The Victim: A Romance of the Real Jefferson Davis

by Thomas Dixon

  CHAPTER XXVI

  THE IRREPARABLE LOSS

  Jefferson Davis not only refused to remove Albert Sidney Johnston fromhis command in answer to the clamor of his critics, he wrote his generalletters expressing such unbounded confidence in his genius that heinspired him to begin the most brilliant campaign on which the South hadyet entered.

  Grant, flushed with victory, had encamped his army along the banks ofthe Tennessee, then at flood and easily navigable for gunboats andtransports. The bulldog fighter of Fort Donelson had allowed his maximof war to lead him into a situation which the eye of Johnston was quickto see.

  Grant's famous motto was:

  "Never be over anxious about what your enemy is going to do to you; makehim anxious about what you are going to do to him."

  In accordance with this principle the Union General was busy preparinghis Grand Army for a triumphant march into the far South. He wasdrilling and training his men for their attack on the Confederates atCorinth. His army was not in a position for defense. It was, in fact,strung out into a long line of camps for military instruction, preparingto advance on the foe he had grown to despise.

  Sherman's division occupied a position near Shiloh Church. A half milefurther was B. M. Prentiss with newly arrived regiments, one of whichstill had no ammunition. Near the river McClernand was camped behindSherman and Hurlbert still farther back. Near them lay W. H. L.Wallace's division, and at Crump's Landing, Lew Wallace was stationedwith six thousand men.

  Grant himself was nine miles down the river at Savannah, a point atwhich he expected to form a junction with Buell's army approaching fromthe east.

  Grant sat at breakfast on a beautiful Sunday morning quietly sipping hiscoffee while he planned his conquest of the vast territory which now layat the mercy of his army the moment the juncture should be effected.

  With swift stealthy tread, Johnston was moving through the dense forestsof the wild region to the south. His army had been rapidly recruited toapproximately forty thousand effective men. Beauregard had been detachedfrom the East and was second in command.

  The night before this beautiful spring Sabbath morning the Confederatearmy had bivouacked within two miles of the Federal front. Johnston hadso baffled the scouts and reconnoitering parties of Grant that hispresence was not suspected.

  In the gray mists of the dawn his divisions silently deployed and formedin line of battle. General Leonidas Polk on the left, Braxton Bragg inthe center, William J. Hardee on the right and John C. Breckinridge inreserve.

  The men were alert and eager to avenge the defeats of Forts Henry andDonelson. With chuckles of exhilaration they had listened that night tothe rolling of the drums in Grant's camps.

  A mist from the river valley hung low over the fresh budding trees. Withswift elastic tread the gray lines moved forward through the shadows ofthe dawn.

  So complete was the surprise that not a picket was encountered. Not asingle company of cavalry guarded the flanks of the sleeping army.

  The mists lifted and the sheen of white tents could be seen through thetrees.

  Only a few of the blue soldiers had risen. They were washing and cookingtheir morning meal. Some had sat down to eat at generous mess-chests.Thousands were yet soundly sleeping in their tents.

  On Prentiss' division from flank to flank with sudden fury the gray hostfell. Even the camp sentinels were taken completely by surprise andbarely had time to discharge their guns. On their heels rushed theConfederates cheering madly.

  Officers and men were killed in their beds and many fled in confusionwithout their arms. Hildebrand's brigade of Sherman's division wasengulfed by the cyclone and swept from existence, appearing no more inthe battle.

  In vain the broken lines of the Federal camps were formed and re-formed.Charge followed charge in swift and terrible succession.

  By half past ten o'clock the Confederates had captured and demolishedthree great military encampments and taken three batteries of artillery.Storehouses and munitions of war in rich profusion were captured atevery turn. The demoralized Union army was retreating at every point.

  When Grant reached the field, the lines both of attack and defense werelost in confusion. The battle raged in groups. Sometimes mere squads ofmen surged back and forth over the broken, tangled, blood-soaked arena,now in ravines and swamps, now for a moment emerging into clearings andthen buried again in the deep woods.

  The stolid Federal commander sat his horse, keen-eyed, vigilant andimperturbable in the storm of ruin. His early efforts counted for littlein the blind confusion and turmoil of his crushed army. Lew Wallace hadbeen ordered to the field in post haste. The bridge across Owl Creek,held by Sherman in the morning, was now in the hands of theConfederates. Wallace marched and countermarched his army in a vaineffort to reach the field.

  At two o'clock Johnston had brought up his reserves and ordered theentire gray army to charge and sweep the field. His fine face flushedwith victory, he rose in his saddle, addressed a few eloquent words toBreckinridge's division, placed himself at the head of his army and hissword flashed in the sunlight as he shouted to the line:

  "Charge!"

  Dick Welford had been detached from Forrest's cavalry on staff duty byhis Chief's side. Forrest had been marked by Johnston for promotion forhis work at Donelson, and Dick had grown to worship his gallantCommanding General. He had watched his plan of battle grow with boyishpride. He knew his Chief was going to crush the two divisions of Grant'sarmy in detail before they could be united. And he had done it. Suchcomplete and overwhelming victory would lift the South from her sloughof despair.

  With a shout of triumph he spurred his horse neck to neck with hisGeneral.

  At two o'clock the blue lines were still rolling back on the river inhopeless confusion, the gray lines cheering and charging and crushingwithout mercy.

  A ball pierced Johnston's right leg. Dick saw his hand drop the rein foran instant and a look of pain sweep his handsome face.

  "You're wounded, sir?" he asked.

  "It's nothing, boy," he answered, "only a flesh cut--drive--drive--drivethem!"

  Without pause he rode on and on.

  He was riding the white horse of Death--an artery had been cut and hisprecious life was slowly but surely ebbing away.

  He swayed in his saddle and Dick dashed forward:

  "General, your wound must be dressed!"

  Governor Harris of Tennessee, his aide, observed him at the same momentand spurred his horse to his side.

  The General turned his dim eyes to the Governor and gasped:

  "I fear I'm mortally wounded--"

  He reeled in his saddle and would have fallen had not Dick caught himand tenderly lowered him to the ground.

  The brave war Governor of Tennessee received the falling Commander inhis arms and helped Dick bear him a short distance from the field into adeep ravine.

  Dick took the flask of whiskey from his pocket and pressed it to hislips in vain. A moment and he was dead.

  In a passion of grief the boy threw his arms around his beloved Chiefand called through his tears and groans:

  "My God, General, you can't die--you mustn't die now! Don't you hear theboys shouting? They're driving Grant's army into the river. They'veavenged Donelson!--General--for God's sake speak to me--say you won'tdie--you can't, you can't--Oh, Lord God, save his precious life!--"

  No sign or answer came. His breast had ceased to move. The Governortenderly lifted the grief-stricken boy and sent him with his General'slast message.

  "Find Beauregard and tell him he is in command of the field. Not a wordof the death of the Chief until his victory is complete."

  Dick saluted and sprang into the saddle.

  "I understand, sir."

  "Dick saluted and sprang into the saddle--'I understand,sir'"]

  It was late in the afternoon before he located General Beauregard anddelivered the fateful news.

  The victorious Confederate army had furiously pressed its charge.Johnston's word had
passed from command to command.

  "Forward--forward--let every order be forward!"

  Everything had yielded at last before them. From camp to camp, fromrallying point to rallying point the Union hosts had been hurled,division piling on division in wild confusion.

  Driven headlong, the broken ranks were thrown in panic on the banks ofthe river. Thousands crouched in ravines and sought shelter under thesteep bluffs of the river banks. Trampling mobs were struggling in vainto board the transports and cross the river. The Federal reserve linehad been completely crushed, and the entire army, driven from the fieldthey had held that morning, were huddled in a confused mass of a halfmile around the Pittsburg Landing.

  The next charge of the Confederates would hurl the whole army into theriver or they must surrender.

  The gunboats had opened in vain. They were throwing their shells a milebeyond the Confederate lines where they fell harmlessly.

  The Confederate division commanders were gathering their hosts for thelast charge at sunset. There was yet an hour of daylight in which to endthe struggle with the complete annihilation of the Union army. Downunder the steep banks of the river's edge the demoralized remnants ofthe shattered divisions were already stacking their arms to surrender.They had made their last stand.

  General Bragg turned to his aide:

  "Tell Major Stewart of the twenty-first Alabama to advance and drive theenemy into the river!"

  The aide saluted.

  "And carry that order along the whole line!"

  The aide put spurs to his horse to execute the command, when a courierdashed up from General Beauregard's headquarters.

  "Direct me to General Bragg!"

  The aide pointed to the General and rode back with Beauregard's courier.

  "General Beauregard orders that you cease fighting and rest your mento-night."

  Bragg turned his rugged dark face on the messenger with a scowl.

  "You have promulgated this order to the army?"

  "I have, sir--"

  "If you had not, I would not obey it--"

  He paused and threw one hand high above his head.

  "Our victory has been thrown to the winds!"

  The sudden and inexplicable abandonment of this complete andoverwhelming success was one of the most remarkable events in thehistory of modern warfare.

  The men bivouacked on the field.

  The blunder was fatal and irretrievable. Even while the order was beinggiven to cease firing the advance guard of Buell's army was alreadyapproaching the other bank of the river. Twenty-five thousand fresh menunder cover of the darkness began to pour their long lines into positionto save Grant's shattered ranks.

  As night fell another misfortune was on the way to obscure the star ofBeauregard. His soldiers, elated with their wonderful victory, brokeinto disorderly plundering of the captured Federal camps. Except for afew thousand sternly disciplined troops under Bragg's command the wholeSouthern army suddenly degenerated into a mob of roving plunderers, madwith folly. In the rich stores of the Federal army thousands of gallonsof wines and liquors were found. Hundreds of gray soldiers becameintoxicated. While scenes of the wildest revelry and disorder were beingenacted around the camp fires, Buell's army was silently crossing theriver under cover of the night and forming in line of battle forto-morrow's baptism of blood.

  Albert Sidney Johnston's body lay cold in death--and the army of thevictorious South had no head. Better had there been no second general offull rank in the field. Either of Johnston's division commanders, Bragg,Hardee, Polk or Breckinridge, would have driven Grant's panic-strickenmob into the river within an hour if let alone.

  But the little hero of Bull Run of the flower-decked tent halted his mento rest for the night at the very hour of the day when Napoleon orderedhis first charge on one of his immortal battlefields.

  Beauregard gave his foe ample time for breakfast next morning. The sunwas an hour high in the heavens before the battle was joined.

  The genius of Johnston had surprised Grant and rolled his army back onthe river--never pausing for a moment to give him time to rally hisbroken ranks.

  But when Beauregard leisurely led his disorganized army next morningagainst Grant's new lines, there was no shock, no surprise--the line wasready. His panic-stricken men had been reorganized and massed in strongdefensive position and reenforced by the divisions of Generals Nelson,McCook, Crittenden, and Thomas of Buell's army--twenty-five thousandstrong.

  Lew Wallace's division had also effected the junction and the Federalfront presented a solid wall of fifty-three thousand determined menagainst whom Beauregard must now throw his little army of thirtythousand effective fighters.

  The assault was made with dash and courage. For four hours the battleraged with fury. The shattered regiments that had been surprised andcrushed the day before, yielded at one time before the onslaughts of theConfederates. By noon Beauregard had sent into the shambles his lastbrigade and reserves and shortly afterwards gave his first order towithdraw his army.

  Breckinridge's division covered the retreat and there was no attempt atpursuit. Grant was only too glad to save his army. The first greatbattle of the war had been fought and won by the genius of the South'scommander and its results thrown away by the hero of Bull Run.

  Never was the wisdom of a great leader more thoroughly vindicated thanwas Jefferson Davis in the record Albert Sidney Johnston made at Shiloh.The men who had been loudest in demanding his removal stood dumb beforethe story of his genius.

  The death list of this battle sent a shiver of horror through the Northand the South. All other battles of the war were but skirmishes to this.

  The Confederate losses in killed, wounded and missing were ten thousandsix hundred and ninety-nine. At Bull Run the combined armies of JosephE. Johnston and Beauregard lost but one thousand nine hundred andsixty-four men.

  Grant's army lost thirteen thousand one hundred and sixty-two in killed,wounded and prisoners. McDowell at Bull Run had lost but two thousandseven hundred, and yet was removed from his command.

  The rage against Grant in the North was unbounded. The demand for hisremoval was so determined, so universal, so persistent, it was necessaryfor Abraham Lincoln to bow to it temporarily.

  Lincoln positively refused to sacrifice his fighting General for hisfirst error, but sent Halleck into the field as Commander-in-Chief andleft Grant in command of his division.

  The bulldog fighter of the North learned his lesson at Shiloh. The Southnever again caught him napping.

  Great as the losses were to the North they were as nothing to thedisaster which this bloody field brought to the Confederacy. AlbertSidney Johnston alive was equal to an army of a hundred thousandmen--dead; his loss was irreparable.