286

A NIGHT ON SHILOH BATTLE-FIELD.

widow Rey's, not far from that of Shiloh Meeting-house, near which Hardee formed his forces for assault on the morning of the 6th.' We were, as we soon ascertained, at the parting of the ways for Hamburg and Pittsburg Landings. While deliberating which to take, and considering seriously where we might obtain supper and lodging, for the gloom of twilight was

OUR HOSTESS AT SHILOH

gathering in the woods, the questions were settled by a woman (Mrs. Sowell) on a gaunt gray horse, with her little boy, about six years of age, striding the animal's back behind her. She kindly consented to give us such entertainment as she could. "It is but little I have," she said, in a pleasant, plaintive voice, and we expressed our willingness to be content therewith. So we followed her through the woods and a few open fields for nearly a mile in the direction of Pittsburg Landing, and at dark were at her home, not far from McClernand's camp on Sunday morning, where the battle raged with so much fury. All around it were the marks of war in scarred, decapitated, and shattered trees, and the remains of clothing and accouterments strewing the ground.

Our hostess was a widow, with six children. Her husband was dying with consumption when the battle commenced. She did not leave him, but remained in the house with her children throughout that terrible storm of war. A heavy shell went

through her house, and several trees standing near it were cut off or shattered by them. "The Lord was with me," she piously said, as we sat at her humble table, lighted by a lamp composed of wick and melted lard in a tin dish, and supping upon hoe-cake without butter, just baked in the ashes, some fried bacon, and coffee without milk or sugar. "My husband died, but my children were spared," she said; "but God only knows what will become of them in this desolated country, without a school or a church." We had just

1 See page 270.

THE EFFECTS OF BATTLE.

287

come in from the enjoyment of the bright moonlight, and balmy April air, and the burden of the whippowil, and felt that peace and serenity imparted by nature in repose, that inclines one to forgive as we hope to be forgiven. The sweet spell was broken when, in that dingy and battered cabin, lighted by a few blazing fagots and the primitive lamp, with only one half-bottomed chair and a rude box or two to sit upon, we looked upon that lonely, suffering, educated woman, with her six really pretty and intelligent boys and girls, half clad, but clean, struggling for the right to live an example of like misery in thousands of households, once prosperous and happy, thus crushed into poverty by the wickedness of a few ambitious men. In that presence, the Rebellion seemed doubly infernal, and the spirit of forgiveness departed.

We slept soundly in one of the log houses, with our horse stabled in an adjoining room, nailed up for the night, to keep him from the clutches of prowling bushwhackers, and the pigs grunting under our open floor; and at dawn we went out, while the cuckoo's song was sweetest and the mocking-bird's varied carols were loudest,

and rambled far over the battle-field, meeting here a tree cut down by shot near its base, there a huge one split by a shell that passed through it and plunged deeply into another beyond, and everywhere little hillocks covering the remains of the slain. After an early breakfast we rode to Pittsburg Landing, and made the sketch seen. on page 263, and then, riding along the greater portion of the lines of battle from Lick Creek to Owl Creek, we visited the site of Shiloh Meeting-house, made a drawing of it, and again striking the Corinth road

HOUSE.

at the ruins of widow Rey's house, re- EFFECTS OF A SHOT NEAR SHILOH MEETINGturned to that village by way of Farming

ton, where Paine and Marmaduke had a skirmish,' in time to take the afternoon train to the scene of another battle, Iuka Springs, twenty miles eastward.

1 See page 292.

288

SITUATION OF THE TWO ARMIES.

CHAPTER XI.

OPERATIONS IN SOUTHERN TENNESSEE AND NORTHERN MISSISSIPPI AND ALABAMA.

IEWING events in the light of fair analysis and comparison, it seems clear that a prompt and vigorous pursuit of the Confederates from Shiloh would have. resulted in their capture or dispersion, and that the campaign in the Mississippi Valley might have ended within thirty days after the battle we have just considered. Within a few days afterward, the Lower Mississippi, with the great city of New Orleans on its banks, was in the absolute possession of the National forces. Mitchel was holding a line of unbroken communication across Northern Alabama, from Florence to the confines of East Tennessee; and the National gun-boats on the Mississippi were preparing, though at points almost a thousand miles apart, to sweep victoriously over its waters, brush away obstructions to navigation, and meet, perhaps, at Vicksburg, the next"Gibraltar" of the Valley. Little was to be feared from troops coming from the East. They could not be spared, for at that time General McClellan was threatening Richmond with an immense force, and the National troops were assailing the

strongholds of the Confederates all along the Atlantic coast and the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Beauregard's army was terribly smitten and demoralized, and he had sent an imploring cry to Richmond for immediate help.' The way seemed wide open for his immediate de

struction; but the judgment of General Halleck, the commander of both

On the day after his arrival at Corinth, Beauregard forwarded a dispatch, written in cipher, to General Cooper, at Richmond, saying he could not then number over 35,000 effective men, but that Van Dorn might join him in a few days with about 15,000. He asked for re-enforcements, for, he said, "if defeated here, we lose the Mississippi Valley, and probably our cause." This dispatch was intercepted by General Mitchel, at Huntsville, sad gave, doubtless, a correct view of Beauregard's extreme weakness thirty-six hours after he fled from Shiloh. 2 This was the dwelling of Mr. Ford when the writer visited Corinth, late in April, 1866. It stood upon the brow of a gentle slope in the northwestern suburbs of the village.

VICTORY AND ITS FRUITS.

289

Grant and Buell, counseled against pursuit, and for about three weeks the combined armies of the Tennessee and Ohio, not far from seventy-five thousand strong, rested among the graves of the loyal and the disloyal (who fought with equal gallantry) on the field of Shiloh, while Beauregard, encouraged by this inaction, was calling to his standard large re-enforcements, and was casting up around the important post of Corinth a line of fortifications not less than fifteen miles in extent.

April 6,

1862.

Meanwhile the people everywhere had become acquainted with the true. outline history of the great battle of Shiloh, and began to perceive its significance. Jefferson Davis, who, on the reception of Beauregard's dispatch of Sunday evening, had sent an exultant message to the Confederate "Senate," had reason to change his tone of triumph; while the orders that went out from the War and Navy Departments at Washington' on the 9th, for demonstrations of thanksgiving and joy throughout the army and navy for the victories gained at Pea Ridge, New Madrid, Island Number Ten, and Shiloh, and the proclamation from the Executive Department recommending the same in the houses of public worship through

out the land, were not stripped of their power by the fingers of truth. They were substantial and most important victories for the Government, over which the loyal people had reason to rejoice. Yet the latter battle was a victory that carried terrible grief to the hearts of thousands, for in the fields and forests around Shiloh hundreds of

April.

CABIN OF A HOSPITAL STEAMER ON THE TENNESSEE RIVER.

loved ones were buried, and the hospital vessels that went down the Tennessee with their human freight, carried scores of sick and wounded soldiers who never reached their homes alive.

General Halleck arrived from St. Louis, his head-quarters, on the 12th of April, and took command in person of the armies near Pittsburg Landing. He found General Grant busily engaged in prepa

€ 1862.

1 He told them that, from "official dispatches received from official sources," he was able to announce, "with entire confidence," that it had "pleased Almighty God to crown the Confederate arms with a glorious and lecisive victory, after a hard-fought battle of ten hours." He spoke in feeling terms of the death of Johnston, nd of his loss as "irreparable."

2 The order from each Department directed that, on the Sunday next after receiving it, chaplains should offer n each behalf a prayer, "giving thanks to the Lord of Hosts for the recent manifestations of His power, in the overthrow of rebels and traitors," and invoking a continuance of His aid in delivering the nation, "by arms, from he horrors of treason, rebellion, and civil war."

The President recommended (April 10) to the people, at their "next weekly assemblage in their accustomed places of public worship" which should occur after notice of his proclamation should be received, to especially acknowledge and render thanks to "our Heavenly Father for the inestimable blessings He had bestowed, and to implore His continuance of the same;" also to implore Him to hasten the establishment of fraternal relations at home, and among all the countries of the earth."

VOL. II.-19

290

A FORWARD MOVEMENT CHECKED.

rations for an advance upon Corinth while Beauregard was comparatively weak and disheartened, not doubting that it would be ordered on the arrival of his chief. He had sent Sherman out in that direction with a body of cavalry on the day after the battle, who skirmished some with horsemen of Breckinridge's rear-guard and drove them, and who found a general hospital with nearly three hundred sick and wounded in it. The roads, made miry by the recent rains, were strewn with abandoned articles of every kind, testifying to the precipitancy of the retreat. Sherman returned the same night, and was sent up the Tennessee, accompanied by the gun-boats as far as Eastport, to destroy the Memphis and Charleston railway over Big Bear Creek, between Iuka and Tuscumbia, and cut off Corinth from the latter place, where Colonel Turchin had large supplies. This expedition was arranged before Halleck arrived, and was successfully carried out, after which such demonstrations ceased for a while. No movement of importance was again made toward Corinth until about the first of May, when Monterey, nine or ten miles in that direction, was occupied by National troops. General Pope had arrived in the mean time," with the Army of Missouri, twentyfive thousand strong, and these, with some regiments from Curtis, in Arkansas, made Halleck's forces a little over one hundred thousand in number.

a April 22,

1562.

General Mitchel, in the mean time, with his few troops and the cordial assistance of the negroes, who acted as spies and informers,' had been holding a hundred miles of the Memphis and Charleston railway, on Beauregard's most important flank, tightly in his grasp. Turchin held Tuscumbia,2 at the western end of his line, until the 24th of April, when a Confederate force advanced from Corinth, for the purpose of seizing his stores (one hundred thousand rations, which had been sent to him by way of Florence), in such strength that he was compelled to fly; but he carried away the coveted property and fell back to Decatur, skirmishing on the way. He was yet hard pressed, so, burning a part of his provisions (forty thousand rations), he fled across the Tennessee River' at Decatur, his rear-guard under Colonel Lytle firing the magnificent railway bridge that spanned the stream at that place. It was the only bridge over the Tennessee between Florence and Chattanooga, excepting one at Bridgeport, eastward of Stevenson, which was then the eastern extremity of Mitchel's occupation of the railway.

8

› April 27.

At this time Mitchel's left was threatened by a considerable force under General E. Kirby Smith, that came up from Chattanooga; and the Confederates were collecting here and there in his rear in alarming numbers. His chief objective was now Chattanooga, from which point he might operate

1 General Mitchel informed the writer, late in the summer of that year, that he could not have held the railway from Tuscumbia to Stevenson so long as he did, had it not been for the assistance of the negroes. He found, near Huntsville, an intelligent one who was a carpenter. Having worked at his trade along the whole line of the railway then held, he knew trusty slaves on plantations all along its course, and of the Tennessee River. He employed this man to organize, among his fellow-slaves, a band of informers, who should watch the river and the railway, and report to him any hostile movements of the Confederates. To every man who should give important information he offered freedom from slavery, among the rewards. They were faithful, and he often checked incipient movements against his posts, in consequence of information received from these slaves. 2 See page 267.

That bridge. lying upon massive stone piers, was one of the finest of the kind in the South. It was not yet rebuilt when the writer visited Decatur and crossed the Tennessee in a ferry-boat, late in April, 1866.