indicating preparation to meet a general attack. All the usual and plentiful agencies at hand for testing such a question seem to have been in a state of " innocuous desuetude." If one looks at the placid orders and reports of that day, it would appear that the army was there for sanitary purposes, and that the country round about Pittsburg Landing was a health resort. So the night came which preceded one of the greatest battles of modern times, yet brought with it no sense of danger. Stuart's brigade, without artillery or cavalry, and responsible for a mile of the unexplored left, sharing in the delusion common to all, retired to rest unmindful of the shadow of death hovering over the banks of the Tennessee. A few hours brought them face to face with the disorderly tumult which followed.

Shiloh is beyond question the most hotly contested battle since the war. This ex-post-facto conflict has raged with such violence that all statutory and common-law remedies against nuisances and occasional personal violence might well be invoked to suppress the eternal clatter. I wish not to add to it, but only to state certain conclusions adopted by all who have studied the subject. They are to the effect that the great surprise of the war occurred then and there; that a Confederate army of over forty thousand men, moving less than twenty miles in three days' time, compelled the opposing army to accept battle upon terms dictated by them, and strictly on the defensive as the instant of attack found them; that every separate and separated organization at the front was forced to fight according to circumstances and not according to design, and was flanked as a unit early in the day; that the first line of the Federals was, like the Equator, an imaginary one; that it was not a formation of troops with intervals between its detachments, but a space with raw and undisciplined men located at uncertain distances upon it; that not one man from the veteran organizations in the rear arrived on the line of

the first attack in time to give it cohesion, continuity, or support. It is a historical certainty that the possibility of such an attack, born as it was of the desperation of Albert Sidney Johnston, was never considered at all by the Federal commanders.

Should any one wish details, I suggest a reading of Roman's "Life of Beauregard," by far the best circumstantial account yet written upon that theme. The fascinating literary gymnastics of William Preston Johnson, upon the same subject, will be found upon examination to be wrong in their premises and false as to their facts. The latter is an ingenious argument, filed in the case of Jeff. Davis vs. Joe Johnson and Beauregard, always on trial at the forum of public opinion, wherein each seeks to prove the other responsible for the downfall of the Confederacy. I have no sympathy with the numerous Southern historians, nor with the Northern literary Mugwumps who always cipher the Federal army up and the Confederate army down. At the present rate it will soon appear that General Lee, with a one-armed orderly and a ragged recruit, living on raw corn and persimmons, and armed with a double-barrelled shotgun that would not stand cocked, were solely responsible for the whole four years' resistance.

What is stated herein is offered as fair criticism upon one of the first battles of an unquestionably great general. I have no desire to take a place, however obscure, among the malicious detractors of the Buell class, and therefore emphasize, what is well known to all personal friends, that I have been from first to last an intense believer in General Grant, even unto the third term. The grand poise and the magnificent qualities typical of his splendid success shine as brightly through the battle-smoke of Shiloh as they did after. All the mistakes of his life rolled into one would not equal those of Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg, and who questions his ability? Among the characters of the

Rebellion period, General Ulysses S. Grant undeniably stands highest, the one matchless, magnificent, and unapproachable.

Somehow history seems to be an endless procession of titled heroes. Dashing warriors of exalted rank, bestriding fierce war-horses and followed by bespangled escorts, go prancing over every page. Even panoramas - the modern effort to make battle-scenes realistic - pander to this taste for hero-worship; and into the foreground of each picture gather the generals of the whole department, who sit impassive and serene in the centre of the conflict, where generals never were and never ought to be, and where, if they had been, they would have been more numerously perforated than an old-fashioned tin skimmer. Let us get behind this dazzling pageant, and see if we cannot find, here and there, a hero no less brave who served for smaller pay and less fame.

The Fifty-fifth fought at Shiloh with its brigade detached from the rest of the army upon the extreme left. It would have been connected with the swift-footed Seventy-first Ohio, if that regiment had remained in the vicinity after the battle begun. Its loss was the heaviest of any regiment on that field with one exception, and one of the severest in the annals of warfare.

Before the battle opened, the little drummers were found in the ranks, gun in hand, as fierce as fightingcocks, with no notion of shirking the dangers of that position. From that dire intent they were rescued by the good chaplain, who organized them into a hospital corps, under his own efficient command. There was one among them called "Little Joe," a mere boy in years and size. He worked like a hero all day, caring for the wounded; and when night came it found him by the log-house used as a hospital, at the Landing. Exhausted by excitement and toil, he lay down on the wet ground outside and went to sleep. Through the night, as the wounded died inside, they were carried out to make

room for the living. Some hospital attendants, bearing their bloody burden, saw Joe asleep, and supposing him dead, laid a corpse down beside him. This was followed by others; and when the tired drummer awoke he found himself at the head of a ghastly rank of whom he alone was living, and from whom he fled yelling that they should not use him for what he called a header.

There lives out in Winnebago County a prosperous farmer who is in all respects a leading and worthy citizen. In army times he was called "Bob Oliver," and became a captain; but he fought at Shiloh as a corporal. He was as fine a type of the citizen-soldier as the exigencies of national tribulation ever brought to the front. He claims no literary skill, and would blush like a schoolgirl if he were asked to write anything to be read in public. But he did write in a private letter what follows, and expressed himself so well that the letter is, in its way, a gem. He had been ordered to the rear with a wounded man, but soon turned his charge over to a sergeant with a broken arm, because the latter was too disabled to use his gun; while he returned to the line. What follows is in his own language.

"I heard some one call out, 'For God's sake, Robert, don't leave me!' I looked back and saw James D. Goodwin of my company. He had everything off but his pants and shirt, and was as red as if he had been dipped in a barrel of blood. I said, 'Never! Put your arm around my neck, and I will do the best I can for you.' The Rebels were very close all around us, but I felt strong enough to pull up all the young saplings that grew on the battlefield. While I was taking him back, he was hit once or twice. When I got to a surgeon and we cut the shirt off Goodwin, to my horror I found seven bullet-holes in that boy not yet seventeen years old. I never could tell this experience without something coming up in my throat to cut my speech off. From the minute I took hold of him until I gotto the river he never murmured nor broke down. Whenever

he was hit, he gave a sudden start and then braced up again; I never saw such nerve. He died on May 8, the noblest boy I ever saw."

It would seem as though the existence of the Republic must be eternal, when it can reach out over the prairies and gather from the farms soldiers like these.

The remnants of Stuart's brigade retreated from the south side of the ravine, where they made such stout resistance, a few minutes after two o'clock. Just after reaching the opposite side I was myself wounded through both legs, at almost the same instant. Weak and staggering, and suffering intense pain, I stumbled over the ridge into the next ravine toward the Landing. A fine soldier an orderly sergeant who had been helping his terribly wounded nephew away, and was returning to the front-found me helpless under a tree. Being told that the regiment had retreated, he came to me and put his arms around me, and I clambered up at his side, clinging to his strong form for support. Thus slowly and painfully we dragged our way a few rods. He reached his left hand across his body to hold me closer to him, and the movement pulled up his blouse sleeve and disclosed. a bandage around his arm. I exclaimed, "Bagley, if you are hit, take care of yourself; don't wait for me." His reply is remembered well; his words were the last utterance of an uncrowned hero; they were spoken with the last breath of a man who lost his life helping me save mine; they are burned into my memory by the one great tragedy of a lifetime. These words were, "That does not amount to anything; lean on me just as heavy as you are a mind to; I feel just as well as I ever did."

Instantly there rang out clear and distinct from the edge of the ravine a rifle-shot. A burning sensation passed along my back, and we fell together, two quivering, bleeding human beings. The bullet fired at me, a