The Union troops, for the most part, were neither so new to war nor so poorly armed as the Confederates, many of them having been in the fights of Henry and Donelson, and the entire army being equipped with the latest improved firearms.
But, considering all things, history must march these two armies of blue and gray down the years, bannered with a fadeless glory; and the great National Park which the government has established on their battle field is a beautiful and impartial testimonial which will speak to the centuries.
To the friends and schoolmates of my youth who were among the killed of this great struggle, my heart has paid sixty years of silent tribute. My last glimpses of some of them, as the smoke of the conflict wrapped them in its thundering folds, have become vivid and cherished memories. It is the strange way of nature that the vanished spirits of my comrades linger in my vision as boys in the joyous flush of life’s morning, while I have marched far up into the gray hills of the evening twilight, and I salute them across the long stretch of years.
I had, as I thought, many narrow escapes
from death at Shiloh. At one time a cannon ball passed so near me that the current of air created by its passage almost swept me from my horse. Many bullets and grapeshot fanned me and left their unwelcome whistle in my memory.
Amid all the dangers of battle ever walks the spirit of humor, and there is no day so terrible that it fails to hold some laughable incident. I recall one such on the Shiloh field which illustrates the fact that man is the wildest creature of the animal kingdom when thoroughly frightened. Early on Monday morning a small squad of us was preparing a hasty breakfast of “hardtack” and bacon behind our line, having staked our horses out to bushes, when firing began suddenly on the line, followed by the passage of a wild-eyed rider, proclaiming the arrival of Buell at Hamburg, shouting that he was surrounding us and warning us to run for our lives. There was a large, long-haired trooper in our crowd, who made a hurried run for his horse, mounted him, and put the spurs to him, overlooking the fact that the horse was tied to a bush with a long rope. As the spurs went home in the horse’s flanks, he began wildly racing around the bush, taking as wide a circle as his line would allow. The excited trooper tossed his head from side to side, trying to keep an eye on the firing line, while the horse increased his speed and narrowed his circle as the rope gradually wound around the bush until it became so tight that it brought him to a sudden stop and sent the trooper on a flying dive to the ground. We were all laughing at him when he ended his wild race, and he was so embarrassed and humiliated that he secured a transfer to another company.
Immediately after our return to Corinth I was detailed to pilot the corps of engineers in locating the line of breastworks that was to protect our front against the advance of the Union Army from Shiloh battle field.
