i| OTTO E IS ENS CHI ML LINCOLN ROOM UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY 973.7326 Ei83s cop. 2 ^le ?^>c**-* /^y, "* *, L*~^7 ?K^f ( /«^a'>«&>v; ,,..,.- By courtesy of National Park Service General Grant's headquarters at the Cherry Mansion, Savannah, Tennessee. The nearest railroad was twenty miles away; the roads which led toward or through it were mostly mere wagon trails, and only a few inhabited dwellings were silhou- etted against the background of dense forests and thickets which covered the ground. Numerous ravines and swamps presented serious obstacles to the rapid movement of troops. The little log church of Shiloh, built on one of the sparse clearings, three miles from the Landing, was shown on no map. That this wilder- ness, devoid of all apparent strategic or economic value, and so uninviting from every point of view, should become the site of a great armed struggle, must be re- garded as one of the strangest vagaries of history. 17 Chapter Somewhat hesitantly, Johnston had abandoned his plan to defend Northern Alabama and decided instead to join Beauregard at Corinth, before Buell could break the railroad between them. The picture now began to define itself. The clash of the two opposing forces would come either at Corinth or at Pittsburg Landing, de- pending on who attacked first, and the combined armies of Grant and Buell would be arrayed against the com- bined armies of their two Southern adversaries. On the 13 th of March, after a suspension of nine days, Grant had been restored to command. Selecting Savannah, nine miles downstream from Pittsburg Land- ing, and on the opposite side of the river, as his head- quarters, he examined the position of his army. He found Lew Wallace's wing at Crump's Landing, and approved its location, although why anyone should have put a large body of troops there, seems past un- derstanding. If an attack in force had been directed against Wallace, his 6,500 men alone could not possibly have met it successfully. They were out of touch with the main army at Pittsburg, for the intervening coun- try consisted of marshes and was practically impassable. So far as mutual support was concerned, the two forces might as well have been fifty miles away from each other; and as a supply depot, any landing above flood- 18 stage on the opposite side of the river, even the more distant Savannah, would have been preferable. If the choice of Wallace's location was questionable, that of the main army was infinitely more so. Spread over an area of about twelve square miles, its flanks were well enough protected by the swampy bottoms of Owl and Snake Creeks on one side and Lick Creek on the other; but its back was against the broad and swift Tennessee River, {see map 2) and all supplies had to come by water transportation from Paducah, {see map 1) far to the north, and not a very desirable base at best. What is totally inexplicable, though, is that no attempts were made to fortify the position on its unprotected front, especially as on March 20 the cautious Halleck had explicitly ordered Grant to do so. In an article for the Century Magazine, written more than twenty years later, Grant declared off-hand- edly that he had taken entrenchments under considera- tion, but had been advised by his engineer that they would have to be thrown up closer to the river, which would have separated the camps from their water sup- plies. Halleck had removed Grant from command for an unimportant infraction of the rules, but having for once issued a sound order in instructing Grant to build fortifications, he either overlooked this insubordination, which was fraught with such far-reaching possibilities, or else remained ignorant of it. No further exchange of ideas on this vital order between the two generals has been found in the Official Records. The various camps, each housing either a division or a brigade, had been selected solely for sanitary reasons. The visibility on the field was poor, due to 19 the undulating ground and the heavy underbrush, yet no man-made obstacles barred the progress of an enemy advance from Corinth. This in spite of the fact that Grant knew of Johnston's and Buell's rendezvous there, and estimated the number of their troops as high as 100,000, three times the size of his own force at Pitts- burg. Trenches were not in general use yet, but abatis (felled trees with sharpened ends pointing outward), the forerunners of barbed wire entanglements, were a matter of textbook knowledge and would have afforded considerable protection. Earthworks for batteries were also well known. Grant never offered anything but a shallow argument for his carelessness. He declared that the troops needed drilling worse than they needed en- trenchments; as if one necessarily need have excluded the other. Sherman, who was in command when Grant was absent, and therefore shared his guilt, gave two excuses for the lack of defensive preparations. "We did not fortify our camps," he wrote in his Memoirs, "because we had no orders to do so; and because such a course would have made our raw men timid . . . ." Of these two explanations, the first is evasive and not in accordance with the facts; the second is down- right absurd. Sherman carried the absurdity to the point of declaring in a sworn statement at a subse- quent court-martial, that "to have erected fortifications would have been evidence of weakness, and have in- vited an attack," which is like saying that the presence of policemen admits the weakness of law enforcement and invites the commission of crimes. Grant further contributed to the state of general un- 20 preparedness by transferring early on Saturday, April 5, Sherman's cavalry, the 5th Ohio, to Hurlbut's division. The 4th Illinois cavalry was to take its place, but did not arrive until evening, so that Sherman was without cavalry on this all-important day, a fact which caused Beauregard to express his astonishment. Had his op- ponent forgotten that "cavalry is the eye of an army"? To make matters worse, three or four of the di- vision's batteries were moved to the rear that morning, and two of them were not returned in time to take part in the battle. At least, so it was charged by one of Sherman's regimental commanders. The reason for this alleged removal has remained obscure. Grant's biographer Badeau, doubtlessly recognizing the invalidity of the explanations offered by the two leading Union generals, became almost abusive in his self-imposed task to absolve his idol from blame. "Some ... in their anxiety to become secure against the enemy, forget that the first object in war is not safety to one's self, but destruction to the foe. Those who wish to be entirely safe, should stay at home." It would have been more manly for both Grant and Sherman to acknowledge that they had disobeyed or- ders, had been extremely careless, and that their negli- gence was unjustifiable on any grounds. The camps of the Federal army did not form a continuous line and were not connected with each other. General Sherman held the most exposed position, along and across the main road from Corinth, at Shiloh Church, {see map 5) His troops had received only thirty 21 From Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, supplemented by Monroe F. Cockrell and drawn by Walter Newman. BATTLE OF SHILOH— First Day, April 6, 1862 Based on the official, or Thorn map, made shortly after the battle by General Thorn, Chief Topographical Engineer on General Halleck's staff, after consultation with Generals Grant, Sherman and Buell. 22 days' training, but this was more than most others on the field could boast. Both opposing armies, for that matter, consisted largely of raw recruits. The only seasoned soldiers, so far as soldiers could be seasoned that early in the war, were on the Union side. The divisions of Lew Wallace, McClernand, and C. F. Smith (the latter now commanded by W. H. L. Wallace) , had fought at Fort Donelson. None of the Confederates had as yet been under fire, with the exception of Nathan B. Forrest's cavalry, which he had evacuated from Fort Donelson on the night before its surrender. Behind Sherman's camp lay that of General Mc- Clernand, and farther to the left, on a secondary road to Corinth, General Prentiss camped with the rawest and smallest division of them all. General Stuart's brigade of Sherman's division occupied the extreme left front, General Hurlbut had kept his original position near the Landing, and W. H. L. Wallace's camps lay about the same distance from it and on a line parallel to the river, {see map 5) When Halleck had ordered Buell to join Grant, he did not direct him to disembark at Hamburg, which was the starting point of a main road to Corinth, and would have been an excellent place to deploy, but moved him to Savannah, because Grant was making his headquarters there. But Savannah, nine miles away, was a poor place for either headquarters or for troop concentration. By sending Buell to Savannah, Halleck only aggravated Grant's mistake. The order was the first link in a long chain of errors, which stamp the entire Shiloh campaign, on the Union side, as one of the most amateurish of the war. True, Grant felt con- 23 fident — over-confident, as it turned out — that no at- tack would be made on him; but even so, to omit all precautions bordered on foolhardiness. Flushed with his victories, he evidently considered this war a chess game where he alone would dictate the moves. Grant was going to be the attacker, not Johnston. The ir- regular quadrangle occupied by his troops was to be a camping ground, not a battlefield. He, Grant, said so. Yet, Grant evidently had at one time considered Hamburg as a desirable position for Buell's troops, for on April 5 he had wired to Halleck that "It is my present intention to send them [Buell's three foremost divisions] to Hamburg, some four miles above Pitts- burg, when they all get here." The last five words are inexplicable. Why was it necessary to wait till "they all got there"? Why was it necessary to let them come to Savannah at all? When the battle started, one division at Hamburg, or even on the bank opposite Hamburg, would have been worth more than an army at Savannah, {see map 2) Buell had set his men in motion from Nashville on March 15, and expected to reach Savannah by the 6th of April, {see map 1) When Grant heard this, he ad- vised Buell through his leading division commander Nelson, not to hurry, because no battle would be fought before Tuesday, the 8th; if the Army of the Ohio should arrive before then, no boats would be ready to ferry it across the Tennessee River. It was Grant's good for- tune that Buell, good soldier that he was, ignored these instructions. He had his marching orders, and he marched. He was not under Grant's command, but under Halleck's. Buell had been advised that Grant 24 would become the senior commander of the united forces only if the Army of the Tennessee were attacked. Up to March n, Buell had been a Department Commander, while Grant had merely commanded a district. When Halleck's request to be put in command of all Western forces, as a reward for "his" victories at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, had been granted, Buell ceased to be a Department Commander, but still ranked Grant. This created a delicate situation, which Buell quickly eased, however, by assuring Grant of his readiness to obey Halleck's order and recognize Grant as his superior officer in case of an enemy at- tack on the latter's army. While Buell was moving across Tennessee, ham- pered by floods and bad roads, Johnston had reached Corinth, thereby increasing the total of the Confederate effectives to about 40,000 men. As a rule, they were poorly armed and poorly trained. Most of them had only flintlocks or shotguns, the cavalry with a few exceptions had no sabres, and some of the troops were not armed at all. On the whole, though, considering the time and the general quality of Southern armament, they were as well equipped as could be expected. At least they knew how to handle what weapons they did possess, which was more than could be said of their opponents, many of whom were city-bred and did not even know how to load their firearms. When Johnston and Beauregard saw the trap which Grant had laid for himself, they were not slow to note its alluring potentialities. They knew that Grant had only 33,000 men at Pittsburg Landing. Why wait until Buell joined him? If there ever was a chance to retrieve 25 Fort Donelson, then and there was the time and the place for it. Although some generals protested that their troops were not ready, and a lack of trained of- ficers was seriously felt, Johnston decided to attack Grant on Saturday, the 5th of April. It was a question of do or die. It is interesting to speculate what would have hap- pened if the army of General Van Dorn, camped at Van Buren, Arkansas, and consisting of 20,000 men, had been able to join Johnston at this time. But high waters delayed its movements, and it did not reach Memphis, a hundred miles to the west, until April 10, three days after the end of the battle. On the 2nd of April, the necessary orders were is- sued to the Confederate commanders. If everybody had moved according to schedule, the battle would have been fought on the 5th, with Buell's army still far away. But the Southern generals, through lack of experience, ruined this well-laid plan. Only the leading column, General Hardee's Third Corps, reached its ob- jective on time. The second, commanded by Bragg, became intermingled with the reserve corps under Polk and Breckinridge. Polk was largely responsible for the waste of a precious nine hours, waiting as he did for written orders, although he had been told to proceed without them. A heavy rainstorm contributed to the confusion. The result was a delay of twenty-four hours, and twenty-four hours in this case meant a fatal loss of time. Diverging from the Michie house on the main Corinth road, about six miles from Pittsburg Landing, it was not until the afternoon of the 5th that all the troops were in their designated positions. 26 Chapter Three All this time Sherman and Grant had been living in a fool's paradise. Reports constantly trickled in from the outposts that the enemy was near, but neither gen- eral took these warnings to heart. On Saturday, the 5th, at five p.m., with 40,000 eager enemies only two miles away and crouched to spring, General Sherman sent this carefree telegram to Grant: "I do not apprehend anything like an attack on our position." Grant echoed Sherman's judgment by wiring to Halleck: "I have scarcely the faintest idea of an attack . . . upon us." Not all the men in the Union ranks were as somno- lent. There were many who did suspect that something was astir in those dark and mysterious woods to the south of them. On the 3rd, Colonel Buckland of Sher- man's Division, with a small detachment had run into Confederate infantry, cavalry and artillery, five miles out. Buckland suspected that this pointed to more than a mere enemy reconnaissance in force, and he so re- ported to Sherman. But the only response the colonel elicited was that if he started a serious engagement, the consequences would be on him. Had not Halleck issued orders to avoid a clash until Buell was on the ground? 27 The next day Buckland once more felt out the woods in his front, and again was reprimanded for his pre- cautionary sortie. All during Saturday, the 5th, there was uneasiness among the officers and men near the front. They felt the proximity of hostile troops, if they did not actually see and hear the army itself; yet they were given no orders to get set for defense. Some of the regimental commanders, no longer able to repress their apprehen- sions, held informal councils, and at three o'clock Sun- day morning, Colonel Peabody of Prentiss' Division, commanding a brigade, sent out three companies under Major Powell in the direction of Corinth, without Gen- eral Prentiss' knowledge. The Union soldiers struck the enemy on a piece of open ground known as Fraley field, and a hot fight ensued. Hurriedly Powell called for re- inforcements, and five companies of the 21st Missouri under Lieutenant-Colonel Moore rushed to his assist- ance. By this time Powell had been forced back across the Corinth road to Seay field, where he made a de- termined stand, {see map j) Within a few minutes the fighting had become general. The Batttle of Shiloh was on. Prentiss has been given high praise for his share in the first day's struggle, but while he earned much glory, he should not be credited, as he is by many his- torians, for being the one who precipitated hostilities, thereby breaking the first shock of Johnston's attack. On the contrary, Prentiss was in the act of censuring Colonel Peabody for violating orders, when a Confed- 28 erate fusilade cut off his harangue. Peabody was killed shortly thereafter, death robbing him of the laurels due him. Although Johnston had expected to catch Grant and Sherman off guard, he could scarcely believe his eyes when he found how utterly unprepared they were. At a conference of Southern generals prior to the battle, Beauregard had in fact proposed to abandon the enter- prise, arguing that through all too frequent skirmishes, the Federals must have been fully warned; that a sur- prise now was out of the question, and that the at- tackers would find the Federal camps fortified beyond hope of a quick victory. Johnston had listened to him attentively and in silence. Then he calmly gave orders to attack at day- break. "I would fight them tomorrow, if there were a million," he said simply. It was about five o'clock when the battle was joined. Hardee, with one-third of the army, formed the Con- federate first line; he was followed by a second under General Bragg, who in turn was supported by the re- serves under Polk and Breckinridge. The troops were ordered to hurl themselves against the Union camps, conquer them if possible, and then turn the left flank of Grant's army at Dill's Branch, thus forcing the Fed- eral army into the bottoms of Owl Creek, where they would be cut off and forced to surrender, {see map j) At the start of the battle, for which a comprehen- sive plan had been prepared, Johnston ordered Beau- regard to take command of the field operations. He himself wanted to be at the front, ride from regiment to regiment, and implant in them his own patriotic 29 fervor. He was a handsome and magnetic man, who exerted great influence on his men. By mingling with them, he thought he was rendering the best possible service to his side. To the greater part of the Union army, including its highest officers, the onslaught came like a bolt from the blue. The few regiments which had stemmed the first onrush were soon brushed aside, and the remainder were thrown off balance. But the density of the under- brush, the numerous ravines, and the swampy land, made a terrain so unexpectedly favorable for defense, that if the Confederates were envisioning an easy vic- tory they were quickly disillusioned. It was a bloody and costly fight from the very beginning. These boys in their teens went in to shoot and to be shot at, and they did it standing up. It was Southern dash against Northern pluck and endurance, as Grant phrased it nicely. But the losses on both sides were terrible. Where was Grant when the storm broke that Sun- day morning? Grant was eating breakfast in the beau- tiful Cherry home at Savannah where he made his headquarters. Miles away from where he should have been, he heard the sound of heavy gunfire. Quickly he finished his repast, boarded his boat, and steamed up the river, stopping only at Crump's Landing for a hur- ried conference with General Lew Wallace. Wallace also had heard the shooting, knew that it indicated a full-fledged battle, and had all his troops under arms and ready; but he was where nobody could use him; nor did he at that time receive orders to move. Grant later claimed that he was then still uncertain 30 whether Johnston was aiming his stroke at Crump's or at Pittsburg. What would Johnston have done at or with Crump's Landing? But even if, for some un- fathomable reason, the Confederates had been aiming at Crump's Landing, Wallace should have been ordered away with all possible speed to avoid destruction or capture; and the only logical place for him to go was Pittsburg Landing. How badly confused Grant was, can be gauged by the answer he gave to the commander of one of his two gunboats, who happened to be at Crump's and asked for orders. "Use your own discre- tion," Grant told him. When Grant arrived at the front is a moot question. He himself gave the time at 8 a.m., but Wallace in his official report stated that his superior did not visit him at Crump's until nine; therefore he could not have been at Pittsburg until nine-thirty at the earliest. An officer who was with Grant, gave the hour as "near 10 a.m." Whatever the exact time was, it was too late. The tide of the battle had already disastrously turned against him. Isolated Union forces were struggling bravely, but unsuccessfully, against encirclement. There was no cohesion between the various divisions, there was no battle plan, there was no head to the army. The commanding officers cooperated as well as they could, but on the whole it was each division for itself, each regiment for itself, and in many instances each man for himself. Grant later was accused of having been drunk be- fore and during the battle, and Halleck indicated by his subsequent actions that he, too, was of that belief. Nevertheless, this report, assiduously spread, was un- 31 O; cc Sherman's division had largely melted away. The dis- organized remainder mingled with those of McClern- and's, and slowly retreated northward, just where Johnston had wanted them to go, letting their com- rades to the left of them fight it out as best they could. The whole battle might have ended there, had it not been for another great if. About halfway between the Shiloh log church and the Tennessee River ran a sunken road, long abandoned, and often under water. It stretched for three-fourths of a mile through one of the thickest woods on the field, (see map 3) When Prentiss was thrown back, his division, reduced now to a thousand men, occupied this natural trench, and with- stood all attempts to dislodge it. An army using mod- ern tactics probably would have by-passed this position, which might have been easy in the morning, but be- came more difficult when W. H. L. Wallace reinforced Prentiss heavily in the "Hornets' Nest," as it has be- come known to history. This sunken road, surrounded by heavy timber and some open fields over which the attackers had to pass, presented a problem the Con- federates were unable to solve. Brigade after brigade dashed against this stronghold, only to stagger back with bloody losses. For hour on hour, Prentiss here held up the bulk of the Confederate army; when he finally did surrender, he had saved the day for Grant. Strange that history has all but forgotten this fighting hero, who never received sufficient praise for his valor and, unsung, quit the army a year later. Grant's notorious lack of generosity prompted him in later years to describe Prentiss' gallant stand in such a manner that it appeared instead as a tactical 33 error. "In one of the backward moves," he wrote, ". . . Prentiss did not fall back with the others. This left his flanks exposed, and enabled the enemy to capture him . . ." Although he conceded that "Prentiss' command had rendered valiant service and had contributed a good share to the defense of Shiloh," he did not once mention the Hornets' Nest, nor did he try to correct the false impression created by his first statement. In- deed, he might have asserted without exaggeration that he owed his own military survival and subsequent Pres- idential honors to Prentiss' stubborn and sacrificial resistance. 34 Chapter Four As disaster threatened to engulf him, Grant bethought himself of Lew Wallace at Crump's Landing, who was impatiently waiting for orders. At last the long ex- pected message arrived; but Wallace was not destined to bring immediate relief to his troubled chief. Although he started off at once, he did not reach the field until the day's fighting had stopped. What happened to cause this delay led to a controversy which was to becloud the relations between these two men for many years to come. The known facts are these. Grant selected as his messenger one Captain Baxter to whom he gave verbal instructions, ordering Wallace to the field by the road nearest the river — so Grant said afterward. A small bridge across Owl Creek had been built for the purpose of facilitating a junction of Wallace's force with that at Pittsburg Landing. Wallace stoutly asserted that he did not receive the message in that form; he was ordered, he claimed, to take position on the right of the main army. Hearing heavy fighting southwest of him, he moved toward the right flank where he thought he had been ordered; but by the time he approached that position, Sherman had been pushed back, and the battle in Wallace's front had ended. Hard riding staff officers overtook him, and 35 ordered him back to where Sherman was at the end of the day, and where Grant maintained he had wanted Wallace to go in the first place, {see map 5) But by then it was too late. The sun was down, and the en- gagement was over. The right and the wrong of this controversy has never been definitely established. After carefully sift- ing the evidence, most students will be inclined to side with Wallace. Grant should have put an order of such paramount importance into writing, instead of letting a staff officer transcribe it at his own discretion. Un- fortunately, the tobacco-stained, crumpled piece of pa- per, written in pencil and unsigned, which carried the directions to Wallace has been lost, and therefore final judgment on this matter must be suspended. Curiously enough, though, if Wallace had been allowed to con- tinue on his march, he would have struck the unpro- tected left flank of the Confederate army, and might have been the instrument to snatch victory from de- feat. At half past three in the afternoon, when he was ordered to turn back, he was only a mile from the camps Sherman and McClernand had occupied in the morning. The Confederate army had fought all day long. Its left wing was beginning to celebrate in the abandoned camps and might have stampeded. By recalling Wal- lace, Grant lost a golden opportunity to pay his op- ponents back for their surprise attack of the morning, and under conditions which could easily have changed the fortunes of the day. "If I had known then, what I know now," Grant ad- mitted to Wallace two years later, "I would have or- dered you where you were marching when [I] stopped [you]." 36 In the meantime things on the main battlefield had gone from bad to worse. By noon even Grant, whose nerves were as of steel, was seriously concerned about the way his army was forced to yield ground. He must have remembered shudderingly that he had wired Buell to delay his arrival until Tuesday, and this was only Sunday. But he probably remembered also that Buell had disregarded his advice, and that the first brigade, Ammen's of Nelson's division, had reached Savannah at 1:00 o'clock noon on Saturday, the 5th, the day before, and that Buell himself had been expected to be there by 5:00 o'clock in the afternoon. Now Grant sent Buell word to hurry, hurry, hurry. Buell did not need to be hurried. He, too, had heard the fighting upstream, and was anxious to join the fray, but the bulk of his army was strung out inland for ten or fifteen miles and therefore unable to render immediate assistance. Without waiting for orders, he took a despatch boat to consult with Grant; but before he reached Pittsburg Landing, he was met by a boat from headquarters. It was then about 11:30 in the morning. A note from Grant was handed to him which read in part: "The attack on my forces has been very spirited since early this morning. The appearance of fresh troops . . . now would have a powerful effect ... If you will come upon the field ... it will be a move to our advantage and possibly save the day for us. The rebel forces are estimated at over 100,000 men . . ." This message was to prove an intriguing document in view of events which followed. Under the stress of his anxiety, Grant spoke his true mind. He admitted 37 that, in spite of an enemy which he estimated at over 100,000 men, he had deliberately placed his 33,000 men with their backs toward the river, had taken no safety measures, and had tried to keep a relief army out of reach. As a consequence he was sorely beset, and needed help, not to win, but to escape defeat. Yet he had earlier advised Buell to take his time reaching the field. It is doubtful if a worse series of blunders were committed during the entire war by any general on either side. Buell already had ordered Nelson's division to Pitts- burg Landing, a distance of about eleven miles, and not an easy march through swamp land which only recently had been under water. A guide, whom Grant should have held in readiness for such an emergency, but had not, was secured with difficulty at the last moment. By extraordinary exertion the division did arrive at its destination before nightfall. At 5:30 in the afternoon the first regiment, the 36th Indiana, was being ferried across to the battlefield. Half an hour earlier, the Hornets' Nest had sur- rendered. Both sides had been desperately fighting for time, one to let Grant reorganize his forces, the other to seal his fate before sundown. After sacrificing brigade after brigade in vain frontal attacks, the Confederates did at last what modern warfare would have dictated in the beginning. They gathered all available artillery, at least sixty-two guns, and showered the Hornets' Nest with a barrage such as never had been known previ- ously, in an attempt to pulverize the defenders into submission. But even under this cruel punishment Pren- 38 tiss refused to give up. W. H. L. Wallace, who had reinforced Prentiss, did not display equal stamina. He concluded that further resistance was useless, and tried to extricate his regiments. In this he was only partially successful, and was himself mortally wounded. Sur- rounded on all sides, abandoned by Wallace, and out of ammunition, Prentiss finally capitulated. By the time he concluded the surrender of his 2200 men, it was close to six o'clock. Johnston's original battle order to turn the enemy's left flank now could be executed, but by then he who had conceived the plan was dead. At half past two he had been struck by a stray bullet, which severed an artery in his leg. He was alone at that time; his personal staff, even his physician, had been sent away on various errands. Governor Harris of Tennessee, the first to return, saw Johnston swaying in his saddle, the paleness of approaching death on his face. "General," he cried out, "are you hurt?" "I am afraid so, and seriously," Johnston replied. These were his last words; he sank off his horse, fell into Governor Harris' arms and expired a few minutes later. It has often been said, and was maintained by his son for many years afterward, that if Johnston had lived, the South would have won at Shiloh. It is difficult to agree with that view. Johnston was no longer in charge of the battle — Beauregard was. The fact that Johnston had not a single staff officer with him at the time of his death, shows plainly that he was fighting in the ranks and not at the head of his army. A lull which happened to follow Johnston's death was not 39 due to the normal difficulties arising from a change in command, but to the shifting of Confederate forces toward that hellish little spot where Prentiss was defy- ing such a vast superiority of men and material. Although after Prentiss' surrender the attack slowed down for a while, sporadic fighting was continually going on along the whole line. The Union army had been crowded into a small irregular semi-circle; in some spots it was within 500 yards of the Tennessee River. Stuart's brigade on the extreme Union left, which had fought admirably all day, had been pushed back almost to the Landing itself; only Dill's Branch formed a last natural obstacle to ultimate disaster. Once the Landing was taken, Grant's supply line would be broken, and his army captured. Buell, unable to gain a foothold on the western bank of the river, would be rendered im- potent, (see map j) Halleck's bad judgment in order- ing Buell to Savannah instead of Hamburg, where he could have flanked the attackers, now loomed up as a catastrophic error, (see map 2) Dill's Branch was a small stream, flowing through a steep ravine, which was then flooded with overflow water from the Tennessee. The ground on both sides was covered with heavy brush and timber, offering good coverage for the defenders. The climax of the battle was approaching. McClern- and had only disorganized units left; Sherman was an officer without troops. Prentiss had been captured. W. H. L. Wallace's division was scattered and had lost its commander. Lew Wallace was still miles away. The only division still in fairly good condition was Hurl- but's. All in all, Grant's remaining effective fighters 40 totaled perhaps 7,000 men. 8,000 of his army had been wounded or killed; 3,000 had been captured; an estim- ated 15,000 were cowering on the banks of the Ten- nessee or trying to swim to the eastern bank of the river. Ambrose Bierce, who was to gain renown as a writer in coming years, and was then a junior officer in an Indiana regiment which formed a part of the relief forces, related that he and his comrades had to beat back the frightened stragglers with their rifle butts be- fore they could get off their transport. This was the situation as Buell found it when a few minutes before six o'clock he arrived with the advance of his army. The Confederates, who had been in combat all day, were exhausted and short of am- munition, but still dangerous. The critical point on the front, of course, was Dill's Branch. Two small brigades, Chalmers' and Jackson's, together no more than 1800 men, might yet win the day for the South by a last- minute assault. It was then that one of Grant's staff officers, Colonel J. D. Webster, also unknown to fame, hurriedly gathered some guns of the disorganized Union artillery on top of a ridge, a quarter of a mile from the Landing, manned them, and turned them toward Dill's Branch as a last line of defense. If Chalmers' and Jack- son's troops could silence or capture these guns, victory would be definite and complete. The attack was made. Storming across the ravine, the intrepid Southern warriors advanced a short dis- tance, only to look into the muzzles of more than twenty cannons. Although these men had nothing but their bayonets to fight with, some of them came within a hundred yards of the batteries, and the gunners 41 started to abandon their posts. It looked as if the Stars and Bars might yet fly at Pittsburg before nightfall. At this moment the 36th Indiana Infantry of Buell's army appeared on the hill. Fresh troops in battle array, armed to the teeth. Chalmers' and Jackson's men viewed them with sinking hearts. Human endurance, strained to its utmost, could stand no more. The two brigades, their only supporting battery blown to bits, their last bullet gone, wavered, then gave up the un- equal struggle and retreated sullenly. It was now past 6:00 o'clock. Would the right and center of Grant's front also be able to beat back the last desperate assault which they momentarily ex- pected? But the assault, so apprehensively awaited, never came. Into the ranks of gray and butternut a message had been brought from Beauregard: "Cease firing." Bragg, who was at the front with his troops, was dumbfounded when he heard the order. If we are to believe what he wrote some twenty years later, he was willing to defy his commander to the point of mutiny. "Have you promulgated this order?" he asked the messenger. "Yes, Sir." "Well," Bragg replied, "if you had not, I would not obey it. The battle is lost." It is a piquant tale, partly corroborated by Bragg's Chief Engineer, Colonel S. H. Lockett, who related it in slightly less dramatic form, but flatly contradicted by Captain Clifton H. Smith, who delivered the order and did not hear one word of comment from Bragg. Nevertheless, Bragg's official report, issued shortly after the battle, stated that when the order to withdraw was 42 received, he was in the midst of "a movement com- menced with every prospect of success." Throughout the remainder of his life Beauregard would be censured for not having ordered that last at- tack. Johnston's son, Colonel Preston Johnston, claimed that if his father had been alive, the attack would have been made. But Preston Johnston had not been there. Beauregard insisted that such an attack would have been suicidal, that every one of his men would have been killed or captured, that his worn-out troops could not have prevailed with bayonets against fully armed regiments, which were augmented into brigades as quickly as they could be discharged from the boats. His decision may also have been influenced by an erroneous report he had received from Colonel Ben Hardin Helm, one of his scouts and, curiously, a brother-in-law of Lincoln, to the effect that Buell could not arrive in time to save Grant, in fact, was marching toward Decatur and not toward Savannah. Was it this report which led Beauregard to believe that he still could do on Monday what had to be done on Sunday, or not at all? Jefferson Davis, in his Rise and Fall of the Confed- erate Government, blamed Beauregard for the loss of the battle, by not pressing the attack. Davis was most likely influenced by Bragg, and his opinion does not bear the stamp of authenticity. He also did Beauregard a grave injustice by implying that the commanding general had directed the battle from an ambulance. This was not the case. Beauregard had slept in an ambulance, lacking a tent, but had spent the two days of the battle on horseback, although he was still re- covering from a severe throat ailment. 43 On the Northern side, Beauregard's opponent, Grant, was assailed with equal vigor for his errors of omis- sion and commission. That he would have been in a precarious position without Buell's help is certain; that his army would have been destroyed, is at least a pos- sibility. But Grant never admitted either, and in later years gave Buell scant credit for his timely appearance. Grant's own report to Halleck, written two days after the battle, shows how well this credit was deserved. "At a late hour in the afternoon a desperate effort was made by the enemy to turn our left and get possession of the Landing ... no troops were stationed here, except the necessary artillerists [for a battery of rifled guns] and a small infantry force for their support. Just at this moment the advance of Major-General Buell's column (a part of the division under General Nelson) arrived, the two generals named both being present. An advance was immediately made upon the point of attack and the enemy soon driven back . . ." Could an admission be plainer? By 1 87 1, Grant appears to have completely forgot- ten what he had reported to Halleck immediately after the battle, for in a letter to General Belknap, written on the anniversary of Shiloh, he made no mention what- ever of Buell's part in the victory. He offered his "con- 44 gratulations to the gallant Army of the Tennessee. The battle of Shiloh, though much criticized at the time, will ever be remembered by those engaged in it as a brilliant success, won . . . over a superior force, and under circumstances the most unfavorable . . ." Adam Badeau, Grant's panegyrist, in his Military History of General U. S. Grant, went so far as to in- sinuate that the guilt for the belated junction of the two Union armies rested on Buell's shoulders. "The delay of Buell, although not absolutely inex- cusable, was undoubtedly greater than any necessity existed for. A dozen commanders . . . could have moved their force with double the rapidity and energy that Buell displayed . . . But Buell, in his whole career, never got rid of his excessive deliberation . . ." Then Badeau instilled poisonous suspicion into the minds of his readers: "His ordinary characteristics are sufficient explana- tion of his tardiness in this instance, without attributing it to any unwillingness to serve under one who had hitherto been his junior." This was the same Buell, who had reported to Grant without complaint, and whose advance forces had marched into Savannah on the 5th of April, after he had been told by Grant that they need not arrive before the 8th, because no boats would be ready to ferry them across the Tennessee River. In trying to cover his lack of magnanimity, Grant scornfully pointed out that in that last fight for the Landing only two men of Buell's army had been killed and one man wounded. But that was scarcely the point. What counted, was the moral effect of Buell's arrival. 45 On one side 1,800 Southern troops, their guns shattered, their cartridge belts empty, being suddenly confronted by the advance units of a new army. On the other side, the desperate defenders beholding an unending stream of brothers-in-arms coming to their aid. No army, not even Bluecher's on the field of Waterloo, could have been welcomed with greater enthusiasm — or sighted with deeper despair — than that of Buell at Pittsburg Landing. In his article written for the Century Magazine, Grant declared that he had not needed Buell; that "victory was assured" when Lew Wallace arrived, no matter whether or not other support had accrued to him the next day. But if there ever had been a question of whether Grant had been providentially rescued, he himself had answered it when he pencilled that hurried note, telling Buell that he "might possibly save the day for us." Could Beauregard have captured Grant's army by a last-minute assault? Probably not. Prentiss had done his work only too well; even after his surrender, the disposition of his men drew still further on the depleted Confederate reserves. Moreover, many troops had got- ten out of hand and stopped fighting, satisfying their ravenous appetites in the captured Union camps. Ru- mors also had spread that Grant's entire army had been captured, and hundreds left the ranks to steal a look at the captives. Beauregard might have whipped up his soldiers to one more effort, but in their exhausted condition they could not have overrun Grant in a few 4 6 minutes. And a few minutes is all they had, for Buell's army was already crossing the river. But should Beauregard at least have made the su- preme effort to break through, even with the odds against him? Yes, undoubtedly. No one could know, no one knows today, on which side the odds really lay. Grant's front may have been a brittle shell, or else may have contained a hard core. His soldiers certainly were disheartened; they could not help but lack faith in their commander. How much ammunition they had left also is a matter of conjecture, but it is on record that when the battle started, a number of regiments had no car- tridges. Beauregard was not in the best of health, and at his headquarters two miles behind the front, he saw mostly the wounded, the stragglers, the cowards. Far better if he had deferred to the judgment of Bragg, his Chief of Staff, who was at the front. There was too much at stake to do otherwise. It has been claimed that the assault was bound to fail, because General Hardee, on the extreme left of the Confederate line, who had not received Beauregard's order to withdraw, kept on fighting, yet could not push back his opponents. This deduction appears unsound, for without a simultaneous movement on the entire front, Hardee could no more have succeeded than the unsupported Pickett did at Gettysburg. In his Military Operations of General Beauregard, the author Roman, whose statements were authenti- cated by Beauregard himself, points out that a "last attack" was made on the Union positions; but the time given by him was 4:00 p.m., hence it could not have been the last possible attack. At that time the Hornets' 47 Nest was still unconquered, and most of the Confed- erate forces were concentrated in that sector of the battlefield. Roman raises one argument, however, which at- tracts attention. Beauregard, he says, was afraid to venture everything on one last throw of the dice, be- cause he expected Lew Wallace to come in and break into his unprotected left flank. If this is what held Beauregard back, it is but the last act in a tragi-comedy of errors which started with Grant's unsigned note to Wallace in the forenoon and was destined to plague both armies to the end of that day, and to harass the unfortunate victim of Grant's carelessness for many years after. Roman also recorded that Nathan B. Forrest, then a colonel of cavalry, had sent scouts into the enemy lines after the first day's fighting. They reported that large bodies of troops were crossing, with much con- fusion existing among them. Forrest so advised Gen- erals Hardee and Breckinridge and suggested an im- mediate attack; he was told to see General Beauregard, but could not locate him. Hardee then sent Forrest back to his regiment, but failed to notify Beauregard. The latter intimated later that he might have acted favorably on Forrest's suggestion. This may well be doubted. A night attack under the conditions then prevailing would have been an extremely hazardous venture. As to the Landing itself, the capture of which would have definitely turned the scale, everything hinged on a matter of a few minutes. If the 36th Indiana had arrived five minutes later — or if the last assault would 48 By courtesy of Mrs. J. B. Bailes, Florence, Alabama Mr. and Mrs. William Murphy Inge of Corinth, Mississippi have been launched five minutes sooner — the battle still might have ended in a victory for the Confederacy. Such was the slender thread on which hung the course of history. That night Beauregard's soldiers slept in the aban- doned tents of the Federal army, their rest disturbed by a terrific rainstorm and intermittent shelling from the two U. S. gunboats Tyler and Lexington, which had cooperated splendidly with the army during the day. The next morning three of BuelPs five divisions, about 20,000 fresh men, Lew Wallace with his 5,000 troops, and a goodly number of returned stragglers, swelled Grant's ranks to approximately 40,000 effectives, against whom Beauregard could pit only half that number. The outcome was a matter of course. Beauregard put up a skillful fight, and held out as long as it was pos- sible. But it was a purely defensive fight. At three o'clock in the afternoon, he asked one of his staff of- ficers what he thought of the situation. "General," was the reply, "have you ever noticed a lump of sugar soaked with water? It still holds its form, but when you touch it, it crumbles. That, I think, is the present state of our army." Beauregard agreed and gave the signal to retreat. Once more he traversed the soggy roads to Corinth, taking all his wagon trains with him. Grant did nothing to exploit his victory. He made no effort to destroy the retiring army; he did not even try to stop it. Beau- regard calmly made his camp on the 8th within two or 49 three miles from the battlefield, and remained almost within gunshot of the Union army until he was ready to move on. Nelson's division of Buell's army had been followed by Crittenden's and then by McCook's. They could have been used to take up the pursuit, although Mc- Cook asserted that his men were tired, having marched strenuously for many hours. Grant yielded to this un- soldierly protest. Perhaps he was still shaken by the near-disaster of the preceding day and was willing to leave well enough alone. At any rate, his delinquency was a fitting finish to a battle which, from its inception to its inglorious finish, he had so lamentably bungled. On the nth, Halleck arrived, his chest out. Was he not the biggest man in uniform? Had he not won at Fort Henry? Had he not taken Fort Donelson? Had he not vanquished at Shiloh? Now he was going to assume personal command to take up the pursuit and show the country what would happen if a man of his caliber led the army in person. Bravely he started to cover the twenty miles between himself and Corinth, there to give his foe the coup de grace. But it took him no less than thirty-one days to travel that short dis- tance. When he arrived at the end of it, Beauregard had gone. Never again would Halleck take the field as a commanding general. While Halleck was slogging along at the rate of half a mile a day, without encountering any resistance whatever, Lincoln was nagging McClellan for having "the slows" on the Virginia peninsula, where he was battling against a vicious terrain, rain-soaked roads and hard-hitting armies led by the best Southern mili- 50 tary talent. When the two spring campaigns were over, Lincoln dismissed McClellan, while he made Halleck General-in-Chief of all armies. No one has ever satis- factorily explained either of these two extraordinary acts on the part of the war-time President. 5i Chapter Six The firing at Shiloh had hardly died away, when violent controversies concerning the battle flared up throughout the country. These controversies were not between the South and the North; the opponents agreed fairly well as to what had happened. The controversies raged between the commanders on each side and their respective partisans. On the Southern side, Beauregard became the target of savage attacks for his hesitancy at the last and decisive moment. On the Union side, Halleck and Grant were not only accused of idiocy; they were also accused of bad faith. Colonel Thomas Worthington, a West Point graduate, who had com- manded the 46th Ohio Infantry during the battle, and had been mentioned in Sherman's report as displaying great personal courage, cried out that the misfortunes of the Union army had been due to treason in high quarters; that Halleck, Grant and Sherman had con- spired with the Congressional Committee on the Con- duct of the War to lose the battle. To prove his sensa- tional indictment, he demanded to be court-martialed. Within three months his wish was gratified. What happened at Worthington's trial is not ex- actly known. The wrathy colonel later wrote a book, in which he presented his case, and in it gives a frag- mentary summary of the proceedings; but his style is 52 abominable, and he revels in irrelevant and repetitious statements. Nonetheless, the case he is trying to make out deserves consideration. Worthington's argument runs like this: Halleck aspired to the highest military post in the Federal serv- ice, and was in league with a clique in Washington whose object it was to prolong the war, in order to win the 1864 election. To prove his thesis, Worthing- ton cites that Grant was deprived of his command on the 4th of March, so as to relieve him of the responsi- bility for selecting a battlefield which fairly invited disaster. Smith was put in charge, and after he had placed the troops in the trap, Grant was reinstated. Then Halleck who, on March 11, had been given com- mand over all Western troops, including BuelPs, ordered the latter to desist from a promising attack on the retreating Johnston, and from occupying Florence, a course which McClellan had advised but not ordered, and which would have impeded a junction of the two Southern armies. When Buell obeyed his new orders and marched to Savannah, Grant told him to delay his arrival. Thus it was made certain that the Confed- erate army would have a preponderance of numbers, and the defeat of Grant was practically assured. Halleck, Grant and Sherman were provided with excellent alibis. If questioned, Halleck could put the blame on General C. F. Smith for selecting the Shiloh site. Sherman had only executed Smith's orders, and Grant had fallen heir to his predecessor's error. Of course, Grant's failure to throw up entrenchments was his own, but all he had to do was to stand by his ex- planation that he expected to wage an offensive cam- 53 paign, and that "his troops needed discipline and drilling more than they did experience with the pick, shovel and axe." Colonel Worthington claimed that he had kept de- manding axes, axes and more axes, to erect abatis in front of his camp. He received only twenty-six of them. Sherman assured his cantankerous subordinate that he had given him all the axes there were in Paducah. But did this answer really dispose of the complaint? Pa- ducah was not the only place in the United States where axes could have been procured. One of the charges against Colonel Worthington read that he had been drunk while on duty. In his book he admits that on one occasion "there were conviviali- ties, in which the colonel of 46th Ohio was joined," and that he "was in a better humor . . . than usual . . ." What transpired at the court-martial would make in- teresting reading, even today, but Worthington claims the records were lost or destroyed. At any rate, they were not accessible to him when he wrote his book. Worthington might have added that when Grant's alleged plot to be beaten had failed through Buell's interference, he did the next best thing by letting Beau- regard retreat without molesting him; and when Hal- leck took charge after the battle, he crippled it further by taking a month to reach Corinth, for which inef- ficiency he was royally rewarded. One of Worthington's allegations, at least, has since been substantiated. He claimed that the record of the proceedings against Buell, who was subjected to a court of inquiry after Bragg's Kentucky invasion, also had been "lost." Its contents were not made public at the 54 time, and have not been made public since. When I was in Washington during my studies on Lincoln's death, a high officer in the Judge Advocate General's office told me that he, too, had searched in vain for these papers in the files of his own office. Worthington suggests that Buell, like himself, may have voiced suspicions which some persons in high places found embarrassing. However, in his article, "Shiloh Reviewed," which was written for the Century Magazine twenty-two years after the battle, Buell does not accuse Grant of bad faith, although he does treat him with ill-disguised contempt. There is one question of importance which Worth- ington failed to discuss. Could the Washington clique have afforded a serious setback without endangering themselves, not to mention their country? The answer is that they could; for even if Johnston had succeeded in destroying Grant's army, the victory would have been a hollow one. Buell's army, equal in strength, and as yet without battle scars, was across the river, and Federal gunboats had command of it. The Confeder- ates would have been stalemated, even if left in pos- session of the battlefield. Their victory would merely have prolonged the war, as was the intention imputed to the alleged plotters. Interesting as Worthington's theory may be, there is not a shred of tangible evidence to support it. To an unbiased observer, who is not blinded by a desire to prove his case, it would seem that the quarrel be- tween Halleck and Grant, which led to the latter's temporary dismissal, was genuine. Furthermore, both Grant and Sherman are decidedly out of character in 55 the roles of political conspirators. Nothing in their past, nothing in their subsequent careers, indicates that they would have participated in a plot which can only be designated as treasonable. What weakens Worthing- ton's thesis still more, is that Halleck, Grant and Sher- man were at that time almost strangers to each other, and not likely to reach an understanding on a matter of this kind. On the other hand, a close study of the Civil War almost forces one to the belief that some kind of conspiracy was afoot to prolong the war; not to win the 1864 election, as Worthington suspected, but to arouse sectional hatred until reconciliation with the South would be impossible. This course was bound to keep the Radical Republicans in power for many years — as it did. The Radicals made no great secret of their sinister goal. Stanton's deliberate sabotaging of McClellan's campaign was plain enough for anyone to see. It may be safely surmised that Grant's and Halleck's bungling was joyful news to the Radicals, and Halleck's promotion may have been furthered by his inaptitude, which stamped him as a suitable tool for their evil designs. But there is no proof that he was in league with the Washington politicians, and it is highly improbable that he was in their confidence. 56 Chapter Seven I enjoyed many heart-to-heart talks with Captain Rice, and plied him with questions. "Captain," I asked one day, "when Prentiss' 2,200 men were captured, what did the Confederates do with them?" The prisoners, he told me, were taken to Corinth, and were lined up in a square in front of a house be- longing to Colonel William M. Inge, General Johnston's temporary aide-de-camp, before they were sent to Southern prison camps. I have found that chance questions often produce unexpected results. It proved to be so in this case. When I went to Corinth to look at Colonel Inge's house, I was only mildly interested in the house itself, espe- cially as the colonel had died long ago, and his original home had been destroyed by fire. I was interested in the square, however, which would, I saw, easily accom- modate 2,200 men. Nevertheless, on the spur of the moment I decided to go into the new house to see what, if any, further information I could elicit there. Colonel Inge's widow, I had been told, was still living in it. On the front porch sat a few boys and girls, play- ing a guitar and singing. I had heard from Captain Rice that Colonel Inge's former home had been General Albert Sidney Johnston's headquarters prior to the bat- 57 tie, and that his body had been brought back there to be prepared for burial. "Excuse me for interrupting your performance," I said, as I broke into the gathering, "but is this the house to which General Johnston's body was brought after the Battle of Shiloh?" The group stopped its musical exercises and looked at me in embarrassment. Finally, one of the girls rose from her chair. "I am sure Grandmother knows better than we do," she said. "May I take you to her?" We went upstairs, and there in a bed I found a very old lady, her body shrunken with years, her face wrinkled. On a chair next to her sat an equally old negress. I was somewhat taken aback, but the old lady blinked at me hospitably. "Grandmother," the young girl introduced me, "this gentleman wants to talk to you about the Battle of Shiloh." The old lady sat up in bed and her eyes shone. "Do you mean that?" she asked me earnestly. "I do." She half closed her eyes. "I feel sixty years younger all of a sudden. Josie, put the pillows behind my back; this gentleman and I are going to talk about the Battle of Shiloh." "I don't know who you are, sir," she began, "but if you want to discuss Shiloh, you are my friend. The generation which is growing up now, has little reverence for history. Please take a look in the room next door, sir. Do you see the mahogany desk there? That is the desk at which General Albert Sidney Johnston sat for three nights preparing his battle plans, and on that chair next to him sat Colonel Inge, my husband. You 58 see his picture here." I saw a picture of a plump man with an intelligent face and penetrating eyes. "Now, I want you to look out of the window," Mrs. Inge continued. "You see that large tree there? It looks just like the trees we had at our old home in 1862. Weeks before the battle, my maid Talitha and I cooked and baked, and we fed as many of our boys as we could. The branches of those trees held many steaming cal- drons. General Johnston was our guest, and what a fine guest he was. All of Corinth envied me my good for- tune. But finally the day came when he was ready to march off. No one told us women that, but we could tell by many little signs which only a woman would know how to interpret. I went to General Johnston and said, 'General, will you let me give you some cake and a couple of sandwiches?' But he refused politely. 'No, thank you, Mrs. Inge,' he replied with a bow, 'we soldiers travel light.' He had such a lovely gleam in his blue eyes when he said that." Something like a smile flitted over the wrinkled face of my aged hostess. "I curtsied," she went on, "but did not say anything. Nobody ever contradicted Gen- eral Johnston. He was a handsome, chivalrous and impressive man, but very determined. I never heard anyone say 'No,' after he had said, 'Yes.' Quietly I went out into the kitchen and wrapped up two sand- wiches and a piece of cake and stuck them into a pocket of his coat." She stopped for a while, as if in recollection of her kind deed. Then she took up her story again. "A few days later they brought his body back to my house, wrapped in a muddy army blanket. Together with an 59 old friend of mine, Ellen Polk, I cleaned his face and uniform, and in his pocket I found half of one sand- wich and a small piece of cake. He had eaten most of it. To this day I am proud that it was I who sustained his life, while it lasted, with the cake I had baked and the sandwich I had personally prepared for him." She held up her hands to me, and I saw that they were trembling. "Look at these two hands," she mur- mured, "they are the same hands which draped the Confederate flag around the body of General Johnston before they took him South." She closed her eyes again, and I did not dare break the silence. But soon Mrs. Inge was living in the present again. "Josie," she ordered, "bring me my scrapbooks." The negress went out and returned with a pile of books, all filled with old clippings. Together we bent over them and looked over the yellowed columns. They told the story of Corinth as it had been in 1862, when Mrs. Inge was the belle of the town. A beautiful woman she must have been, and a leader in the society of the Old South in its ante-bellum glory. "What did you do after the battle?" I finally asked Mrs. Inge, when we had turned the last page of the last scrapbook. "We did a very smart thing," she replied, "or at least I thought so then. We moved South with what we considered the most valuable part of our property, our slaves, to refugee with friends at Aberdeen. Every- thing else we left behind, hoping to return at an early day. But Corinth remained in the hands of the enemy" — had she hesitated a moment, as if intending to use another term? — "and we did not return until the war 60 was over. Then they took our slaves away from us, and we had nothing left but our home. We moved back into it, Colonel Inge took up what law practice he had left, and once more I became a member of Corinth society. But things never were again what they had been before." The scrapbook had told me that she had become more than a member of Corinth society. She had been one of the inspired United Daughters of the Confed- eracy who commemorated their dead through the erec- tion of the beautiful Confederate monument at Shiloh. On the day its cornerstone was laid, she placed in it a lock of General Johnston's hair, which she had cut from his head while the body was under her care. When I reminded her of this, she smiled. "Have you been over the battlefield?" she asked. "Then you have seen the monument?" I had. "Well," she declared with a proud lift of her white head, "if you look closely, you will find there are eleven generals shown in the relief. Six marched in and five marched out, for Johnston had been killed. They marched in with their heads held high, impelled by the will to win. They marched out with their heads bent low in sorrow. And did you notice that the officer on the left tries to hide his face behind his hat? I have always thought he bears the features of General Beauregard. It was his vanity and selfish ambition which cost us the battle. Johnston's plan would have won it, but Beauregard wanted the victory to be his, and his alone. Therefore it was not to be won on the first day, which was Johnston's day, but on the second, which was Beauregard's alone. The glori- ous opportunity Johnston had provided was thrown 61 away. Thus I think posterity has pronounced the sen- tence of Southern sentiment on General Beauregard: to hide his face in shame to the end of time, for he betrayed the hopes of his country." The old lady sank back exhausted, and I arose to leave. She looked at me wistfully. "You do not know what you have done for me," she whispered. "In the two hours in which you have favored me with your visit, I have lived my whole life over again. Now I am ready to die." Two or three days later I was back in Chicago and sent her a little gift with a note of thanks for her hos- pitality. She acknowledged it in a letter which I still preserve. In it she again stressed that the hands which were writing those lines were the hands which had wrapped the Confederate flag around the body of Gen- eral Johnston. When I responded, my letter came back with a notation of the post office, "Addressee Deceased." She had died a few days after her reply. I like to believe that she died with a happy smile on her lips. 62 Chapter Eight That night I went to a store in Corinth to inquire if it carried books on the Battle of Shiloh. Sometimes, I have discovered, one may pick up odd writings near a historical site. The man behind the counter climbed up a ladder, and on the top shelf found a small stack of books, of which he handed me one. I looked at it in amazement. The title of it was "The Story of Shiloh," and the author's name was none other than DeLong Rice. Mr. Rice had not, in all the time we had spent together, said one word to me about having written a book on Shiloh. When I got back to my hotel, I started to glance through the pages with some skep- ticism. But I had not progressed far, when I was lost in honest admiration. The man who had expressed those thoughts had written as only one can, who writes on something that is dear to his heart. The book has long been out of print, and few people are aware of its ex- istence. DeLong Rice's name is not listed among famous American authors, and he is not known to many lovers of fine writing. Yet, I think he was one of America's great poets, and his book is among my most treasured possessions. Over a hundred years ago, so his story begins, a tired pioneer farmer in Southern Tennessee, returning from his day's work, fell asleep on his oxen wagon. De- 63 prived of his guiding hand, and following their whim, the animals chose the easiest path through this virginal forest land, meandering where the ground was low. The next oxen team, seeing their tracks, followed them, and the third team followed the second. And so, in the course of time, a road was carved into the soft soil, where no road should have been, and where no intelligent man would have built one. It was this sunken road which was destined, many years later, to form the Hornets' Nest in the Battle of Shiloh. It was this natural trench which upset Johnston's battle plan, and which robbed the South of a well-deserved victory. What an opening! I kept on reading with ever- growing excitement, unaware of the creeping hours. Now the battle lines form. Looking over the soldiers in the Northern ranks, Rice espies a mellow-voiced young brigadier of Ohio with the head of a statesman. His name is James A. Garfield. Near him he beholds a thick-lipped young officer not yet twenty-nine years of age, who rides at the head of the nth Illinois Cav- alry, and who some day will be known as the Demos- thenes of the 19th century; his thoughts, clothed with incomparable beauty, will be printed in every language of the civilized world. He is Robert G. Ingersoll. In the ranks of the 30th Indiana Infantry marches a nineteen- year-old lieutenant named Henry W. Lawton. Little does he dream that one day he will track Geronimo through the mountains of the west, and that in the end he will die for his country in the far-away Philippines. Leading the foremost Confederate corps, Captain Rice sees General Hardee, a former commandant of West Point and the author of a text book on Infantry 64 Photo by Monroe F. Cockrell, August IQ45, when Mrs. Hyneman was 99 years old. Mrs. Eugenia Polk Hyneman, who assissted in preparing General Johnston's body for burial. drill and tactics which is used by both armies. Then there is Leonidas Polk, who gave up his duties as bishop to take up the sword; Breckinridge, a Congressman at the age of thirty and Vice President of the United States at thirty-five; Theodore O'Hara, who will some day write his immortal poem, "The Bivouac of the Dead." When all sectional strife has been buried, it shall be engraved on bronze tablets in all national cemeteries. Now the preliminaries are over. The curtain rises and Rice begins his Story of Shiloh. The average age of all these men in the ranks is less than twenty years; not a trench, not an earthwork, not even a rifle pit shields their young bodies. The fight is on. The gray line advances, flinches, reels, then plunges forward again. The torn and bleeding Federals fall back, and as the shadows of the evening fall, their last line des- perately hugs the banks of the Tennessee. Then, just as the broken columns are set to meet the final charge of their weary foe, there is an unexpected pause. A message has arrived which will pose an eternal question on the lips of men. Beauregard has given the order to cease firing. On and on I read, until I had finished the book by this man whose life had been wedded to the story of Shiloh. When I called on Captain Rice the next morning, I could not suppress a gentle reprimand. "Captain," I said, "you have kept a secret from me. Why did you not tell me that you have written a book on Shiloh?" 65 He gave me one of his flashing, kindly smiles. "Who am I," he replied, "to push myself forward and tell you that I am the author of a book?" I thought this was carrying modesty too far, but I could not help feeling the highest respect for this man who seemed to embody the best of the Old South in him. I asked him why he had named his book "The Story of Shiloh" and not "The Battle of Shiloh." His answer came forth instantly. "The Battle of Shiloh is a thing of the past," he de- clared. "The lines which divided the Blue and Gray have long disappeared. Today we are all Americans, glorying in a common history, without rancor, without resentment. All that is left of the battle is its romance, the valor, the devotion of its soldiers. To me Shiloh is a heroic saga. To me it never will be anything but The Story of Shiloh.' " "Captain," I remarked after a pause, "let me ask you another question: Do you think that the story of The Drummer-Boy of Shiloh' actually happened?" He gave me a side-long look. "Odd you should ask me that," he replied, and then fell silent. The boy I spoke of had enlisted in a Northern regi- ment and, during one stage of the battle, was ordered to beat "attack." Responding to his sharp summons, the troops stormed up a hill, but met fierce enemy fire and came to a halt. The captain called to the boy to beat "retreat." The boy drummed, but again he beat "attack." "I said 'retreat,' " the officer shouted. Tears came to the boy's eyes. "Captain," he answered, 'at- tack' is all I know. They never taught me to beat retreat.' " 66 Hearing the familiar signal, the men resumed their onslaught, and to their own surprise captured the hill. But when the officer looked around for the boy to commend him, he found him lying dead on the slope, a bullet hole through his chest. Captain Rice slowly aroused himself from his rev- erie. "Come with me," he said at last. "I want to show you something, something that perhaps I should not show to visitors; but I am going to make an exception of you." He led me to a large room which he called his laboratory, a room devoted to the assorting of excavated relics. Dozens of men, he told me, were con- stantly digging in the battlefield, not out of curiosity or morbidness, but to improve roads or to erect monu- ments. If they found battle relics, the government tried to return them to their rightful owners or their heirs, provided they could be located. Then Captain Rice told me why he had invited me to visit his laboratory. One day, shortly before my visit, he said, his men had been excavating a hillside, and had stumbled on the skeleton of a boy. It still wore pieces of a drum cord around its neck, and showed a bullet hole through its chest. "Now, my friend," Captain Rice said, as he showed me his find, "what would you do with this body, if you were I?" I pondered for a moment, and then ventured a suggestion. "This find is too sacred to be shown to mere sightseers," I declared. "But if anyone comes in here who knows the story of the drummer boy, and asks whether it is true, I would show them these re- mains; I would show them to no one else." 67 Captain Rice again gave me his friendly smile. "I like your idea/' he said, "and so it shall be." I have no doubt that he intended to put the rule into effect, but today's Park Administration has no knowledge of Rice's precious relic. I may add here that the drummer boy who forms the subject of Hays' poem, is not the boy of whom I speak. He was buried shortly after the battle, and his grave is plainly marked. Per- haps Captain Rice's final decision may have been prompted by the consideration that it would have been sacrilege to intrude on the rights of the boy whose memory Hays had perpetuated. Captain Rice was that kind of a man. For some months I kept up an intermittent corres- pondence with my genial host, but I found no other opportunity to repeat my visit to him. Time slipped by, and other events crowded in my mind against the remembrance of Shiloh. Years later, I happened to cross San Francisco Bay on a ferry boat. A fellow passenger addressed a casual remark to me, and we talked on the usual topics of chance acquaintances. In the course of the conversation I asked him where he came from. "The little town I come from," he replied, "is one you probably have never heard of." "I'll take a chance on that," I said. "What is the name of your home town?" "Corinth, Mississippi." Our conversation at once took a more intimate tone. "Do you know Captain Rice of Shiloh National Park?" I asked him, after explaining my interest in Corinth. ,« "Haven't you heard?" he asked me with lifted eye- brows. I had dire forebodings. No, I had not heard. "A few months ago, as he and his family returned to their residence from a visit, they detected a strong odor of gas. While Captain Rice and his son were in- vestigating the source of this odor, a violent explosion occurred, followed by a fire. Mr. Rice was taken to the hospital and died there a few days later. His son had succumbed earlier, but Mr. Rice was not told, and died without knowing of the death of his son." I turned away, unable to speak. The conversation, which had begun so pleasantly, flickered out. Now that Captain Rice and Mrs. Inge are no longer among the living, Corinth and its neighboring battle- field have lost much of their enchantment for me. Some- how, on the day when I heard of Captain Rice's death, I wrote finis to that chapter of my life which, with reverence to him, I shall always think of as The Story of Shiloh. ^^^msswn^' 69 De Long Rice DeLong Rice — Captain Rice, as he was affectionately called by those who knew him — was born on July 5, 1872, in Franklin County, Tennessee, near the county seat of Winchester. He was educated at the Winchester Normal School, and worked for a time as stenographer for the W. T. Adams Machine Company at Corinth, Miss. When he was only eighteen years old, he became secretary to Robert L. Taylor, who was then lecturing and laying the groundwork of his campaign for the governorship of Tennessee. Later he was appointed secretary of the Tennessee Railroad Commission, which position he resigned to organize and conduct the Rice Lyceum Bureau at Nashville, presenting through it some of the most prominent lecturers and theatrical stars of that period. He was keenly interested in civic and political affairs, and at one time ran for State Treasurer on the Democratic ticket. In 1913 he was appointed secretary of the Shiloh National Military Park Commission, and soon after- ward became superintendent of the park, a position he held until his death, which occurred on September 24, 1929. Mr. Rice was not satisfied with the mere routine discharge of his new duties. He was instrumental in building a hotel near the park grounds, which later 70 was taken over by the Young Men's Christian Asso- ciation, and he collected funds to erect a stone memorial building on the site of the Shiloh church. This memorial was never finished. Its half erected walls still stand today in mute testimony of a man who spent his best years embellishing and furthering the usefulness of the historic grounds which were under his care. Aside from his Story of Shiloh, Mr. Rice also wrote The Spirits of the Trees, another poem in prose, in which he sang the praise of the trees which he knew and loved so well. Other examples of his excellent writ- ings are Old Limber, the story of a hound dog — in fact, a fascinating story of politics — and The Autobiography of Peach Brandy. Unfortunately, track has been lost of many of Mr. Rice's poetic gems. After his untimely death, the late Governor Mal- colm R. Patterson penned a touching epilogue to his departed friend in the Memphis Commercial Appeal. "DeLong Rice," he wrote, "was unusual. A compara- tively young man, he really belonged to the old age of romance. His thoughts, his manner of speech, his ap- pearance, and even his dress, were all reminders of the days that are gone. "He was a poet by nature, and a prose writer whose words and ideas were uncommonly rich and flowing, a man who delighted and revelled in the beautiful and artistic. "As superintendent of the battlefield of Shiloh, he was a great deal more than a keeper and preserver of its roads and markers and monuments. He was the interpreter of the battle itself with all its stirring inci- dents and varying fortunes. To hear DeLong Rice 7i explain the positions of the troops . . . and recount the incidents . . . was to gain a clearer insight . . . [into] one of the most important engagements of the great war between the states than could possibly be derived from any historical narrative. "DeLong Rice was a most impressive man ... As a physical specimen, few men were his superior. Tall, well formed, with coal-black hair, and a pair of dark eyes that reflected all his moods, Mr. Rice, with his sideburns and flowing mustache, looked like some fine representative of old-time Southern chivalry." What strikes one most forcefully in this splendid farewell message are the words, "DeLong Rice was unusual." All those who knew him, will remember him just like that — unusual, but unusual in the very best sense of the word. Not one of his many friends and acquaintances will ever forget him, and posterity should pay tribute to this man, whose innate modesty kept him from attaining during his lifetime the nation-wide recognition due him. 72 Augusta Evans Inge Mrs. Inge — her full name was Florida Augusta Evans Inge — was born in South Carolina in the year 1834, but came to Mississippi in her early childhood. At the age of eighteen, she married William Murphy Inge, a young lawyer, two years her senior, who was then prac- tising at Aberdeen, Miss. The Evans family traced its ancestry back to the days of King Arthur, and all through that lineage had its authors, poets and statesmen. Augusta Evans Wil- son, the well-known Southern writer, was a kinswoman of Mrs. Inge, and a delicate acknowledgment of their relationship may be found in St. Elmo, one of whose characters bears the name of Inge. In 1858 the Inges came to Corinth, staying at the old Cross Roads Hotel, (now the site of Rubel's De- partment Store) until the completion of their own home, which they called Rose Cottage and which they were to occupy until 1875, when they moved to a more pretentious house named Ingeheim. Neither of these two homes stands today; it was at Rose Cottage where General Johnston made his headquarters. When the war broke out, Mr. Inge organized a company of cavalry in Tishomingo County, Miss., and was elected captain. Impatient for action, he resigned, and joined the 12th Mississippi Infantry as a private 73 but, probably because he had received some training at West Point, soon was made adjutant of the regiment. He took part in the first battle of Bull Run, was pro- moted to a captaincy and, following his almost acci- dental participation in the fight at Shiloh, returned to the East. After the battle of Malvern Hill he rose to the rank of colonel. He then was ordered west again, fought under Forrest, was with him near Rome, Geor- gia, when Colonel Streight surrendered, and found him- self under Hardee in South Carolina subsequent to the fall of Savannah and Charleston. After trying in vain to hold a section of Forrest's line at Selma with a motley crowd of boys and old men, he was about to organize a partisan command in Macon, when Lee's surrender ended all his efforts. In later years, Mrs. Inge often described the scenes at her home and among her neighbors during the stormy years of the war. Her husband happened to be on furlough while she was hostess to General Albert Sidney Johnston, and was offered a position on Johns- ton's staff, but preferred to go into battle as adjutant to General Clark, who commanded a Mississippi brig- ade. He was in General Johnston's confidence, however, and helped him in the planning of the forthcoming battle. It was a sad moment when the boys from the South moved out of Corinth, Mrs. Inge used to reminisce. The bands played popular tunes, but tears flowed freely when they intonated Then You 11 Remember Me, and The Girl I Left Behind Me. General Johnston mounted his horse in front of Rose Cottage and, turning to Mrs. Inge, said, "Madame, I am going out to fight for the 74 protection of your home." These were his last words to her. The 5th of April was a prolonged day of agony for the people of Corinth, and when night fell there still was no news from the army. On the 6th, early in the morn- ing, one of Mrs. Inge's colored servants burst into her room. "The day of resurrection has come!" she cried, and fell on her knees, praying. A thunderous noise from the North proclaimed that the gigantic struggle was on. Yellow flags indicated the buildings which were ready to house the wounded, and there were few without this emblem of mercy. Surgeons, nurses and Sisters of Charity were waiting to go to work, and they did not have to wait long. Mrs. Inge was foremost among the willing workers. After many hours of gruesome work, she was just about to assist in another amputation, when one of her daughters came running in. "Mamma," she panted, "they are bringing in papa!" Mrs. Inge never remembered how she made her way home. When she got there, she found her husband on a stretcher; but he smiled at her reassuringly. His horse had been shot under him; in falling, he had been injured painfully, but not dangerously. Mrs. Inge took him to their old childhood town of Aberdeen, where he soon became well enough to rejoin his regiment. On Monday, April 7, a runner came in from the battlefield, announcing the death of General Johnston, and a few hours later the body of the general was brought in, accompanied by his staff and a cavalcade of soldiers. The room which he had occupied before his departure was found locked — Johnston had taken 75 the key with him — and the door had to be forced open to permit the body to be placed in what were consid- ered its proper surroundings. Mrs. Inge, assisted by a neighbor, Mrs. Ellen Polk, and her daughter Eugenia, prepared the body for interment, at which time Eugenia cut two locks of hair from General Johnston's head, one of which she sent to his widow. The body was first shipped to New Orleans, then to Houston, and finally to Austin, Texas, where the burial took place. Mrs. Polk was a cousin of both President Polk and General Leonidas Polk; her daughter Eugenia, who later married a Mr. Hyneman, one of Forrest's soldiers, a boy she had known since childhood, is now ninety- nine years old and was lately visited by Monroe F. Cockrell of Chicago and myself. Her mind is still crys- tal-clear, and her tales brought back with surprising freshness interesting memories of the long ago. When the war was over, Mrs. Inge's homecoming was a sad one. Her beloved Rose Cottage was a shell. Bushwhackers had plundered the town a few days before, and had spared no one. Mrs. Inge and her four children, accompanied by her mother, gathered corn from barns where the marauders had fed their horses, but in a few days even this source of food gave out, and the family would have starved but for the kindness of a neighbor, who made a perilous trip up the Tennessee River to procure a few groceries. Slowly the life of the Inges adjusted itself to the changed conditions. Colonel Inge, matured by four years of war, forged to the top of his profession, and became one of the most influential lawyers of the state, counting among others the Southern Railway Company 7 6 as one of his clients. Turning to politics, he became a member of the Mississippi legislature in 1882, and Speaker of the House in 1884. He died in 1900. Mrs. Inge survived her husband by twenty-five years, and became prominent in her own right as a poet and active member of many societies. She served as president of the Methodist Missionary Society, as president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, as chaplain of the Corinth Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution and as honorary president of the local chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. She was among the first to conceive the idea of the Confederate Monument and worked dili- gently for many years toward raising the sum of $50,000 which was needed for its erection. She was indeed in no small measure responsible for the achievement of this goal. For years she appealed to her neighbors, both in verse and in prose, and had the satisfaction of hearing her dedication poem read at the unveiling of the monu- ment before one of the largest gatherings ever seen on the battleground. Later she was elected poet laureate of the Mississippi branch of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and of the Western Tennessee Sons of Confederate Veterans. One of Mrs. Inge's granddaughters, Mrs. J. B. Bailes, who resides in Florence, Alabama, where she is engaged in journalistic activities, remembers her grand- mother as a rather austere woman, who stood in awe of no one except her husband. "I never would have dared call her Granny," she de- clared to me, "as you had me do in the original draft of your manuscript; but with all her outward sternness, 77 she was kindness itself and not free from little vanities. She was very proud, for instance, of her first name Florida and took great care to sign all her letters and checks with the initials F. A. L, but why she was named Florida, I never found out. "My grandmother was an artist in everything she did," Mrs. Bailes added. "She made the tastiest salads in town, and usually won all the blue ribbons at county fairs with her preserves and pickles. Nobody raised more beautiful or rarer flowers than she, and the cakes she baked for the annual Confederate Veterans' reunions were masterpieces of the culinary and decorative arts." Mrs. Inge died on March 29, 1925, at the ripe age of ninety-one, and it was a group from the thinning ranks of Confederate soldiers who acted as honorary pallbearers at her funeral. 78 The Confederate Monument at Shiloh Accompanied by Monroe F. Cockrell, I recently called on Frederick C. Hibbard of Chicago, the designer and sculptor of the Confederate Monument, at his spacious studio on the edge of the Chicago University campus. Mr. Hibbard, once a pupil of Lorado Taft, told us that his model for the Confederate Monument was unanimously selected in 19 14 from eight competi- tive designs, by a Committee of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. "My underlying idea," Mr. Hibbard said, "was to have the monument represent Victory defeated by Death and Night. Death took away General Johnston, and Night ended the battle just when victory was in sight. The woman in the center, who represents the Confederacy, reluctantly relinquishes to Night and Death the wreath of Victory she holds in her hand." Contrary to Mrs. Inge's opinion, Mr. Hibbard did not intend to have the Confederate officer whose face is partly hidden by his hat, resemble General Beaure- gard, or anyone else in particular; nor did he intend to have the heads on the panels represent the generals who led the troops into the battle. "They represent the average Southern youth," Mr. Hibbard explained. "The 79 only portrait I had in mind is that of General Albert Sidney Johnston, whose face is shown in relief in the center. I had to make it from the only authentic photograph of the Southern general which was avail- able; from this I made first a portrait bust and then a relief portrait in profile." When the monument was finished, difficulties arose in transporting it to its selected site, as the bridges from Corinth were not strong enough to carry the load. Hence, the stones were shipped by train to a point on the Tennessee River, then loaded on barges which were pushed by a steamboat to Pittsburg Landing. Here the granite had to be rolled on timbers up the bank and then one mile inland, much as houses are moved from one place to another. The site chosen for the monument is near the spot where General Prentiss surrendered, designating the high-water mark of Southern success during the battle. Mr. Hibbard still preserves his original drawings and models of the monument, also pictures of the young woman whom he chose as his prototype of Victory. In spite of the many other sculptures he has created since the unveiling of the Confederate Monument in 1917, it is still spoken of as one of his masterpieces. Neither Mr. Cockrell nor I claim expert knowledge on sculptur- ing, but both of us consider Mr. Hibbard's memorial of the Confederate dead the most impressive of all the monuments at Shiloh, in fact, the most beautiful of all battle memorials we have seen anywhere. 80 The Log Church of Shiloh At the time of the battle, Shiloh Church was a small, unpretentious meeting house, built of hewn logs. The little building had been erected in 1 849-1 850 by the Reverend Jacob J. Wolff, a local Methodist minister. It had two doors and one window without glass. Prior to the battle, the Federal troops removed the floor boards, to use them for coffins, and when the Confed- erates took possession, they removed the pulpit and the seats to their camps. After the battle, the building was used as a hospital, and for a time a guard was stationed in front of it; but when the guard was with- drawn, curiosity hunters began their destructive work and demolished the building completely. Si Acknowledgments In the compilation of this book I have had the help of many friends to whom I wish to tender my grateful acknowledgment. Miss Helen S. Babcock and Mrs. Gertrude I. Jen- kins, librarians of the Legler Branch of the Chicago Public Library, who made a diligent search covering some controversial historical points. Mrs. J. B. Bailes, granddaughter of Mrs. Florida Augusta Evans Inge, who put at my disposal many interesting clippings from her grandmother's scrapbooks. Miss Meta Caminer, Mrs. Beatrice Jaros and Miss Zelda Altman, who were very helpful in the prepara- tion of the manuscript. Mrs. Blanche Cerny, who gave me valuable sug- gestions in regard to arrangement and style. Mr. Monroe F. Cockrell, president of the Chicago Civil War Round Table, who read and re-read the manuscript, offered much sound criticism, and super- vised the drawing of all the maps, adding explanatory details where necessary after a careful study on the ground. I almost consider Mr. Cockrell a co-author of this book, and it was he who inspired its publication. Mr. Edwin J. East, City Clerk of Corinth, Missis- sippi, who was instrumental in procuring essential local 82 material and photographs, and whose friendly hospital- ity greatly eased my investigations. Messrs. Elmer Gertz and Ralph Newman, who as- sisted and advised me in various ways. Mr. Frederick C. Hibbard, sculptor of the Confed- erate Monument on the battlefield of Shiloh, to whom I owe much of my knowledge of this memorial. Mrs. Mary W. Kendrick, president Corinth Chap- ter, U. D. C, who gave me much pertinent information. Mr. R. Gerald McMurtry, professor at Lincoln Memorial University, who verified the whereabouts of Colonel Ben Hardin Helm at the time of the battle. Mrs. DeLong Rice, Miss Julia and Mr. Robert C. Rice, who furnished me biographical data of the late Mr. DeLong Rice, and let me quote from his book. Mr. Ray D. Smith of Chicago, who loaned me books bearing on Shiloh from his rich Civil War Library. I am further greatly indebted to the following mem- bers of the National Park Service, who gave me gen- erously of their time, their thoughts, and their material: Mr. Herbert E. Kahler, Chief Historian of the Na- tional Park Service. Dr. Charles W. Porter, Assistant Chief Historian of the National Park Service. Mr. William W. Luckett, Superintendent, Salem (Mass.) Maritime National Historical Site. Mr. James W. Holland, Superintendent, Shiloh Na- tional Military Park, Pittsburg Landing, Tenn. Mr. William H. Glover, Park Ranger at Shiloh, who proved an untiring guide to Mr. Cockrell and myself during our recent visit to the battlefield. 83 Bibliography Appletons Encyclopedia of American Biography The Battle of Shiloh by Joseph W. Rich, 191 1 Ohio at Shiloh, Report of the Ohio Shiloh Battlefield Commission, 1903 Braxton Bragg, by Don C. Seitz, 1924 Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (The Century Co., 1884-1887) Military History of General U. S. Grant by A. Badeau, 1867 Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, 1885 Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, 1875 The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government by Jefferson Davis, 1891 General Beauregard by Alfred Roman, 1884 War Papers, Indiana Commandery Loyal Legion, 1898 The Story of Shiloh by DeLong Rice, 1924 Shiloh, etc., by Thomas Worthington, 1872 History of the United States by James Ford Rhodes, 1919 Official Records of the War of the Rebellion. 84 The Civil War Round Table The first meeting of the Civil War Round Table was held on December 3, 1940 with fifteen present. The name was formally adopted at the third meeting. The steady increase in attendance with sustained interest made it advisable to set up a more formal organization. At the meeting on March 20, 1945, the members formally approved the proposed by-laws and selected the following officers: President, Monroe F. Cockrell Secretary, Ralph G. Newman Treasurer, Vernon Hanson Members of Executive Committee: The above officers and Newton C. Farr, Seymour J. Frank, Elmer Gertz and Fred C. Evers. MEETINGS December 3, 1940 Stonewall Jackson's Valley Campaign Speaker: Percival G. Hart January 17, 1941 Wilbur F. Storey and the Chicago Times in the Civil War Speaker: Elmer Gertz February 14, 1941 Cumberland Gap in the Civil War Speaker: Robert L. Kincaid 85 March 14, 1941 Civil War Battlefields I Have Visited Speaker: Otto Eisenschiml April 23, 1941 America's Greatest Conspiracy. The Trial of the Lincoln Conspirators Speaker: John W. Curran May 28, 1 94 1 The Secession Movement and Some of Its Fathers Speaker: Newton C. Farr October 30, 1941 General Nathan Bedford Forrest Speaker: Monroe F. Cockrell November 12, 1941 The Army of Tennessee Speaker: Stanley F. Horn December 10, 1941 General Benjamin F. Butler Speaker: Ralph G. Newman January 27, 1942 Following the Trail of Jefferson Davis' Flight Speaker: Stewart W. McClelland February 18, 1942 General John A. McClernand and the Civil War Speaker: Norman Bruce Sigband March 24, 1942 King Cotton and the Blockade Speaker: Seymour J. Frank April 14, 1942 General George Brinton McClellan Symposium May 12, 1942 Brig. Gen. Ben Hardin Helm, C.S.A., The Rebel Brother-in- law of Abraham Lincoln Speaker: R. Gerald McMurtry September 24, 1942 The Mississippi River in the Civil War Speaker: Garnett L. Eskew 86 October 17, 1942 Dedication of the Civil War Library of Lincoln Memorial University, Harrogate, Tennessee November 18, 1942 Abraham Lincoln's Personal Finances Speaker: Harry E. Pratt December 15, 1942 Some Medical Aspects of the Civil War Speaker: Carl B. Davis January 19, 1943 Adam Gurowski Speaker: Leroy H. Fischer February 16, 1943 "Fighting Joe" Hooker Speaker: Walter H. Hebert March 23, 1943 B. H. Grierson: Cavalryman Speaker: Paul M. Angle April 22, 1943 The Adams Family and the Southern Question Speaker: Ernest Samuels May 20, 1943 Conflicting Elements in the Character of Abraham Lincoln Speaker: Walter S. Holden June 24, 1943 Illinois Monuments on the Civil War Battlefields Speaker: Don Russell September 22, 1943 Frontier Humor in Early Illinois Speaker: Franklin J. Meine October 15, 1943 Alaskan Slavery and the Civil War Speaker: Jay Monaghan November 17, 1943 Nathan Bedford Forrest Speaker: Robert S. Henry December 17, 1943 Herndon's Contribution to Lincoln Mythology Speaker: Louis A. Warren 87 January 19, 1944 The U. S. Marine Corps in the Civil War Speaker: Colonel Chester L. Fordney, U.S.M.C. February 10, 1 944 The Diary of a Public Man Symposium March 22, 1944 How to be Rich Though a Historian, or Cosmic Forces in American History, or Lincoln and Other Presidential Candidates Speaker: William E. Baringer April 14, 1944 Civil War Battlefields — Their Preservation and Treatment Speaker: Herbert E. Kahler May 18, 1944 Generals, Secretaries and Some Senators Speaker: James G. Randall June 15, 1944 Lincoln, Stanton and the Maryland Triumvirate Speaker: M. L. Houser September 21, 1944 Some Aspects of Civil War Journalism Speaker: Elmer Gertz October 18, 1944 "Fighting Joe" Hooker Speaker: Walter H. Hebert "First with the Most — Forrest" Speaker: Robert S. Henry December 8, 1944 Was Lincoln a Seer, Saint or Mere Politician? Speaker: Lester O. Schriver January 19, 1945 Robert E. Lee Speaker: Marshall Wingfield February 28, 1945 The Battle of Franklin, Tenn. Speaker: Lloyd D. Miller March 20, 1945 Jefferson Davis Symposium 88 April 25, 1945 The Slavery Epoch and Slave Trade in American History Speaker: Robert L. Huttner May 18, 1945 Abraham Lincoln, Hoosier Speaker: John M. Hamer June 13, 1945 The Story of Shiloh Speaker: Otto Eisenschiml September 20, 1945 A Knight of the Golden Circle Speaker: U. S. Lesh October 18, 1945 Kentucky in the Civil War Speaker: Robert L. Kincaid November 2, 1945 Preview of American Battle Scenes, and Civil War books, donated by the Loyal Legion, at Chicago Historical Society November 27, 1945 A Civil War Illusion — Northern Prosperity Speaker: Seymour J. Frank December 18, 1945 That Traitor — Breckinridge; (From Resolution of Decem- ber 4, 1861, expelling him from the Senate of the United States) Speaker: Wesley Carty 89 COLOPHON The type for this volume has been com- posed in Linotype Caslon 137. Printed in a limited edition on Devon antique paper by the Norman Press, Chicago. Design and typography by Norman W. Forgue. Bound by the John F. Cuneo Company. ■>