The Shiloh Series: Books 1-3

by Phillip Bryant

  He and he alone was uniquely qualified to speak on Shiloh to this community of farmers and shopkeepers, of immigrants and pioneers. His sermon would be not embellished with heroes and villains, but with acts of kindness on the battlefield and the horrors of war that were all too clear now.

  Paul stumbled into the kitchen and broke Philip’s reverie. With a curt nod he sat down heavily in the chair next to the fire and rubbed the matter out of his eyes. Paul’s decision to volunteer gave Philip a sober chill. It had been his own choice, and the whispers in the community would be silenced once he put on the Union blue, but Philip knew that joining the army wasn’t just a question of personal honor any longer. The question was, was Paul willing to die for the Union?

  ****

  The church was stuffy and silent. The wooden floors and pews creaked with age at the weight of footfalls and overweight bodies shifting nervously. The house was full this morning; was it for him? Philip feared the answer was yes. It was this church he had pastored before the war. Perhaps they were just curious to see the prodigal son return, perhaps to hear a word from the soldier son, perhaps to relive old times, or perhaps to heap scorn from the seats.

  Philip was hot in his frock coat. In the back row, to his surprise, were his traveling companions, resplendent in their officer’s kit, gold braid and all. A few faces from the regiment, those men who could no longer march or give anymore, were also in attendance—men he’d not seen for some time. The Harpers were not in attendance, and he found himself disappointed. Some small chance of seeing Elizabeth once more had lifted his hope.

  The stage was set. His father approached the pulpit, a monstrous oaken stand with the ubiquitous cross of Christ in wooden relief upon its face. Standing at it, one observed the audience from a position of authority, though it was not the audacious pulpit of the Plymouth Brethren or Calvinists, who built them towering high into the ceiling so the minister could not only look down upon those in attendance but also ring hellfire and brimstone from the lofty heights, as if God himself were taking his form. Methodism was not so pretentious in at least the position of preacher to congregant.

  By the stern countenances emanating from the pews, one would think he was being judged by a room full of upright piety, but Philip knew better. Those who had been appointed as deacons by the bishop in Cincinnati folded their arms and looked grave, the wives prim and made up, the children restless and bored, the soldiers curious about one of their own.

  Philip uttered his last words, bowed his head slightly, and took his place in the seats that sat facing the congregation, sweating and shaking. Not pretending to be his father and teach on a topic with spiritual undertones, he spoke about the war, the soldier’s life, and the desire every man in blue felt for the crushing of the Rebel armies and the peace that would come from settling the questions of secession and slavery. It was heartfelt and passionate, the recognition of those from the community who would never cross the threshold of the church again and of those who had borne the battle and come back missing limbs or the health they once possessed. The war was every day, even if there wasn’t a skirmish or an engagement to crowd the newspaper columns with lists of casualties. If they remembered this one thing, Philip could feel he had imparted something of value. Charles gave the benediction and then made his way to the front to wish good health on the families as they left, Philip by his side and feeling all too nostalgic.

  “Them’s some purty words, there, Preacher,” Philip’s traveling companion Major George Pickering said after the last of the local families had made their exit.

  “Shut up,” Philip murmured and smiled. “I thought you two would have gone on by now.”

  “In the morning,” Captain Simon Sheffield replied. “You want to come into town to the hotel for some coffee?”

  “Yes, I’d like that,” Philip replied and looked at his father. It was a taboo to do anything but fix and consume Sunday meal after church, but since their mother had passed on and Philip had started his own ministry, that tradition had faded away. Philip felt compelled to get the assent of his father anyway.

  “Do what you want, son,” came the laconic reply.

  The hotel lounge area was more quaint than ornate, being the best a small community could afford and taking advantage of the traffic between Cincinnati and Columbus. It was the last stop before a half-day’s journey to the commerce capital of Ohio, bringing river-borne transport overland to the farming communities and the markets of Columbus. The clientele this evening were all soldiers; a smattering of all commissioned ranks could be seen seated among the tables drinking coffee and harder stuff. The room buzzed with chatter; uniformed attendants milled about with carafes of coffee and served whiskey from pewter trays. The room smelled of cigar and pipe tobacco. The topic of conversation seemed to be the bodies—Confederate bodies found along the main road leading into town.

  His mouse-like companion with the big ears, George Pickering, on his way to join the staff of General George Thomas, was still squirming and agitating over the state of the war, though little had changed from the few days before when he’d been railing against Halleck’s mismanagement of his theater of operations.

  Simon Sheffield, a tallish man whose thin, bony shoulders seemed to poke through his tunic coat like two rounded hills, merely sat and listened, something he’d done for the miles and miles the three had already logged on horseback from Columbus.

  “I think the Rebel we treated to breakfast the other day is here and leaving his compatriots in his wake,” George said between sips of whiskey and grousing.

  “What do you mean?” Philip asked, surprised.

  “Cavalry patrol pulled in with a body, some poor waif in artilleryman’s uniform, strangled. They think he’s with that party that broke out of Chase.”

  “That was yesterday,” Simon added. “They found two more this morning. One was dead, and the other was barely alive. A third give himself up. Seems the Rebs is turning on theyselves.”

  “Any of them the one we ate with?” Philip inquired.

  “Don’t know, not seen any of them—just seems to be the talk of the town. Prolly the only excitement this place has seen,” George surmised.

  “Odd they finding some dead like that,” Philip said. “Don’t make a whole lot of sense.”

  “Deep behind enemy lines, no food, no transportation, a bunch of thieves and the worst sort of slave-keeping reprobates … it’s a wonder they aren’t at each other’s throats as a matter of course.”

  “Where’d they take the one they found alive?” Philip asked.

  “Back to their camp,” Simon replied. Simon was destined for the 54th Ohio as a major and quartermaster. His neatly trimmed goatee and cut hair gave him the appearance of a highborn cavalier. Cheekbones that flared out and a thin jawline made him look as if he was constantly grinning even when he was trying to look serious.

  Philip asked, “Want to go and pay him a visit, see if he’s our Rebel lieutenant?”

  “Who cares who they captured as long as they captured him?” George groused.

  “Might be interesting, given our brush with him,” Simon conceded.

  “You have something better to do, George?” Philip asked.

  “No, just don’t care one way or the other about them sons of Hades. But all right, I’ll humor you.”

  The local jail was bereft of military prisoners, but a cavalry troop encamped on the town’s outskirts yielded what the group was looking for. Sibley tents were pitched in rows and horses picketed in regulated fashion. Beside an officer’s wall tent lay two bodies in dirty Confederate garb, neither covered. A guard outside the tent told Philip they’d come to the right place. A surgeon was tending to a tall man’s bruised face near the two corpses.

  “Well, it ain’t our Reb,” said George with disappointment.

  “In here,” said a rough-looking sergeant as he held open the tent flap.

  “Millidge, get a patrol ready and take Captain Kearns with you, he’ll show you wher
e the others might be,” said the man seated at a desk in the tent. Seated in a corner of the tent was a man in Rebel uniform calmly smoking a pipe, looking dirty and tired but otherwise content. He nodded to Philip and the others as they entered.

  Sergeant Millidge saluted and looked Kearns over with disgust before turning on his heel and exiting the tent.

  Looking up, the lieutenant said, “Provost due sometime. You he?”

  “No, we heard one of them was captured, and we came to take a look,” Simon answered. He looked at the Rebel and then at George and Philip in turn.

  “What happened to them other two, Lieutenant …?” Philip asked the lieutenant.

  “Fisher. The prisoner killed ‘em, or so the note says.”

  “Note?” Philip, George, and Simon said in near unison.

  “Found him bound to a tree and hollerin’ like blazes. Found this note pinned to his coat. This Captain Kearns led us to him.” Fisher said and motioned to Kearns, who nodded and raised his pipe in greeting.

  The lieutenant handed the group the dirty paper. It read, “I’m Private Lewis Hopewell. I’m a murdering sonofabitch, and I killed Privates Peter Pritchert and Fredrick Lester. Please shoot me.”

  “One of them dirty Rebs has a sense of humor,” George laughed.

  “The private said anything?” Philip asked.

  “Nothing that we can verify. Says they’s two more runnin’ loose hereabouts.”

  “That much is certain,” Simon agreed.

  “If the note is true, what next?” Philip asked the lieutenant. “And what’s his story?” motioning toward Kearns.

  “We’ll shoot the prisoner, probably. Kearns here is going to help us run down the others in exchange for leniency from Colonel Moody at Camp Chase.”

  “Sir, we’re mounting up,” Sergeant Millidge announced as he poked his head through the open tent flap and motioned for Kearns to follow.

  “Mind if we have a few words with the private, Lieutenant?” Philip asked as Jackson Kearns brushed past them.

  “No, but you won’t get much out of the little cuss,” Fisher said and returned his attention to what he’d been writing.

  As they exited the tent, the patrol was setting off, with the sergeant in the lead and the Rebel prisoner Kearns riding in the middle of the group, unbound and seemingly enjoying the ride. They headed south down the Germantown Pike, and Philip watched them riding as if they had little to do but sit a horse for several hours. He started to wonder if they really wanted to find the other two or if the Rebel was purposefully leading them astray; he’d have paid more attention to the woods if were the one doing the looking.

  Lewis Hopewell was seated on a stool by the wall of the lieutenant’s tent while the surgeon was tending to cuts to his face. His eyes were blackened and reduced to slits, his lips puffy and bleeding, his jaw swollen. Philip and his companions looked at Hopewell some few moments before interrupting the surgeon’s work.

  “Was the man that did this a lieutenant of cavalry?” Philip asked the man.

  Glumly, the captive nodded.

  “That clever little bastard!” George cried.

  “He escape with you and the others?” Philip asked the man.

  Through swollen eyes, the man tried to look up at them. His lower lip was a ball of dried blood and swelling, and his cheeks were red and black. His jaw was broken, and he labored to open it even a little.

  “Yes, he escape with us.”

  “And none of you are paroled, right?” Simon added.

  The man shook his head no. He was breathing in shallow, quick breaths, and the surgeon had already wrapped a compress around his chest to constrict movement.

  “Why’d you kill those men? Your men?” Philip asked.

  He was unable to keep his legs still as the surgeon poked and prodded, releasing fresh torrents of blood. With bleeding lips and a swollen jaw, Lewis yelped, “Wash it! Wash wha’ you doin’!”

  Working his jaw and wincing, Lewis answered Philip. “… reedom. Freedom,” came his labored reply.

  “What the hell does that mean? Freedom? You killed them for freedom? I told you they were barely civilized,” George said, disgusted.

  “It was ‘unter, Hunter what did it.”

  “Well, one of them sorry excuses for soldiers did it, but I’m not likely to believe what comes out of his mouth either way,” George said.

  “What was that lieutenant’s name? Was it Hunter?” Simon asked.

  “He didn’t strike me as the murdering type,” Philip replied.

  “They all the murdering type!” George cried. “Can’t believe anythin’ any one of them says anyhow.”

  “Well, if your curiosity has been piqued enough … “ Simon said as he headed for the flap of the tent. Standing over the injured man, Philip motioned to Simon to wait. He fixed his gaze on the beaten soldier.

  “Tell the truth, did you murder those two men? You can lie to us, but you can’t lie to God, and confession is good for the soul.”

  The prisoner glared back. “Hunter … did it.”

  George smirked. “You think one lyin’ Reb is gonna tell the truth about another lyin’ Reb?”

  “Whoever tied him up obviously thought he did it,” Simon said when they were all out of the tent.

  “Why leave him tied to a tree to be found? They might as well have let us know they were going to be passing through as leave this one alive,” Philip said.

  “Who cares? When did that trooper say the escape was? They’ve been on the run for days. Who knows why they did what they did.”

  “Always the curious one, ain’t you, George?” Philip chided.

  “Just practical. And it’s no real concern of ours, true?”

  Philip and the others slowly walked back to the hotel. The summer afternoon was driving people indoors for shade and cold drinks, and the three set a rendezvous for the morning and the continuation of their journey. Philip returned home but stopped short of the porch and eyed his horse. His gear was scattered about his old room in the house, but he need only retrieve his carbine and be ready to move out. There had been plenty of cavalry activity all around the area, but if it were he trying to remain invisible, where would he hide? Making up his mind, he entered the house.

  “I’m going to go and scour the woods for those escaped Confederates,” Philip announced as he opened the door to the house. Charles looked up from the book he was reading, and Paul, sitting opposite his father in the receiving room and reading the paper, just stared back.

  “Don’t everyone try to stop me at once,” Philip said after the awkward silence begged to be broken.

  “You going to do that today? On the Sabbath?” Charles asked.

  “What escaped Confederates?” Paul asked.

  “Why not, sir? Nothing more restful than putting the mind at ease,” Philip replied. “They found two dead and one nearly so. The one I ran into a few days ago put on a good show of being paroled. Pulled the wool over our eyes good. Thought I’d give the area a once-over just out of curiosity.”

  “And what do you plan to do if you find ‘em?” Charles asked, a little concerned.

  “That’s why I have this,” Philip said and brandished his Sharps carbine. The breech-loading carbine was a short weapon without the kick of the single-shot percussion- converted 1855 Springfield rifled musket he’d been issued when a private in the 24th Ohio. Buck and ball was the load, a cylindrical lead ball with buckshot embedded underneath the cartridge that made the weapon particularly dangerous when fire was sprayed at close ranges. If you weren’t torn asunder by the ball, you’d be perforated by the buckshot. The Sharps was a single-shot short rifle carried by the cavalry arm, and it could be purchased for twenty-five dollars—an expense luxury item indeed for a newly minted chaplain.

  “Had to buy it myself; chaplains aren’t issued anything.”

  “Think there is an obvious reason for that?” Paul chided.

  “Don’t mean that I’m not going to shoot someone if they tr
y to bushwhack me. Bibles are for our own troops, bullets are for Confederates.” Philip grinned.

  “Go with him, Paul. Might learn a thing or two,” Charles said as he returned to his book.

  “You’ll have to double ride for a bit; I’m going out a ways.”

  “Horse ain’t going to be much use in the woods,” Paul warned.

  “True, but save some shoe leather getting out that way. Besides, we know all the trails, right?” The woods were crisscrossed with footpaths the locals used for cutting in and out of each other’s farmhouses and barns and creeks, sneaking around and hiding from nosy fathers.

  They mounted and set out for an uncomfortable ride. Philip was still unused to the horse and it to him; the complication of adding a second rider only made it worse. The beast was skittish and not entirely happy with Philip’s style of leading—which was to say he wasn’t leading the horse very much, but being led instead.

  “You don’t know what the hell you’re doing, do you?” Paul said after an unsuccessful attempt to turn the horse off of the road.

  “No, and neither do you. I just let him follow the other two I was traveling with,” Philip confessed.

  Stopping along a narrow footpath in the forest, a path well-worn and well-known to both from childhood, Paul nudged Philip. “I don’t trust the horse or you, so I’m getting down right here,” Paul said as he slid off and backed away slowly, waiting to be kicked. The path wended its way through forest paths that crisscrossed farmland and were perfect places to hide if you didn’t want to be found. The cavalry was looking along the main roads. The forests around the town and farms radiating out were where they used to go to play or just be by themselves. This was where he’d hide, Philip thought, west along the outskirts of Germantown.

  “Let’s tie him up and start poking about,” Philip conceded.

  “You really think you’re going to find those escaped Confederates? You pick up some skill you haven’t told me about?”