I have seldom seen. My blanket held water so well that I was partly submerged when I woke, and the remainder of the night was spent in cat naps, sitting on the ground with my back against a tree.
On Monday morning, the 7th, the battle opened with not less than twenty-five thousand fresh troops added to Grant’s sorely pressed lines, and so the Confederate hopes of Shiloh took wings; but in the deep gloom of the changed situation, our army went into battle line with the coming of the day. Every Confederate had heard the disheartening news; but they were soldiers still, and, with a courage that at this far-distant day is difficult to understand, they held the enemy to a very slow advance until past the hour of noon.
With no Confederate reënforcements in prospect, General Beauregard began, early in the afternoon, to withdraw the gray army from the unequal conflict. We retired in good order, and were deeply surprised that the Union forces made no attempt to pursue us beyond their encampment.
We marched back to Corinth, taking with us all captured cannon and other arms, without a rear-guard fight.
General Forrest stopped at the village of Pea Ridge, about eight miles from the battle field, and on Tuesday, with all the cavalry he could get together, met a division of the enemy which had advanced to Monterey. As we charged this column, General Forrest’s horse became unmanageable and carried him through and beyond the Union line, and we felt sure that he would be either killed or captured; but, after turning his horse, he charged back through a troop of the enemy and miraculously escaped with a wound in the foot.
Thus ended the battle of Shiloh, the first grand battle of the great war.
It is almost inconceivable that a battle so great and so deadly was fought by men unacquainted with the harrowing art of war—raw troops thrown hastily together, a citizen soldiery that had never marched to battle except through the pages of books, white-handed Robin Hoods of the orchard and the meadow—indeed, “boys” in years as well as in that glorious comradeship of danger and death; and yet the “Old Guard” of Napoleon never “fixed bayonets” with firmer courage than that which made history on the field of Shiloh sixty years ago.
The soldiers of Johnston’s army were armed with a variety of guns which looked more like the gathered heirlooms of a museum than arms of battle—shotguns, squirrel rifles, antiquated muskets, and a few modern rifles.