Another soldier met us, unencumbered with blouse or coat of any kind, his accoutrements well adjusted over his gray flannel shirt, and his rifle sloped carelessly back over his shoulder. His eyes were bloodshot, and his face, all begrimed with smoke and gunpowder, wore an expression haggard, gaunt, and very weary. He was a sharpshooter, he told us, belonging to some Missouri regiment, and had been out skirmishing almost ever since daylight, with not a mouthful to eat since the evening before. His cartridges—and he showed us his empty cartridge-box—had given out the second time, and he was 'used up.' In his hat and clothes were several bullet holes; but he had been hit but once, he said, and then by only a spent buckshot.
'Boys, I'm glad you're come,' he said. 'It's a fact, they have whipped us so far; but I guess we've got 'em all right now. How many of Buell's army can come up to-night?'
A hurried, many-voiced reply, and hastening on past a heterogeneous collection of soldiery—couriers, cavalry-men, malingerers, stragglers, a few of the slightly wounded, and camp followers of all sorts—we quickly reached the river's brink. The boat was lying close below. Twenty feet down the crumbling bank, slipping, or swinging down by the roots and twigs of friendly bushes, the regiment lost but little time in embarking. The horses of our field officers were somehow got on board, and, with crowded decks, the little steamer headed for the landing right over against us. Two or three boats were there hugging the shore, quiet and motionless, and there were still more at the lower landing. One or two of these the deck hands pointed out to us as magazine boats, freighted with precious stores of ammunition, and the remainder were now, of necessity, being used as hospital boats. The wounded had quite filled these latter, and several hundred more of the day's victims had already been sent down the river to Savannah. One of the gunboats, fresh from its glorious work up beyond the bend, shortly came in sight, moving slowly down stream, as though reconnoitring the bank for some inlet up which its crashing broadsides could be poured with deadliest effect, if the enemy should again appear in sight.
An informal command to land was given us presently, but many had already anticipated it. How terribly significant becomes the simple mechanism of loading a rifle when one knows that it is at once the earnest of deadly battle and the preparation for it! The few details which we could gather from the deck hands concerning the fight were meagre and unsatisfactory. They told us of disaster that befell our army in the morning, and which it seemed very doubtful if the afternoon had yet seen remedied; and their testimony was borne out by evidences to which our own unwilling senses were the sufficient witnesses. The roar of battle sounded appallingly near, and two or three of our guns were in vigorous play upon the enemy so close on the crest of the bluff that every flash could be seen distinctly. Several shells from the enemy's artillery swept by, cleaving the air many feet above us with that peculiar, fierce, rushing noise, which no one, I believe, can hear for the first time without a quickened beating of the heart and an instinctive impulse of dismay and awe.
At the landing—but how shall I attempt, in words only, to set that picture forth? The next day's fight was my first experience in actual battle, except so much of bushwacking as five months in Western Virginia had brought us, but those hours have no such place in my memory as have the scenes and sounds of this evening at the landing. I have never yet seen told in print the half of that sad, sickening story. Wagons, teams, and led horses, quartermaster's stores of every description, bales of forage, caissons—all the paraphernalia of a magnificently appointed army—were scattered in promiscuous disorder along the bluff-side. Over and all about the fragmentary heaps thousands of panic-stricken wretches swarmed from the river's edge far up toward the top of the steep; a mob in uniform, wherein all arms of the service and wellnigh every grade—for even gilt shoulder-straps and scarlet sashes did not lack a shameful representation there—were commingled in utter, distracted confusion; a heaving, surging herd of humanity, smitten with a very frenzy of fright and despair, every sense of manly pride, of honor, and duty, completely paralyzed, and dead to every feeling save the most abject, pitiful terror. A number of officers could be distinguished amid the tumult, performing, with violent gesticulations, the pantomimic accompaniments of shouting incoherent commands, mingled with threats and entreaties. There was a little drummer boy, I remember, too, standing in his shirt sleeves and pounding his drum furiously, though to what purpose we could none of us divine. Men were there in every stage of partial uniform and equipment; many were hatless and coatless, and few still retained their muskets and their accoutrements complete. Some stood wringing their hands, and rending the air with their cries and lamentations, while others, in the dumb agony of fear, cowered behind the object that was nearest them in the direction of the enemy, though but the crouching form of a comrade. Terror had concentrated every faculty upon two ideas, and all else seemed forgotten: danger and death were behind and pressing close upon them; on the other side of the river, whither their eyes were turned imploringly, there was the hope of escape and an opportunity for further flight.
Meanwhile, louder than all the din and clamor else, swelled the roar of cannon and the sharp, continuous rattle of musketry up in the woods above. There, other thousands of our comrades—many thousands more they were, thank God!—were maintaining an unequal struggle, in which to further yield, they knew, would be their inevitable destruction. Brave, gallant fellows! more illustrious record than they made who here stood and fought through all these terrible Sabbath hours need no soldier crave. There has been a noble redemption, too, of the disgrace which Shiloh fastened on those poor, trembling fugitives by the riverside. That disgrace was not an enduring one. On many a red and stubborn battle field those same men have proudly vindicated their real manhood, and in maturer military experience have fought their way to a renown abundantly enough, and more than enough, to cover the derelictions of raw, untrained, and not too skilfully directed soldiery.
There was a rush for the boat when we neared the landing, and some, wading out breast deep into the stream, were kept off only at the point of the bayonet. Close by the water's edge grew a clump of sycamores. Up into one of these and far out on a projecting limb, one scared wretch had climbed, and, as the boat rounded to, poised himself for a leap upon the hurricane deck; but the venture seemed too perilous, and he was forced to give it up in despair. The plank was quickly thrown out, guards were stationed to keep the passage clear, and we ran ashore. Until now there had been few demonstrations of enthusiasm, but here an eager outburst of shouts and cheers broke forth that wellnigh drowned the thunderings of battle. The regiment did not wait to form on the beach, the men, as they debarked, rushing up the bank by one of the winding roadways. The gaping crowd parted right and left, and poured upon us at every step a torrent of queries and ejaculations. 'It's no use;' 'gone up;' 'cut all to pieces;' 'the last man left in my company;'—so, on all sides, smote upon our ears the tidings of ill. Fewer, but cheery and reassuring, were the welcomes: 'Glad you've come;' 'good for you;' 'go in, boys;' 'give it to 'em, Buckeyes'—which came to us in manly tones, now and then from the lines as we passed.
We gained the summit of the bluff. A few hundred yards ahead they were fighting; we could hear the cheering plainly, and the woods echoed our own in response. The Thirty-sixth Indiana had already been pushed forward toward the extreme left of our line, and were even now in action. General Nelson had crossed half an hour earlier. The junior member of his staff had had a saddle shot from under him by a chance shell from the enemy, to the serious detriment of a fine dress coat, but he himself marvellously escaping untouched. Two field pieces were at work close upon our left, firing directly over the heads of our men in front; only a random firing at best, and I was glad when an aide-de-camp galloped down and put a stop to the infernal din. Amid this scene of indescribable excitement and confusion, the regiment rapidly formed. Our knapsacks—were we going into action with their encumbrance? The order was shouted to unsling and pile them in the rear, one man from each company being detailed to guard them. It was scarcely more than a minute's work, and we formed again. A great Valkyrian chorus of shouts swelled out suddenly along the line, and, looking up, I saw General Nelson sitting on his big bay in front of the colors, his hat lifted from his brow, and his features all aglow with an expression of satisfaction and indomitable purpose. He was speaking, but Company B was on the left of the regiment, and, in the midst of the storms of huzzas pealing on every side, I could not catch a single word. Then I heard the commands, 'Fix bayonets! trail arms! forward!' and at the double-quick we swept on, up through the stumps and underbrush which abounded in this part of the wood, to the support of the Thirty-sixth Indiana. A few score rods were gained, and we halted to recover breath and perfect another allignment. The firing in our front materially slackened, and presently we learned that the last infuriate charge of the enemy upon our left had been beaten back. We could rest where we lay, 'until further orders.' The sun sank behind the rise off to our right, a broad, murky red disk, in a dense, leaden-hued haze; such a sunset as in springtime is a certain betokening of rain. By this time cannonading had entirely ceased, and likewise all musketry, save only a feeble, dropping fire upon our right. Those sounds shortly died away, and the battle for this day was over. Night fell and spread its funereal pall over a field on which, almost without cessation since the dawn of daylight, had raged a conflict which, for its desperation and carnage, had yet had no parallel in American history.
On that field, freely and generously had been poured of the nation's best blood, and many a nameless hero had sealed with his life a sublime devotion far surpassing the noblest essay of eulogy and all the extolments which rhetoric may recount. Thank God, those sacrifices had not been wholly fruitless! The Army of the Tennessee, although at most precious cost, had succeeded in staying those living waves of Southern treason until the Army of the Ohio could come up, and Shiloh was saved. The next day saw those waves rolled back in a broken, crimson current, whose ebb ceased only when the humiliated enemy rested safe within his fortifications at Corinth.