HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF THE SOUTH

HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF THE SOUTHCHAPTER XVIII—THE BLUNDERS OF SHILOHBy John Trotwood Moore

By John Trotwood Moore

The more one studies Shiloh, the more contradictory it becomes. It will ever remain an incongruous battle. On the Union side it was a battle of unpreparedness—though not of dishonorable surprise—and on both sides a battle of blunders. And never in any battle of any war that I have ever read did Chance—old-fashioned, historic, blind Chance—play a more conspicuous part.

Some of the big chances, standing out in the light of to-day like gray ghosts above the battlefield, are:

First—The chance that cut Buell off one day too late for the Union cause.

Second—The chance that put him there one day too soon for the Confederates.

Third—The chance which Grant took—and which he says in his autobiography he would not have taken with the riper knowledge gained later in the war—of not entrenching.

Fourth—The chance of mud and rain, which delayed Johnston one day in bringing on the fight.

Fifth—The chance of one fateful bullet amid ten thousand harmless ones, striking an artery not hit once in ten thousand times in battle, and striking from the boards the only head on either side which had absolutely a clear conception of the entire battle to be, planned by himself with consummate skill and executed, till stricken to death, like a thunderbolt of Jove in the brain of Mars. He alone, I repeat, of all the host of generals, Federals and Confederates, who swarmed booted and bedecked around the contending hosts of that day, had definite plans, knew what was to be done, and held the doing of it in the hollow of his hand, and his name was Albert Sidney Johnston.

Sixth—The great chance Beauregard had for ending the fight on the first day, instead of calling off the troops until the fatal to-morrow.

Seventh—The chance—ay, the blunder—of Grant in recalling Lew Wallace from a position which a most gracious and generous fate had given him. A chance which gave to Wallace the opportunity for his own fame and the fame of Grant’s army—the chance of falling upon the flank and rear of the eager, neglectful, front-fighting Confederates, of breaking their hearts as Johnston’s death could never have done. This was a greater chance than Jackson had at Fredericksburg when he utterly defeated the Yankee army; it was as great as the chance Blücher had at Waterloo; greater than Bonaparte’s at Austerlitz.

In thinking of Stonewall Jackson and Johnston, did God in His wisdom know it was best that the Confederacy should not be, as we all now know it, and take these two men from life that it might not come to pass?

And there we are at it again: For God’s decision is man’s destiny.

Now, are not these chances enough? Or is it Law, Cause and Effect, Adjustment, Nature—God?

To know—to see clearly—to understand that one paragraph, who would not be willing to go hence to-night? For if it is God and immortality, there would be no fears, doubts, pitiless daysof self communion, ending in that pale despair which strikes into the soul of every man whose soul is his own and who thinks. And if it is all Chance (a thought repellant and unbelievable to one who thinks), or even the Great Unchance of fixed, immutable, but unloving and uncaring Law—as many believe—then why suffer to this palsied, dust-turning end?

GENERAL LEW WALLACE

From the lips of babes, from the humble and the ignorant, what wisdom! Here is some of it:

On a morning after a cyclone where I once lived, amid the death of nearly threescore people, and the wreck of homes, a friend met an old negro, whose wife and children had been killed, and his home blown away. There was the usual compassion and condolence and trust from the learned man, who had lost nothing. But the old negro said: “Marster, the man that you calls God—yo’ God—it ’pears to me that he do about as much harm as he do good!”

I have wondered since—often and often—if our God—the God our little minds have been able to grasp—to whom some people falsely attribute revenge and cruelty and murder—if he is not as the old negro said; and I have prayed that I might live to know the God Which Is, and that he would permit me to understand the things which do stagger me now!

Were these things really chances? Take each one of them and sift it to its very beginning—follow up the broad stream of each till you find the first drop of its water trickling over the blind bluff of the thing unknown which staggers and stops you, and even to that last tiny drop you will stand and find no answer to the question, and before that drop you will stop again, look up at the stars and ask the same question: “Is it Chance, is it Law, or is it God?”

Let us take the first one: Why was Buell a day late? A thousand little things—a march from Nashville to Savannah, planned with ample time, yet delayed. What delays? Hundreds of them—follow up any one of them and it will end in the drop.

Let me give you one which came under my personal recollection: Some ten years ago I stopped one night at a hotel in Chicago, known as the Kuhn House. After registering, the proprietor sought me out. He had been one of Buell’s chief engineers, and upon seeing where I was from—Columbia, Tennessee—he wanted to know if the old bridge across Duck River at that point was still standing. “It was there,” he said, “that we saved Grant’s army and made him President instead of prisoner. I was given two days”—I think that is the time he stated—“to repair the bridge, the flooring ofwhich had been torn up and the structure half burned before we reached it. But we had heard rumors of a great battle pending near Savannah and though we had received messages from General Grant saying there was no need for undue haste, we were marching for all we were worth. I felt, somehow, that great things were at stake, and I doubled my force and worked day and night completing the repairs so that the artillery might pass over in just half the time given me; and that time saved, put us in Savannah twelve hours to our good. I have often wondered what would have happened had I taken my full time to repair that old bridge over Duck River at Columbia.”

Chance. Might-have-been! Tell me what they are and I will tell you what God is!

Grant and Buell threshed out their differences years ago before they both passed into the shadowland, and nothing is more interesting than the grave and dignified controversy between these two men. Grant, great as he was in war, was out of his element with a pen in his hand; and in the written battle, Buell, to my mind, has worsted him. Nor was it Buell’s fault that this controversy arose. It came about from the exaggerated desire of the friends of the Army of the Tennessee to shield Grant and Sherman from the blunders they so clearly made and which should have been acknowledged by them like men, instead of trying to belittle the part that Buell played. For Buell had enough to his own credit.

In his very able article inThe Century, Buell demonstrates at least very clearly to his own mind:

First. That Grant and Sherman were neglectful in preparing for this battle.

Second. That Grant’s army was too badly scattered, and he, himself, too far away from the front when the battle opened.

Third. That Grant and Sherman were surprised.

Fourth. That they were whipped.

Fifth. and (Q. E. D.) that Buell saved them.

Here is Buell’s very succinct, graphic and convincing statement in the beginning of his paper and argued throughout with the greatest ability:

“An army comprising seventy regiments of infantry, twenty batteries of artillery and a sufficiency of cavalry lay for two weeks and more in isolated camps, with a river in its rear and a hostile army, claimed to be superior in numbers, twenty miles distant in its front, while the commander made his headquarters and passed his nights nine miles away, on the opposite side of the river. It had no line or order of battle, no defensive works of any sort, no outposts, properly speaking, to give warning or check the advance of an enemy, and no recognized head during the absence of the regular commander. On a Saturday the hostile force arrived and formed in order of battle, without detection or hindrance, within a mile and a half of the unguarded army, advanced upon it the next morning, penetrated its disconnected lines, assaulted its camps in front and flank, drove its disjointed members successively from position to position, capturing some and routing others, in spite of much heroic individual resistance, and steadily drew near the landing and depot of its supplies in the pocket between the river and an impassable creek. At the moment, near the close of the day, when the remnant of the retrograding army was driven to refuge in the midst of its magazines, with the triumphant enemy at half-gunshot distance, the advance division of a reinforcing army arrived on the opposite bank of the river, crossed and took position under fire at the point of attack; the attacking force was checked and the battle ceased for the day. The next morning at dawn the reinforcing army and a fresh division belonging to the defeated force advanced against the assailants, followed or accompanied by such of the broken columns of the previous day as had not lost all cohesion, and, after ten hours of conflict, drove the enemy from the captured camps and the field.”

It will be seen from the statement in his article that one of the strongest points he made as to the unpreparedness of Grant’s army is the repeated fateful turning of the flanks of the different divisions throughout the day, in one of which Prentiss was captured. He says:

“The outflanking so common in the Union report at Shiloh is not a mere excuse of the inferior commanders. It is the practical consequence of the absence of a common head and the judicious use of reserves to counteract partial reverses and preserve the front of battle.”

GENERAL GRANT.As he appeared at the time of Shiloh

GENERAL GRANT.

As he appeared at the time of Shiloh

From this alone he argues all the misfortunes of the different divisions acting independently and without a common head. Their flanks turned again and again as each fell back with no warning from the others. And this is his graphic statement of the critical ending of the first day’s fight:

“Before the incumbrance of their success was entirely put out of their day, the Confederates pressed forward to complete a seemingly assured victory, but it was too late. John K. Jackson’s brigade and the Ninth and Tenth Mississippi of Chalmer’s brigade crossed Dill’s ravine, and their artillery on the south side swept the bluff at the landing, the missiles falling into the river far beyond. Hulbert had hurriedly gotten into line in rear of the siege guns, as they are called in the official report, posted a half-mile from the river, but for five hundred yards from the landing there was not a soldier or any organized means of defense. Just as the danger was perceived Colonel Webster, Grant’s Chief of Artillery, rapidly approached Colonel Fry and myself. The order of getting the battery which was standing in park into action was expressed simultaneously by the three of us, and was promptly executed by Colonel Webster’s immediate exertion. General Grant came up a few minutes later, and a member of his escort was killed in that position. Chalmer’s skirmishers approached within one hundred yards of the battery. The number in view was not large, but the gunners were already abandoning their pieces, when Ammen’s brigade, accompanied by Nelson, came into action. The attack was repelled and the engagement ended for the day.... We know from the Confederate report that the attack was undertaken by Chalmer’s and Jackson’s brigade, as above stated; that the reserve artillery could effect nothing against the attacks from under the shelter of Dill’s ravine; that the fire of the gunboats was equally harmless on account of the elevation which it was necessary to give the guns in order to clear the top of the bluff, and that the final assault, owing to the show of resistance, was delayed. Jackson’s brigade made its advance without cartridges, and when they came to the crest of the hill and found the artillery supported by infantry, they shrank from the assault by bayonet alone. Jackson went in search of co-operation and support, and in the meantime the attack was superseded by the order of the Confederate commander calling off his troops for the day.”

His description of how things looked when he landed at Pittsburg Landing, of the demoralized condition of Grant’s army, is graphic in the extreme:

“On the shore I encountered a scene which has often been described. The face of the bluff was crowded with stragglers from the battle. The number that at different times has been estimated at five thousand in the morning to fifteen thousand in the evening. The number at nightfall would never have fallen short of fifteen thousand, including those who had passed down the river, and the less callous, but still broken and demoralized, fragments about the camps on the plateau near the landing. At the top of the bluff all was confusion. Men mounted and on foot and wagons with their teams and excited drivers, all struggling their way closest to the river, were mixed up in apparently inextricable confusion with a battery of artillery which was standing in park without men or horses to man or move it.”

There lives near me in honor and good name, General Gates P. Thruston, one of the greatest scholars of the South, and perhaps the greatest living ethnologists of this country. He waswith Buell, and corroborates his chief, and he refers me to General Lew Wallace’s oration, delivered at Shiloh, April 6th, 1903, in which General Wallace uses the following language:

“Did any of you, my friends, ever hear of an army fighting a battle without a commander? No? Well, that was the case with the Army of the Tennessee at the beginning of the first day here. The five divisions on the field had each its chief, to be sure; but none of the five chiefs was in general command. Instead of one supreme governing will, nowhere so essential as in battle, there were five officers, each independent of the others. Between them things were done by request, not orders. No one of them was responsible for what the others did. I am sure you will see the enormity of the disadvantage. You will even wonder that there was any resistance made.“I may not pass this point without an explanation. To do so would be grossest injustice. General Grant, as everybody knows, was in command of the Army of the Tennessee at the time. By order of General Halleck, his headquarters were at Savannah, ten miles below Pittsburg Landing. Hearing the guns, he made all haste to the scene of action, arriving there four hours after the attack began. It was then too late for him to change the day. The battle had passed beyond his control.“A strange circumstance that, certainly; but what will you say to this I offer you next? The Confederate army left Corinth for Pittsburg Landing on Thursday, in the afternoon. It moved in three corps—Hardee’s, Bragg’s, Polk’s—with Breckinridge’s three brigades in reserve. The intention was to attack the Army of the Tennessee Saturday morning, but it was not until late Saturday afternoon that the entire army reached its destination and was deployed. Here, now, is the marvel. How was it possible to move the three great army corps into as many lines of battle, each behind the other, within two miles of Shiloh Church, without making their presence known? Were there any Union pickets out? How far out could they have been? Had they no eyes, no ears? It would seem not. For at five o’clock Sunday morning, when Hardee moved to the attack—I give you all permission to wonder while you listen—neither General Grant at Savannah nor one of his division commanders on the field knew of the peril, or even suspected it.”

“I may not pass this point without an explanation. To do so would be grossest injustice. General Grant, as everybody knows, was in command of the Army of the Tennessee at the time. By order of General Halleck, his headquarters were at Savannah, ten miles below Pittsburg Landing. Hearing the guns, he made all haste to the scene of action, arriving there four hours after the attack began. It was then too late for him to change the day. The battle had passed beyond his control.

“A strange circumstance that, certainly; but what will you say to this I offer you next? The Confederate army left Corinth for Pittsburg Landing on Thursday, in the afternoon. It moved in three corps—Hardee’s, Bragg’s, Polk’s—with Breckinridge’s three brigades in reserve. The intention was to attack the Army of the Tennessee Saturday morning, but it was not until late Saturday afternoon that the entire army reached its destination and was deployed. Here, now, is the marvel. How was it possible to move the three great army corps into as many lines of battle, each behind the other, within two miles of Shiloh Church, without making their presence known? Were there any Union pickets out? How far out could they have been? Had they no eyes, no ears? It would seem not. For at five o’clock Sunday morning, when Hardee moved to the attack—I give you all permission to wonder while you listen—neither General Grant at Savannah nor one of his division commanders on the field knew of the peril, or even suspected it.”

Of the other great chance or blunder of Shiloh—Grant’s recall of Lew Wallace—let us now speak. Early in my study of this battle I stumbled on this so unexpectedly that it filled me with surprise. It was beyond doubt the greatest opportunity of Shiloh, as I mentioned in a previous paper. The story of it by Lew Wallace himself, is the most interesting paper ever written about that battlefield. For many years the distinguished author of “Ben-Hur” was made the scapegoat of Shiloh. He bore it like the man he was, but history will now vindicate him and nothing has given me greater pleasure than to contribute my share toward his vindication in this series of papers. At the time I arrived at the conclusion I did concerning General Wallace’s brilliant movement during the first day’s fight, I did not know that he had ever explained it himself, but seeing the position I took, and the conclusions I deduced, a friend has sent me the account General Wallace wrote of it himself and turned it over to General James Grant Wilson to be published by General Wilson after the death of the author. This was done last January by the Appletons,[1]and it is useless to add that the author of “Ben-Hur” has told in no usual way the graphic story of that blunder of his superior which made Wallace a scapegoat instead of a hero of that much misunderstood fight. I quote only part of it, but this part bristles with interest, and is enough:

“On the 6th, the memorable Sunday, a sentinel woke me from sleep on the steamboat serving me for headquarters. He reported cannonading up the river. When I reached the hurricane deck dawn was breaking. The air was humid and heavy, but still. The guns were quite audible. Five minutes—ten—and then the irregular pounding, sometimes distinct, sometimes muffled, kept scurrying down the yellow flood of the river. Directly the camp on the bluff became astir.“My staff officers reported to me. One of them (Lieutenant Ware) I sent to Colonel Smith with directions to form his brigade and conduct it to ‘Stoney Lonesome.’ Another (Major James R. Ross) was dispatched at speed to Colonel Thayer with orders to have everything ready to move; continuing his ride, he bore an order to Colonel Wood of the Third Brigade to break camp, send baggage and property tothe landing (Crump’s) and bring his regiments to the rendezvous at ‘Stoney Lonesome.’ The purpose of these orders was to have the division ready for movement when General Grant, who was at Savannah for the night, should pass in his dispatch boat going up the river.“About 8:30 o’clock General Grant drew alongside, and a conversation, substantially (almost literally) the following, took place:“‘Have you heard the firing?’ he asked.“‘Yes, I have been listening to it since daybreak.’“‘What do you think of it?’NASHVILLE PIKE, NEAR SPRING HILL, DOWN WHICH ROAD BUELL MARCHED“‘It is undoubtedly a general engagement.’“‘What have you in your front?’“‘There is nothing reported.’“He then said, after thought: ‘Very well. Hold yourself in readiness for orders.’“‘But, General, I ordered the concentration about daylight. I am ready now.’“Again he reflected. He seemed uncertain. It afterwards came out that he believed the real attack would be on me. Presently he repeated: ‘Hold yourself in readiness to move in any direction.’ The pilot bell rang, the lashings were removed and his steamer put off up-stream hard as it could go.“There was general disappointment among my officers. I was disappointed; but without remark I left the boat. My last order at the Landing was to have a horse saddled and bridled and hitched to a tree on the bluff, that a messenger coming down the river with an order for me might bring it without delay. Thereupon I rode out to ‘Stoney Lonesome,’ where Smith and Thayer were waiting, arms stacked. The Third Brigade had not yet arrived.“The men were clustered together in groups. They were doing little talking. Their faces were turned to the south, listening. Occasionally musketry could be heard accompanying the artillery. Smith and Thayer and their staff officers collected around me, and were surprised when I told them the order General Grant had left me.“Ten o’clock, and still the air laden with noises of the struggle going on—still no order; 10:30—yet no order. Smith got into his saddle and rode away, saying: ‘I guess Grant sees he can get along without us.’“Eleven o’clock. The firing was no longer continuous, but at intervals and in outbursts. Thayer suggested that an order might have been started and the messenger intercepted. I thought not; for if the situation on the field called for us, the possibility of an accident to a courier by land would necessitate sending him by boat. So I ordered a staff officer, Major Ross, to ride to the landing and see if anything had come down by the river. About half a mile down the road he met an officer on the horse I had left, who asked him where General Wallace was. Ross told him; then he asked, in turn, if he had orders for General Wallace. The officer said he had, and gave the Major a paper, which the Major read. In a short time Captain Baxter, a Q. U. of General Grant’s, introduced himself to me and placed the paper in my hand, saying: ‘Here is an order.’“Our watches showed 11:30 o’clock. The officers of my staff and of Thayer’s closed around me while I read. The paper was a half sheet of foolscap, dented with boot heels and soiled with tobacco juice, and it was folded, not enveloped. The writing was in pencil. Strangest of all, no signature was attached. I passed the paper to Thayer to read, and, turning to Baxter, asked: ‘How is the fighting going, Captain?’“Baxter replied: ‘Very well. We are repulsing them all along the line.’“The paper was returned to me, and I read it a second time, and, noticing its deficiencies, inquired:“‘Who is this from, Captain?’“‘General Grant.’“‘Why is it not signed?’“He then explained: ‘I received the order verbally. Not being used to carrying orders, I picked the paper from thefloor of the cabin as I came down and wrote what you see. I was afraid I might make a mistake.’“General Grant, speaking of the order, has several times said that he sent it to me not later than 10 o’clock; that it directed me to march to Pittsburg Landing by the lower or river road; that he gave it verbally to a staff officer, and did not know what it was when delivered to me. Of course, he could not know, but I do; and others, some dead, some living, who read it, have given their accounts of it, so that I can speak with confidence. Here it is—as I received it, mark you—almost verbatim:“‘You will leave a sufficient force at Crump’s Landing to guard the public property there; with the rest of your division march and form junction with the right of the army, your line at right angles with river, and be governed by circumstances.’“Observe, if you please, that the words by the lower or river road to Pittsburg Landing are omitted, leaving nothing but a naked direction for me to march and form junction with the right of the army.“Do I deny General Grant’s version of the order? I believe he ordered me to Pittsburg Landing by the river road because he says he did, and because at 10 o’clock, when the whole army was slowly and sullenly retiring to the river, it was the order logically right and first to present itself. Moreover, by inserting in the body of the order actually brought to me the words ‘to Pittsburg Landing by the lower or river road,’ we have sense in the other direction to ‘form my line of battle at right angles with the river,’ otherwise without sense. At the right of the army, out three miles from the Landing, how was the angle to be ascertained? Why, then, did I not lead my column to Pittsburg Landing? And I answer, because the order Captain Baxter delivered to me contained no mention of Pittsburg Landing or of any road. Satisfied that I comprehended it, I passed the paper to Colonel Thayer; others about us at the moment read it. I gave it finally to Captain Kneffler, my Adjutant-General, who probably stuck it under his sword belt. It was lost during the day. On account of its informality, he attached no importance to it, and, as I shared the opinion, I never blamed him.“My first thought was, where is the right of the army? Captain Baxter’s good news settled the point. If not where it was in the morning, then Sherman must have advanced. In short, Sherman’s camp was now my goal, and I knew it was just beyond the bridge at the junction of Owl and Snake Creeks, on the road from Pittsburg Landing to Purdy. To get to it by the shortest route and in the quickest time from the corner of the V my brigades were in, I must take the right-hand road. General Grant has said in a footnote of his ‘Memoirs’ that, in the absence of an express direction, if I had been an older soldier I would have marched to Pittsburg Landing, and thence, as from a base, out to Sherman. I think not. He forgot the news I had from Baxter as to the condition of the battle; besides which, by taking the right line of the road fork, the distance of the march would be reduced nearly, if not quite, three miles; in addition to which, again, the column would be on the very road Myers had bridged and corduroyed for me. So I sent word to Myers to lead out for the Owl Creek bridge next to Sherman’s camp.“I asked myself, to be sure, if we are beating the enemy, and he is on the run, why the want of me? And why the order to form my line at right angles with the river? I could not answer, but rested implicitly on the order. Grant was on the ground—he knew—that was enough. The idea of defeat never entered my mind; and starting, as I was, with intelligence of a victory already won by our army, what ground is there for the imputation that I had the achievement of some special glory in purpose?“The road we were pursuing had been well repaired. The cavalry had done its work substantially, and we bowled along. By the firing we could tell we were nearing the battle. We took no note of time. Somewhere about half after one o’clock—I remember the head of the column was reported in the vicinity of the Owl Creek bridge—a cavalry officer, quite young and capless, covered with mud, slashed across the forehead, rode up from the rear and asked:“‘Are you General Wallace?’“Without pulling rein, I replied.“‘General Grant,’ he said, ‘has sent me to tell you to hurry up.’“Up? To the right of the army, of course; so I returned: ‘Give General Grant my compliments, and tell him I will be up in a few minutes.’“The courier rode off the way he came—a circumstance which, if I had had the slightest suspicion that my movement was in error, would have prompted calling him back for question.“So, in absolute unconsciousness of mistake, I pushed on. Several times officers came to me and remarked upon the firing so far down on our left. And it was curious. Had we been repulsing the enemy, he should have been in the south, not so nearly in the southeast. But I settled the point, at least to my own satisfaction. ‘The fighting has ceased on front of Sherman; but they are keeping it up away over on our left.’ From the position my column was then in, the left of our army should have been well down toward the river in an almost easterly direction—certainly far enough in that direction to dispose of the only mistake General Grantattributes to me in the footnote corrective of the text in his ‘Memoirs.’“Finally the revelation overtook me. A second messenger came up from the rear. It was Captain Rowley, well known as of General Grant’s staff. He it was who reported to his chief that he found me marching to Purdy and several miles farther from the battlefield than when I started. From ‘Stoney Lonesome,’ Purdy lies west; whereas the road upon which he overtook me runs almost due south, and Shiloh Church, marking the left of Sherman’s camp, could not have been to exceed two miles from where Rowley and I held the conversation, which I will give very nearly in exact words. The fact is, he was himself out of his reckoning, if not lost.“‘I’ve had a devil of a time to find you,’ he said, in high excitement.JOHNSTON’S MONUMENT AT SHILOH“‘I am sorry to have put you to trouble,’ I returned, checking my horse. ‘What is it?’“‘The General has sent me to hurry you up.’“‘That’s the second message of the kind in ten minutes. I don’t understand it.’“‘Where are you going, anyhow?’“‘To join Sherman.’“‘Sherman!’“‘Yes.’“‘Come to one side with me.’ We went a little out of the road.“‘Great God!’ he said, ‘don’t you know that Sherman has been driven from his camp? And that the whole army is now within half a mile of the landing, and it’s a question if we are not all to be driven into the river?’“To my exclamations Captain Rowley went into details. There are kinds of fear; but nothing of that nature can shoot one’s marrow so to the core as the dread of making a mistake in a situation such as Rowley then flung me. Yet I could see with astonishing distinctness that I had led my division into the rear of the rebel army, or rather that the whole victorious army was between me and Grant.“My first impulse was to go on. A vigorous assault upon the enemy’s rear might turn defeat into victory. Two years later, at City Point, General Grant told me that if he had known at Shiloh what he then knew he would have ordered me where I started to go. To which I add, if I had known the moment Rowley was talking to me that General Nelson was on the right bank of the Tennessee, with a possibility of crossing his division to the left bank at Pittsburg Landing before night, I would have continued my march at all hazards. As it was, I did not even know that General Buell was within fifty miles of Savannah. Why, in the morning at Crump’s Landing, General Grant did not tell me that a considerable part of the Army of the Ohio was within supporting distance of the Army of the Tennessee has been a mystery to me from that day to this. It must have been that he did not yet believe there was seriousness in the rebel demonstration at Pittsburg Landing.“Captain Rowley, it is to be observed, did not estimate that there was a mistake in my movement to the right of the army. I told him it was plain that I was in the rear of the rebel army, and asked categorically: ‘What does General Grant want me to do? Do you bring me an order from him?’“‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘General Grant wants you to go to Pittsburg Landing, and he wants you there like hell.’“‘Very well, I shall obey him,’ I said. ‘But it will be necessary for me to back out of this and find a cross road to take the column into the river road. You have just come through the swamps; stay, now, and pilot me.’“He declined, and presently left me; then, thinking to find a crossing into the river road before the head of the column would lap the foot, I sent Captain Kneffler, who was still with Major Myers at the Owl Creek bridge, intelligence of the altered situation and a desire that he would remain with Myers and help take care of the rear. Thereupon I ordered a counter-march by brigades. The tactics of the movement have been criticised, and I now think justly. I should have resorted to a right-about of column.“Note, now, please—when we thus changed direction, from the south facing north, it was to march completely around the left flank of the Confederate army. Note, also—when the counter-march was ordered, not only was my cavalry holding the bridges at Owl Creek, scarcely a half-mile from the bluff on which the right of Sherman’s division rested in the morning, but Thayer’s advance guard had been some time turned into the Hamburg-Purdy road, and could not have been to exceed three-quarters of a mile from the bridge. And, marvelous to say, not a sign of the enemy had been seen! The inference is that the rear of the Confederates was unguarded. Indeed, it has been told me by reputable officers of their side that at the time of my approach there were fully as many of their soldiers looting and drinking in the captured camps as there were of ours burrowing under the bluffs down at the landing. Who shall tell the result had I been permitted to go on in my march? Many a time, seeing as we see in dreams, I have beheld Thayer’s deployed regiments moving through those tented streets, a wave crested with bayonets, and heard the demoralized hordes rushing panic-stricken upon their engaged lines. And now, in moments when personal ambition gets the better of me, I hold Rowley’s coming my greatest quarrel with Fortune. Oh, if he had remained lost in the woods an hour longer!”

“My staff officers reported to me. One of them (Lieutenant Ware) I sent to Colonel Smith with directions to form his brigade and conduct it to ‘Stoney Lonesome.’ Another (Major James R. Ross) was dispatched at speed to Colonel Thayer with orders to have everything ready to move; continuing his ride, he bore an order to Colonel Wood of the Third Brigade to break camp, send baggage and property tothe landing (Crump’s) and bring his regiments to the rendezvous at ‘Stoney Lonesome.’ The purpose of these orders was to have the division ready for movement when General Grant, who was at Savannah for the night, should pass in his dispatch boat going up the river.

“About 8:30 o’clock General Grant drew alongside, and a conversation, substantially (almost literally) the following, took place:

“‘Have you heard the firing?’ he asked.

“‘Yes, I have been listening to it since daybreak.’

“‘What do you think of it?’

NASHVILLE PIKE, NEAR SPRING HILL, DOWN WHICH ROAD BUELL MARCHED

“‘It is undoubtedly a general engagement.’

“‘What have you in your front?’

“‘There is nothing reported.’

“He then said, after thought: ‘Very well. Hold yourself in readiness for orders.’

“‘But, General, I ordered the concentration about daylight. I am ready now.’

“Again he reflected. He seemed uncertain. It afterwards came out that he believed the real attack would be on me. Presently he repeated: ‘Hold yourself in readiness to move in any direction.’ The pilot bell rang, the lashings were removed and his steamer put off up-stream hard as it could go.

“There was general disappointment among my officers. I was disappointed; but without remark I left the boat. My last order at the Landing was to have a horse saddled and bridled and hitched to a tree on the bluff, that a messenger coming down the river with an order for me might bring it without delay. Thereupon I rode out to ‘Stoney Lonesome,’ where Smith and Thayer were waiting, arms stacked. The Third Brigade had not yet arrived.

“The men were clustered together in groups. They were doing little talking. Their faces were turned to the south, listening. Occasionally musketry could be heard accompanying the artillery. Smith and Thayer and their staff officers collected around me, and were surprised when I told them the order General Grant had left me.

“Ten o’clock, and still the air laden with noises of the struggle going on—still no order; 10:30—yet no order. Smith got into his saddle and rode away, saying: ‘I guess Grant sees he can get along without us.’

“Eleven o’clock. The firing was no longer continuous, but at intervals and in outbursts. Thayer suggested that an order might have been started and the messenger intercepted. I thought not; for if the situation on the field called for us, the possibility of an accident to a courier by land would necessitate sending him by boat. So I ordered a staff officer, Major Ross, to ride to the landing and see if anything had come down by the river. About half a mile down the road he met an officer on the horse I had left, who asked him where General Wallace was. Ross told him; then he asked, in turn, if he had orders for General Wallace. The officer said he had, and gave the Major a paper, which the Major read. In a short time Captain Baxter, a Q. U. of General Grant’s, introduced himself to me and placed the paper in my hand, saying: ‘Here is an order.’

“Our watches showed 11:30 o’clock. The officers of my staff and of Thayer’s closed around me while I read. The paper was a half sheet of foolscap, dented with boot heels and soiled with tobacco juice, and it was folded, not enveloped. The writing was in pencil. Strangest of all, no signature was attached. I passed the paper to Thayer to read, and, turning to Baxter, asked: ‘How is the fighting going, Captain?’

“Baxter replied: ‘Very well. We are repulsing them all along the line.’

“The paper was returned to me, and I read it a second time, and, noticing its deficiencies, inquired:

“‘Who is this from, Captain?’

“‘General Grant.’

“‘Why is it not signed?’

“He then explained: ‘I received the order verbally. Not being used to carrying orders, I picked the paper from thefloor of the cabin as I came down and wrote what you see. I was afraid I might make a mistake.’

“General Grant, speaking of the order, has several times said that he sent it to me not later than 10 o’clock; that it directed me to march to Pittsburg Landing by the lower or river road; that he gave it verbally to a staff officer, and did not know what it was when delivered to me. Of course, he could not know, but I do; and others, some dead, some living, who read it, have given their accounts of it, so that I can speak with confidence. Here it is—as I received it, mark you—almost verbatim:

“‘You will leave a sufficient force at Crump’s Landing to guard the public property there; with the rest of your division march and form junction with the right of the army, your line at right angles with river, and be governed by circumstances.’

“Observe, if you please, that the words by the lower or river road to Pittsburg Landing are omitted, leaving nothing but a naked direction for me to march and form junction with the right of the army.

“Do I deny General Grant’s version of the order? I believe he ordered me to Pittsburg Landing by the river road because he says he did, and because at 10 o’clock, when the whole army was slowly and sullenly retiring to the river, it was the order logically right and first to present itself. Moreover, by inserting in the body of the order actually brought to me the words ‘to Pittsburg Landing by the lower or river road,’ we have sense in the other direction to ‘form my line of battle at right angles with the river,’ otherwise without sense. At the right of the army, out three miles from the Landing, how was the angle to be ascertained? Why, then, did I not lead my column to Pittsburg Landing? And I answer, because the order Captain Baxter delivered to me contained no mention of Pittsburg Landing or of any road. Satisfied that I comprehended it, I passed the paper to Colonel Thayer; others about us at the moment read it. I gave it finally to Captain Kneffler, my Adjutant-General, who probably stuck it under his sword belt. It was lost during the day. On account of its informality, he attached no importance to it, and, as I shared the opinion, I never blamed him.

“My first thought was, where is the right of the army? Captain Baxter’s good news settled the point. If not where it was in the morning, then Sherman must have advanced. In short, Sherman’s camp was now my goal, and I knew it was just beyond the bridge at the junction of Owl and Snake Creeks, on the road from Pittsburg Landing to Purdy. To get to it by the shortest route and in the quickest time from the corner of the V my brigades were in, I must take the right-hand road. General Grant has said in a footnote of his ‘Memoirs’ that, in the absence of an express direction, if I had been an older soldier I would have marched to Pittsburg Landing, and thence, as from a base, out to Sherman. I think not. He forgot the news I had from Baxter as to the condition of the battle; besides which, by taking the right line of the road fork, the distance of the march would be reduced nearly, if not quite, three miles; in addition to which, again, the column would be on the very road Myers had bridged and corduroyed for me. So I sent word to Myers to lead out for the Owl Creek bridge next to Sherman’s camp.

“I asked myself, to be sure, if we are beating the enemy, and he is on the run, why the want of me? And why the order to form my line at right angles with the river? I could not answer, but rested implicitly on the order. Grant was on the ground—he knew—that was enough. The idea of defeat never entered my mind; and starting, as I was, with intelligence of a victory already won by our army, what ground is there for the imputation that I had the achievement of some special glory in purpose?

“The road we were pursuing had been well repaired. The cavalry had done its work substantially, and we bowled along. By the firing we could tell we were nearing the battle. We took no note of time. Somewhere about half after one o’clock—I remember the head of the column was reported in the vicinity of the Owl Creek bridge—a cavalry officer, quite young and capless, covered with mud, slashed across the forehead, rode up from the rear and asked:

“‘Are you General Wallace?’

“Without pulling rein, I replied.

“‘General Grant,’ he said, ‘has sent me to tell you to hurry up.’

“Up? To the right of the army, of course; so I returned: ‘Give General Grant my compliments, and tell him I will be up in a few minutes.’

“The courier rode off the way he came—a circumstance which, if I had had the slightest suspicion that my movement was in error, would have prompted calling him back for question.

“So, in absolute unconsciousness of mistake, I pushed on. Several times officers came to me and remarked upon the firing so far down on our left. And it was curious. Had we been repulsing the enemy, he should have been in the south, not so nearly in the southeast. But I settled the point, at least to my own satisfaction. ‘The fighting has ceased on front of Sherman; but they are keeping it up away over on our left.’ From the position my column was then in, the left of our army should have been well down toward the river in an almost easterly direction—certainly far enough in that direction to dispose of the only mistake General Grantattributes to me in the footnote corrective of the text in his ‘Memoirs.’

“Finally the revelation overtook me. A second messenger came up from the rear. It was Captain Rowley, well known as of General Grant’s staff. He it was who reported to his chief that he found me marching to Purdy and several miles farther from the battlefield than when I started. From ‘Stoney Lonesome,’ Purdy lies west; whereas the road upon which he overtook me runs almost due south, and Shiloh Church, marking the left of Sherman’s camp, could not have been to exceed two miles from where Rowley and I held the conversation, which I will give very nearly in exact words. The fact is, he was himself out of his reckoning, if not lost.

“‘I’ve had a devil of a time to find you,’ he said, in high excitement.

JOHNSTON’S MONUMENT AT SHILOH

“‘I am sorry to have put you to trouble,’ I returned, checking my horse. ‘What is it?’

“‘The General has sent me to hurry you up.’

“‘That’s the second message of the kind in ten minutes. I don’t understand it.’

“‘Where are you going, anyhow?’

“‘To join Sherman.’

“‘Sherman!’

“‘Yes.’

“‘Come to one side with me.’ We went a little out of the road.

“‘Great God!’ he said, ‘don’t you know that Sherman has been driven from his camp? And that the whole army is now within half a mile of the landing, and it’s a question if we are not all to be driven into the river?’

“To my exclamations Captain Rowley went into details. There are kinds of fear; but nothing of that nature can shoot one’s marrow so to the core as the dread of making a mistake in a situation such as Rowley then flung me. Yet I could see with astonishing distinctness that I had led my division into the rear of the rebel army, or rather that the whole victorious army was between me and Grant.

“My first impulse was to go on. A vigorous assault upon the enemy’s rear might turn defeat into victory. Two years later, at City Point, General Grant told me that if he had known at Shiloh what he then knew he would have ordered me where I started to go. To which I add, if I had known the moment Rowley was talking to me that General Nelson was on the right bank of the Tennessee, with a possibility of crossing his division to the left bank at Pittsburg Landing before night, I would have continued my march at all hazards. As it was, I did not even know that General Buell was within fifty miles of Savannah. Why, in the morning at Crump’s Landing, General Grant did not tell me that a considerable part of the Army of the Ohio was within supporting distance of the Army of the Tennessee has been a mystery to me from that day to this. It must have been that he did not yet believe there was seriousness in the rebel demonstration at Pittsburg Landing.

“Captain Rowley, it is to be observed, did not estimate that there was a mistake in my movement to the right of the army. I told him it was plain that I was in the rear of the rebel army, and asked categorically: ‘What does General Grant want me to do? Do you bring me an order from him?’

“‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘General Grant wants you to go to Pittsburg Landing, and he wants you there like hell.’

“‘Very well, I shall obey him,’ I said. ‘But it will be necessary for me to back out of this and find a cross road to take the column into the river road. You have just come through the swamps; stay, now, and pilot me.’

“He declined, and presently left me; then, thinking to find a crossing into the river road before the head of the column would lap the foot, I sent Captain Kneffler, who was still with Major Myers at the Owl Creek bridge, intelligence of the altered situation and a desire that he would remain with Myers and help take care of the rear. Thereupon I ordered a counter-march by brigades. The tactics of the movement have been criticised, and I now think justly. I should have resorted to a right-about of column.

“Note, now, please—when we thus changed direction, from the south facing north, it was to march completely around the left flank of the Confederate army. Note, also—when the counter-march was ordered, not only was my cavalry holding the bridges at Owl Creek, scarcely a half-mile from the bluff on which the right of Sherman’s division rested in the morning, but Thayer’s advance guard had been some time turned into the Hamburg-Purdy road, and could not have been to exceed three-quarters of a mile from the bridge. And, marvelous to say, not a sign of the enemy had been seen! The inference is that the rear of the Confederates was unguarded. Indeed, it has been told me by reputable officers of their side that at the time of my approach there were fully as many of their soldiers looting and drinking in the captured camps as there were of ours burrowing under the bluffs down at the landing. Who shall tell the result had I been permitted to go on in my march? Many a time, seeing as we see in dreams, I have beheld Thayer’s deployed regiments moving through those tented streets, a wave crested with bayonets, and heard the demoralized hordes rushing panic-stricken upon their engaged lines. And now, in moments when personal ambition gets the better of me, I hold Rowley’s coming my greatest quarrel with Fortune. Oh, if he had remained lost in the woods an hour longer!”

[1]Appleton’s Magazine, January, 1906.

Back to Index Next