by H. W. Brands
Stillwell now wished he had never left home. “My mind’s eye was fixed on a little log cabin far away to the north.… I could see my father sitting on the porch reading the little local newspaper.… There was my mother getting my little brothers ready for Sunday-school, the old dog lying asleep in the sun.”
The enemy drew closer before bursting into view. “Suddenly, obliquely to our right, there was a long, wavy flash of bright light, then another, and another. It was the sunlight shining on gun barrels and bayonets—and there they were at last! A long, brown line, with muskets at right shoulder shift, in excellent order, right through the woods they came.”
Stillwell’s colonel gave the order to fire. “From one end of the regiment to the other leaped a sheet of red flame,” Stillwell remembered. He and the others reloaded and fired again. Then, to his surprise, he heard the order to fall back. They recrossed the field to their camp, where they turned and stood their ground. They held this position for nearly an hour, exchanging vigorous fire with the enemy, until their officers once more called a retreat. “The troops on our right had given way and we were flanked,” Stillwell observed, adding: “Possibly those boys on our right would give the same excuse for their leaving, and probably truly too.” Whatever the case, the order to retreat came just in time. “As I rose from the comfortable log, from behind which a bunch of us had been firing, I saw men in gray and brown clothes with trailed muskets running through the camp on our right, and I saw something else, too, that sent a chill all through me. It was a kind of flag I had never seen before. It was a gaudy sort of thing, with red bars. It flashed over me in a second that that thing was a rebel flag!”
The retreat swiftly became a dash. “We observed no kind of order in leaving; the main thing was to get out of there as quick as we could. I ran down our company street and in passing the big Sibley tent of our mess I thought of my knapsack with all my traps and belongings, including that precious little packet of letters from home. I said to myself, ‘I will save my knapsack, anyhow,’ but one quick backward glance over my left shoulder made me change my mind, and I went on. I never saw my knapsack or any of its contents afterward.”
Stillwell and the others eventually halted a half mile to the rear at the crest of a brush-covered ridge. Catching his breath, he reflected on his battle experience thus far. “I was astonished at our first retreat in the morning across the field back to our camp, but it occurred to me that maybe that was only ‘strategy’ and was all done on purpose. But when we had to give up our camp and actually to turn our backs and run a half a mile, it seemed to me that we were forever disgraced, and I kept thinking to myself, ‘What will they say about this at home?’ ”
Stillwell’s regiment was ordered to defend a battery some distance to the right. “We were put in position about twenty rods in the rear of the battery and ordered to lie flat on the ground. The ground sloped gently down in our direction, so that by hugging the ground close, the rebel shot and shell went over us.”
At this point Grant appeared. “He was on horseback, of course, accompanied by his staff, and was evidently making a personal examination of his lines,” Stillwell recalled. “He rode between us and the battery, at the head of his staff. He went by in a gallop. The battery was then hotly engaged; shot and shell were whizzing overhead and cutting off the limbs of trees, but Grant rode through the storm with perfect indifference, seemingly paying no more attention to the missiles than if they had been paper wads.”
Stillwell’s regiment remained by the battery till two o’clock in the afternoon, when it was sent to relieve a regiment that had been fighting desperately for hours. “I remember as we went up the slope and began firing about the first thing that met my gaze was what out west we would call a windrow, of dead men in blue, some doubled up face downward, others with their white faces upturned to the sky, brave boys who had been shot to death holding the line.” Stillwell’s regiment held the same line until their ammunition ran out, when they were relieved by another. They refilled their cartridge boxes and returned to their position defending the battery. “The boys laid down and talked in low tones. Many of our comrades, alive and well an hour ago, we had left dead on that bloody ridge. And still the battle raged. From right to left, everywhere, it was one never-ending, terrible roar, with no prospect of stopping.”
The roar persisted till late afternoon, when the fighting diminished and then ceased. “Everything became ominously quiet,” Stillwell said. A staff officer rode up and spoke to the commander of the battery and then to Stillwell’s colonel. The next thing Stillwell saw was the battery horses being brought up from a ravine where they had been sheltered. The horses were hitched to the guns and the battery was hauled to the rear. The strange quiet held; the loudest noise was the creak of the caissons. Stillwell’s regiment followed the battery into the woods and out upon a field. “I then saw to our right and front lines of men in blue moving in the same direction we were, and it was evident that we were falling back.” The quiet held barely a moment longer. “All at once, on the right, the left and from our recent front came one tremendous roar, and the bullets fell like hail. The lines took the double-quick toward the rear. For a while the attempt was made to fall back in order, and then everything went to pieces. My heart failed me utterly. I thought the day was lost. A confused mass of men and guns, caissons, army wagons, ambulances, and all the debris of a beaten army surged and crowded along the narrow dirt road to the landing, while that pitiless storm of leaden hail came crashing on us from the rear.”
The flight carried Stillwell and the others to within several hundred yards of Pittsburg Landing. They rounded a bend in the road and saw a long line of soldiers in blue, at right angles to the road and stretching on each side away into the woods. “What did that mean?” Stillwell recalled asking himself. “And where had they come from?” He asked the same questions of his sergeant, who didn’t know but thought the troops were intended to cover the crossing of the river by the army in retreat. “And doubtless that was the thought of every intelligent soldier in our beaten column. And yet it goes to show how little the common soldier knew of the actual situation.” In fact the line, consisting of elements of the divisions of Sherman, McClernand and Hurlbut, was not covering the retreat but holding a new position. “In other words, we still had an unbroken line confronting the enemy, made up of men who were not yet ready, by any manner of means, to give up that they were whipped.”
William Sherman had seen little amiss before the battle. “From about the 1st of April we were conscious that the rebel cavalry in our front was getting bolder and more saucy,” he remembered. “And on Friday, the 4th of April, it dashed down and carried off one of our picket guards, composed of an officer and seven men, posted a couple of miles out on the Corinth road.… But thus far we had not positively detected the presence of infantry.” The next day showed nothing new, either. “All is quiet along my lines,” Sherman wrote Grant on April 5. “I do not apprehend anything like an attack on our position.”
At seven on Sunday morning, April 6, Sherman rode with staff along his front, which encompassed the Shiloh meetinghouse. The Confederate pickets opened fire, killing Sherman’s orderly. Sherman’s men returned the fire, but nothing yet indicated a general attack.
Things changed within the hour. “About 8 a.m. I saw the glistening bayonets of heavy masses of infantry to our left front in the woods,” Sherman wrote in his after-action report. For the first time he realized something serious was afoot. He galloped along his line, urging his men to hold their ground.
“The battle opened by the enemy’s battery, in the woods to our front, throwing shells into our camp,” he later explained. Sherman’s batteries answered. “I then observed heavy battalions of infantry passing obliquely to the left, across the open field in Appler’s front”—Jesse Appler headed an Ohio regiment in Sherman’s command. Other Confederate columns came straight toward Sherman. He gave the order to engage. “Our infantry and artillery opened along the who
le line, and the battle became general.”
Sherman’s men held firm, but the Confederates drove past his left flank. He clung to Shiloh as long as he could, but eventually the rebels got artillery to his rear. “Some change became absolutely necessary,” he wrote. He ordered his men to fall back, while one of his batteries, led by a Captain Behr, covered their retreat. “Behr gave the order, but he was almost immediately shot from his horse, when drivers and gunners fled in disorder, carrying off the caissons and abandoning five out of six guns without firing a shot.” The enemy kept driving forward, and Sherman was compelled to give more ground. “This was about 10 1/2 a.m., at which time the enemy had made a furious attack on General McClernand’s whole front. He struggled most determinedly, but, finding him pressed, I moved McDowell’s brigade directly against the left flank of the enemy, forced him back some distance, and then directed the men to avail themselves of every cover—trees, fallen timber, and a wooded valley to our right. We held this position for four long hours, sometimes gaining ground and at others losing ground; General McClernand and myself acting in perfect concert and struggling to maintain this line.”
Grant sent word that reinforcements under Lew Wallace were coming. “General McClernand and I, on consultation, selected a new line of defense, with its right covering a bridge by which General Wallace had to approach,” Sherman recounted. “We fell back as well as we could, gathering in addition to our own such scattered forces as we could find, and formed the new line.” Confederate cavalry charged the new position but were driven off. McClernand’s men made their own charge, driving some of the rebels into a ravine. “I had a clear field, about two hundred yards wide, in my immediate front, and contented myself with keeping the enemy’s infantry at that distance during the rest of the day,” Sherman said.
Grant later tried to conceal his surprise at the nature and ferocity of the Confederate attack. For several days he had been hoping for battle, though the prospect strained his mind and spirit. “I wish I could make a visit anywhere for a week or two,” he wrote Julia on April 3. “It would be a great relief not to have to think for a short time. Soon I hope to be permitted to move from here, and when I do there will probably be the greatest battle fought of the war. I do not feel that there is the slightest doubt about the result and therefore, individually, feel as unconcerned about it as if nothing more than a review was to take place. Knowing, however, that a terrible sacrifice of life must take place, I feel concerned for my army and their friends at home.”
On the evening of April 4 he heard firing along the front and rode out to take a look. In the dark, amid torrents of rain, he saw little but what the frequent bolts of lightning illuminated. He turned and headed toward camp, giving his horse its head in the blackness. But the horse slipped descending a hill and fell, pinning Grant’s ankle beneath it. Only the softness of the saturated earth prevented a crippling fracture; as it was, Grant suffered a nasty sprain that hobbled him for days.
On April 5 he learned that the outposts of Sherman and McClernand had been attacked in probing force. He gritted his teeth against the pain in his ankle and rode out again to investigate. “Found all quiet,” he reported to Halleck. The Confederates had captured a handful of prisoners, wounded several and suffered comparable losses in return. The skirmish appeared to be nothing more than that. “I have scarcely the faintest idea of an attack (general one) being made upon us, but will be prepared should such a thing take place,” he told Halleck.
Yet when the general attack occurred the next morning he was not prepared. He had kept his headquarters at Savannah, several miles downstream from Pittsburg Landing. “I was intending to remove my headquarters to Pittsburg, but Buell was expected daily and would come in at Savannah,” he explained. It was at Savannah that Grant first learned of the attack. “Heavy firing is heard up the river, indicating plainly that an attack has been made up on our most advanced positions,” he hurriedly wrote Buell. “I have been looking for this but did not believe the attack could be made before Monday or Tuesday.” He told Buell he couldn’t wait for their meeting but must get to the scene of the fighting at once. To the commander of Buell’s advance force he scribbled an appeal to hurry. “The attack on my forces has been very spirited from early this morning. The appearance of fresh troops on the field now would have a powerful effect both by inspiring our men and disheartening the enemy. If you will get upon the field leaving all your baggage on the east bank of the river, it will be a move to our advantage and possibly save the day to us.”
On the dispatch boat that carried him up to Pittsburg he directed the pilot to stop at Crump’s Landing, where Lew Wallace had his division. He told Wallace to make ready to move wherever he was needed and to watch for further orders. When Grant reached Pittsburg and realized that the landing there was the object of the Confederate attack, he sent word to Wallace to come on as soon as he could. Wallace, however, misunderstood the message or was misinformed as to the route he was to follow, and his division lost its way and reached the battlefield only in the late afternoon.
Grant hadn’t intended to fight on the field where the battle now unfolded, but he quickly assessed the terrain and the deployment of his forces. At the center was the Shiloh meetinghouse. “It stood on the ridge which divides the waters of Snake and Lick creeks,” he recounted afterward. “This was the key to our position and was held by Sherman. His division was at that time wholly raw, no part of it ever having been in an engagement; but I thought this deficiency was more than made up by the superiority of the commander.” To Sherman’s left was McClernand, with a division that had fought at Forts Henry and Donelson. Benjamin Prentiss was next to McClernand, with untested troops. Smith’s division was to Sherman’s right, in reserve, although Smith himself was sick; W. H. L. Wallace commanded in Smith’s absence.
The intensity of the Confederate attack surprised Grant as much as its timing. “The Confederate assaults were made with such a disregard of losses on their own side that our line of tents soon fell into their hands,” he said. The rebels tried to turn Sherman’s right flank, despite the troublesome terrain and the full creeks. Sherman’s men, rising to their first challenge, beat back the rebels time and again. “But the front attack was kept up so vigorously that, to prevent the success of these attempts to get on our flanks, the National troops were compelled, several times, to take positions to the rear nearer Pittsburg landing,” Grant wrote. By dusk his line was a mile back from where it had been in the morning.
Grant galloped from division to division throughout the day, directing and encouraging the commanders and their men. Sherman received the least attention. “Although his troops were then under fire for the first time, their commander, by his constant presence with them, inspired a confidence in officers and men that enabled them to render services on that bloody battle-field worthy of the best of veterans,” Grant observed. He added: “A casualty to Sherman that would have taken him from the field that day would have been a sad one for the troops engaged at Shiloh.” Grant almost did lose Sherman, who was nicked by flying metal and had a musket ball blow off his hat, besides having three horses shot from under him.
Late in the day Grant got word that Buell had reached the east bank of the Tennessee. He rode to the river to meet him, and the two generals conferred on a dispatch boat. As they left the boat, Buell observed panic-stricken troops who had fled the fighting and now cowered under the bank of the river. Inferring the state of the rest of the command from this pitiful minority, Buell asked Grant what provisions he had made for a retreat. Grant said he had made none. “I haven’t despaired of whipping them yet,” he said. Buell insisted: “But if you should be whipped, how will you get your men across the river? These transports will not take ten thousand men.” Buell knew that Grant had thirty thousand in the field. Grant responded grimly, “If I have to cross the river, ten thousand will be all I shall need transport for.”
Grant’s losses that day were unprecedented in numbers killed, wounded and
captured. The captured included most of the division of Benjamin Prentiss, who had become separated from the rest of the Federal line, allowing the Confederates to surround him. The loss of Prentiss took Grant by particular surprise. “The last time I was with him was about half past four, when his division was standing up firmly and the general was as cool as if expecting victory,” Grant said. But scarcely had they parted than Prentiss was forced to surrender with more than two thousand of his men.
The losses and poor performance of the Federal troops required explanation, which Grant provided over the following decades. “There was no hour during the day when there was not heavy firing and generally hard fighting at some point on the line,” Grant wrote in his memoirs. “It was a case of Southern dash against Northern pluck and endurance. Three of the five divisions engaged on Sunday were entirely raw, and many of the men had only received their arms on the way from their States to the field. Many of them had arrived but a day or two before and were hardly able to load their muskets according to the manual. Their officers were equally ignorant of their duties. Under these circumstances it is not astonishing that many of the regiments broke at the first fire.”
P.G.T. Beauregard found himself unexpectedly in command of the Confederate army by the end of Sunday’s fighting. Sidney Johnston had been as active on offense as Grant had been in defense; amid one of the Confederate charges in the afternoon a Union minié ball pierced his leg and severed an artery. He continued to give orders rather than tend to the wound, and he died from the bleeding. “Staff officers were immediately dispatched to acquaint the corps commanders of this deplorable casualty, with a caution, however, against otherwise promulgating the fact,” Beauregard remembered. “They were also urged to push the battle with renewed vigor and, if possible, to force a speedy close.”