Thus it happened that I was with the army of General Sherman when it felt its way up the turbid Tennessee as far as Pittsburg Landing, and it so happened that I was at Shiloh Church on the morning of that terrible onslaught by General Johnston’s army on Sherman’s division, which held the advance of Grant’s army.
I have often wondered what sort of a soldier I must have appeared at that time. I can remember myself as a tall, pale, hatchet-faced boy, who could never find in the Quartermaster’s department a blouse or a pair of trousers small enough for him, nor an overcoat cast on his lines. The regulation blue trousers I used to cut off at the bottom, and the regulation overcoat sleeves were always rolled up, which gave them the appearance of having extra military cuffs, which was a consolation to me.
The headquarters mess had finished its early breakfast, and I had just taken my place at the table on Sunday morning, April 6th, when I heard ominous shots along our adjacent picket lines. In less than ten minutes there was a volley firing directly in our front, and from my knowledge of campaigning I knew that a battle was on, though fifteen minutes before I had no idea that any considerable force of the enemy was in the immediate front of our cantonment. The Seventieth Ohio Regiment, and the brigade to which it was attached, commanded by Colonel Buckland, of Ohio, formed on its color lines under fire, and although composed of entirely new troops, made a splendid stand. At the first alarm, I dropped my knife and fork and ran to my father’s tent, to find him buckling on his sword. My first heroic act was to gather up a beautiful Enfield rifle which he had saved at the distribution of arms to his regiment because of its beautiful curly maple stock. I had been carrying it myself on one or two of the regimental expeditions to the front, and had some twenty rounds of cartridges in a box which I had borrowed from one of the boys of Company I. By the time I had adjusted my cartridge box and seized my rifle, my father was mounted outside, and, with a hurried good-bye, he took his place with his regiment. By this time the bullets were whistling through the camp and shells were bursting overhead.
Not exactly clear in my mind what I intended to do, I ran across to the old log Shiloh Church, which stood on the flank of my father’s regiment. On my right the battle was raging with great ferocity, and stretching away to my left and front one of the most beautiful pageants I have ever beheld in war was being presented. In the very midst of the thick wood and rank undergrowth of the locality was what is known as a “deadening,” a vast, open, unfenced district, grown up with rank, dry grass, dotted here and there with blasted trees, as though some farmer had attempted to clear a farm for himself and had abandoned the undertaking in disgust. From out of the edge of this great opening came regiment after regiment, and brigade after brigade of the Confederate troops. The sun was just rising in their front, and the glittering of their arms and equipments made a gorgeous spectacle for me. On the farther edge of this opening, two brigades of Sherman’s command were drawn up to receive the onslaught. As the Confederates sprang into this field, they poured out their deadly fire, and, half obscured by their smoke, advanced as they fired. My position behind the old log church was a good one for observation. I had just seen General Sherman and his staff pushing across to the Buckland brigade. The splendid soldier, erect in his saddle, looked a veritable war eagle, and I knew history was being made in that immediate neighborhood. Just then a field battery from Illinois, which had been cantoned a short distance in the rear, came galloping up with six guns and unlimbered three of them between Shiloh Church and the left flank of the Seventieth Ohio. This evolution was gallantly performed. The first shot from this battery, directed against the enemy on the right opposite, drew the fire of a Confederate battery and the old log church came in for a share of its compliments. This duel had not lasted more than ten minutes when a Confederate shell struck a caisson in our battery and an explosion took place, which made things in that spot exceedingly uncomfortable. The captain was killed, and his lieutenant, thinking he had done his duty, and, doubtless, satisfied in his own mind that the war was over so far as he was concerned, limbered up his remaining pieces, and, with such horses as he had, galloped to the rear and was not seen at any other time, I believe, during the two days’ engagement.
By this time the enemy was pressing closely on my left flank, and Shiloh Church, with its ancient logs, was no longer a desirable place for military observation. I hurried over to my father’s camp, taking advantage of such friendly trees as presented themselves on the line of my movement, and there found a state of disorder. The tents were pretty well ripped with shells and bullets, and wounded men were being carried past me to the rear. As I stood there, debating in my mind whether to join my father’s command or continue my independent action, three men approached, carrying a sorely wounded officer in a blanket. They called me to assist them, and as my place really was with the hospital corps, being a non-combatant musician, I complied with their request. We carried the poor fellow some distance to the rear, through a thick wood, and found there a scene of disorder amounting to panic. Men were flying in every direction, commissary wagons were struggling through the underbrush, and the roads were packed with fugitives and baggage trains, trying to carry off the impedimenta of the army. Finding a comparatively empty wagon, we placed our wounded officer inside, and then, left at liberty, I started on down toward the river. I had not proceeded more than a mile when I encountered a brigade of Illinois troops, drawn up in battle array, apparently waiting for orders. It was General McArthur’s Highland Brigade, the members of which wore Scotch caps, and I must say that a handsomer body of troops I never saw. These fellows had been at Fort Donelson, and they counted themselves as veterans. They had their regimental band with them, their flags were all unfurled, and they were really dancing impatiently to the music of the battle in front of them. As I sauntered by a chipper young lieutenant, sword in hand, stopped me and said: “Where do you belong?”
“I belong to Ohio,” was my reply.
“Well, Ohio is making a bad show of herself here to-day,” he said. “I have seen stragglers from a dozen Ohio regiments going past here for half an hour. Ohio expects better work from her sons than this.” As I was one of Ohio’s youngest sons, my state pride was touched. “Do you want to come and fight with us?” he asked. I responded that I was willing to take a temporary berth in his regiment. He asked me my name and especially inquired whether I had any friends on the field. I gave him my father’s name and regiment, and saw him make a careful entry in a little pass book, which he afterward placed in the bosom of his coat, as he rather sympathetically informed me that he would see, in case anything should happen to me, that my friends should know of it. Thus I became temporarily attached to Company B, of the Ninth Illinois Regiment, McArthur’s brigade. Several other men from other regiments who had been touched by this young officer’s patriotic appeals also took places in our ranks.
Rather a strange situation that for a boy—enlisting on a battle field, in a command where there was not a face that he had ever seen before; only one face indeed, that had the least touch of sympathy in it, and that belonging to the young officer who had mustered him.
We waited here for three-quarters of an hour before receiving the command to move. During that time, one of the regimental bands played “Hail, Columbia.” It was the first and only time that I heard music on a battle field. Finally the order came to move to the front. By this time the stream of fugitives on the road rendered it almost impassable, but we forced our way through them, and in due time reached the point where our men were being severely driven. At first we were sent to strengthen the line from point to point, and twice that morning our brigade was moved up to support field batteries, which service, I must say from my brief experience, is the most annoying in modern warfare. These batteries drew not only the artillery file of the enemy, but they furnished a point for the concentrated fire of all the infantry in front. To be in supporting position was to receive all the bullets that were aimed at the battery, and which, of course, usually vexed the rear. The shells intended for the battery in your front have a habit always of flying too high or bursting just high enough in air to make it pleasant for the troops who are held in comparative inactivity. Under these conditions, we hugged the ground very closely, and fallen timber of every kind was most gratefully and thankfully recognized. It is amazing how slowly time passes under these circumstances. I am sure there were occasions that morning when twenty minutes’ exposure to fire behind these field batteries seemed to me an entire week. Everything looked weird and unnatural. The very leaves on the trees, though scarcely out of bud, seemed greener than I had ever seen leaves, and larger. The faces of the men about me looked like no faces that I had ever seen on earth. The roar and din of the battle in all its terror outstripped my most fanciful dreams of pandemonium. The wounded and butchered men who came out of the blue smoke in front of us and were dragged or sent hobbling to the rear, seemed like bleeding messengers come to tell us of the fate that awaited us.
It was with the greatest sense of relief that we received orders to move to the left, to face again that awful wave of fire which seemed to be all the morning moving toward our flank. The Confederate divisions came into action at Shiloh Church by the right, with a view to penetrating to the river, and taking us in flank and rear. It was along in the afternoon some time that we were pushed over to the extreme left of the forward line. I had no watch, and could have no idea of the hour of the day, except as I saw the shadows formed by the sun. Up to this time our command had suffered but little, but a dreadful baptism of fire was awaiting us. For a moment I realized that we were on the extreme left of our army; that my regiment was the left of the brigade; that I was temporarily attached to Company B of the regiment, which practically placed me on the left flank of that heroic army. I know all this because there was no firing in our front, and no sound of battle to our left, but steady, steady, steady from the right of us rolled the volleys which told us that the enemy was working around to our vicinity. I saw General McArthur, our commander, at this point, and as I remember, his hand was wrapped with a handkerchief, as though he had been wounded. By his orders, we pushed across a deep ravine which ran parallel with our front, and in five minutes we had taken up a position on its opposite bank, facing the enemy. Everybody felt that the critical moment had come. The terrible nervous strain of that day was nothing compared with the feeling that now the time had come for us to show our mettle. The faces of that regiment were worth studying at that moment. Not one that was not pale; not a lip that was not close shut; not an eye that was not wild; not a hand that did not tremble in this awful, anxious moment. Presently the messengers came—pattering shots from out the dense growth in our front, telling of the advance of the skirmish line. On our part, no response. No enemy could be seen, but the purple wreaths of smoke here and there told of the men who were feeling their way toward our lines. A nervous man, unable to stand the strain, let off his musket in our line. This revealed our presence. With a suddenness that was almost appalling, there came from all along our front a crash of musketry, and the bullets shrieked over our heads and through our ranks. Then we delivered our fire. In an instant the engagement was general at this point. There were no breech-loaders in that command, and the process of loading and firing was tedious. As I delivered my second shot, a musket ball struck a small bush in my front, threw the splinters in my face, and whistled over my shoulder. I may say that I was startled, but I kept loading and firing without any idea whatever as to what I was firing at. Soon the dry leaves, which covered the ground about us, were on fire, and the smoke from them added to the general obscurity. Two or three men had fallen in my vicinity. At this moment the young lieutenant who had my descriptive list in his coat bosom, and who was gallantly waving his sword in the front, was struck by a bullet and fell instantly dead, almost at my feet. Then it was that I realized my utter isolation and shuddered at the thought of a fate impending—“Dead and unknown.”