CHAPTER XLV.

THE FIELD OF SHILOH.

Daylight next morning shone in through the chinks of the bridal chamber (for window it had none), and I awoke refreshed, after sound sleep. The dawn was enlivened by pleasing old-time sounds,—the farmer chopping wood at the door, crowing cocks, gossiping geese, and the new-made fire snapping and crackling in the next room.

The morning was very cold. The earth was covered with white frost, like snow. We had breakfast at the usual hour. “Farmers commonly get their breakfases by sun-up,” said mine host. At table (both doors open, and everybody shivering) Mrs. —— remarked that if it was any colder in my country she would not like to live there. I said to her,—

“We should call this cold weather, though we have some much colder. But, allow me to tell you, I have suffered more from the cold since I have been in Tennessee, than I have for ten years in the North. There, when we go out of doors in winter, we go clad to meet the inclemencies of the season; and we know how to make ourselves comfortable in our houses. Here your houses are open. The wind comes in through the cracks, and you do not even think of shutting the doors. My people at home would think they would perish, if they had to breakfast with the wind blowing on them, as you have it blowing on you here.” In short, I said so much that I got one of the doors closed, which I considered a great triumph.

Zeek brought our animals to the gate; and I called for my bill. Mr. —— said it appeared like he ought not to charge me anything; he had been very glad of my company. As I insisted on discharging my indebtedness, he named a sum so modest that I smiled. “You haven’t heard of the rage for high prices, nor learned the art of fleecing the Yankees.” I gave him twice the sum, but it was with difficulty I could prevail upon him to accept it, for he said it would trouble his conscience. A simple, thoroughly good and upright man,—would there were more like him!

I mounted my horse at the gate, and in company with Zeek and his mule, set out for the battle-field. We struck Owl Creek, but instead of crossing immediately, followed a cattle-path along its bank. On our right were woods, their tops just flushing with the new-risen sun; on our left, cornfields, in some of which the corn had not yet been gathered, while in others I noticed winter wheat, (ploughed in between the rows of stalks, still standing,) covering the ground with its green mat, now hoary with frost. Fording the creek at a safe place, and pushing in an easterly direction through the woods, we came to an army road, made by Wallace’s division moving on towards Corinth, after the battle.

It was a pleasant, still morning, such as always brings to the susceptible spirit a sense of exhilaration. Leisurely we rode among the wooded hills, which I could scarcely believe were ever shaken by the roar of battle. Only the blue jay and the woodpecker made the brown vistas of the trees echo with their drumming and screaming, where had been heard the shriek and whiz of missiles and bullets tapping the trunks.

A little back from the cleared fields we came to a nice-looking new log-hut. It had no window, and but one door. This was closed; by which token Zeek knew the folks were away. This was the abode of his sister and her interesting husband; this the bridal home. Something tender and grateful swelled up in my heart as I looked at the little windowless log-cabin, and thought of the divine gift of love, and of happiness, which dwells in humble places as well as in the highest.

Quitting Wallace’s road at its junction with a neighborhood road, we struck another cow-path, which led in a northeasterly direction through the woods. We soon came upon evidences of a vast encampment. Here our right wing had intrenched itself after the battle. In this place I may remark that the astonishing fact about this field is, that our army did not intrench itself _before_ the battle. Three weeks it lay at Shiloh, menaced by the enemy; Grant himself pronounced an attack probable, and the sagacious Sherman expected it; yet when it came, it proved a perfect surprise; it found our lines badly arranged, weak, and undefended by a single breastwork.

Beyond was a magnificent field, swept of its fences, but stuck all over with abandoned tent-supports, showing where our finally victorious legions had lain. “This field was just like a city after the fight,” said Zeek. I noticed that the trees in the surrounding groves were killed. “The Yankees skinned ’em for bark to lay on,” Zeek explained.

Crossing Shiloh Branch,—a sluggish little stream, with low, flat shores, covered with yellow sedge and sentinelled by solemn dead trees,—we ascended a woody hill, along the crest of which a row of graves showed where Hildebrand’s picket line was attacked, on that disastrous Sunday morning. Each soldier had been buried where he fell. The boughs, so fresh and green that April morning, waving over their heads in the sweet light of dawn, though dismantled now by the blasts of winter, had still a tranquil beauty of their own, gilded and sparkling with sunshine and frost. Fires in the woods had burned the bottoms of the head-boards. I stopped at one grave within a rude log-rail enclosure. “In memory of L. G. Miller,” said the tablet; but the remainder of the inscription had been obliterated by fire. I counted eighteen graves in this little row.

We rode on to Shiloh Church,—formerly a mere log-cabin in the woods, and by no means the neat white-steepled structure on some village green, which the name of country church suggests to the imagination. There Beauregard had his head-quarters after Sunday’s battle. It was afterwards torn down for its timbers, and now nothing remained of it but half-burnt logs and rubbish.

Below the hill, a few rods south of the church, Zeek showed me some Rebel graves. There many a poor fellow’s bones lay scattered about, rooted up by swine. I saw an old half-rotted shoe, containing a skeleton foot. But the most hideous sight of all, was a grinning skull pushed out of a hole in the ground, exposing the neck-bone, with a silk cravat still tied about it in a fashionable knot.

A short distance southeast of the church we visited the ruins of the Widow Ray house, burned to the ground in the midst of its blasted orchard and desolated fields. “A girl that lived hyere fell mightily in love with a Yankee soldier. Saturday night, he allowed there was going to be a battle, and come to bid her good-bye. He got killed; and she went plumb distracted. She’s married now to a mighty clever feller.”

Zeek had another romantic story to tell, as we returned to the church. “Hyere’s whur the bale of hay was. When the Rebs was brushing out the Yankees, an old Reb found a Yankee soldier nigh about this spot, that had been wounded, and was perishing for a drink of water. He just took him, and got him behind a bale of hay that was hyere, and give him drink out of his canteen, just like he’d been his own brother. Some of the time he’d be nussing him behind the hay, and the rest he’d be shooting the Yankees over it.” Some one asked him why he took such a heap of pains to save one Yankee life, while he was killing as many mo’e as he could. “They’re fighting enemies,” he said; “but a wounded man is no longer an enemy, he’s a feller being.”

Members of one family after all, though at war. Some were so in a literal sense. I recall the story of two Kentucky regiments that fought on this field, one for the bad cause and one for the good. Two brothers met, and the Federal captured the Rebel. The former recommenced firing, when the latter said, “Don’t shoot there; that’s daddy behind that tree.”

Cantering over the hills towards the northeast, we came to the scene of a severe infantry fight in the woods. There was a wild burial-place, containing some fifty patriot graves, originally surrounded by a fence of stakes wattled with saplings Both the fence and the head-boards had been broken down and partly burned. All around us were sheep feeding in the open woods; and withdrawn to the seclusion of the little burial-ground was a solitary ewe and a pair of new-born lambs.

“All these hills are just lined with graves,” said Zeek. Not far away was a fence surrounding the resting-places of “two officers and seventeen private Rebels,” as an inscription cut in the side of a black-jack informed us. There was a story connected with these graves. A Federal soldier found on the dead body of one of the officers, a watch, his likeness, his wife’s likeness, a letter from his wife, and a letter written by himself requesting that, in case he should fall, these relics might be sent to her. The soldier faithfully fulfilled this duty; and at the close of the war the wife, following the directions he forwarded to her with them, came and found his grave.

We rode a mile due north through what Zeek termed “the long avenue,” a broad, level opening through the woods, at the farther end of which, “on the elevatedest part,” a Yankee battery had been posted, doing terrible execution, if one might judge by the trunks and boughs of trees lopped off by shot and shell. The Rebels charged this battery repeatedly, and it was captured and recaptured.

Leaving the sedgy hills, and pursuing our course towards the Landing, we were stopped by a trench in the woods. It was one hundred and fifty feet long, and four deep. For some reason both ends had been left open. Two feet from the bottom, planks were laid across, the trench being filled with earth over them. Beneath the planks the dead were buried. Their bones could be seen at one of the open ends of the trench. A row of head-boards indicated the graves of Illinois volunteers.

We rode on to the spot which has given the battle its northern name. Under high bluffs, on what Zeek called a “bench,”—a shelf of land on the river bank,—approached from the land side by a road running down through a narrow ravine, stood the two log-huts, a dwelling and a grocery, which constituted the town of “Pittsburgh.” There was not so much as a wharf there, but steamers made their landing against the natural bank. There was absolutely nothing there now, the two huts having been burned. Wild ducks sat afloat on the broad, smooth breast of the river. It was not easy looking down from those heights upon the tranquil picture, to call up that other scene of battle-panic and dismay,—the routed Federal troops pouring through the woods, disorganized, beaten, seeking the shelter of the bluffs and the protection of the gun-boats; the great conflict roaring behind them; the victorious Rebels in wild pursuit; God’s solemn Sabbath changed to a horrible carnival of mad passions and bloodshed.

“The Rebels just fanned ’em out,” said Zeek. “The Yankees put up white flags under the bluff, but the Rebels didn’t come near enough to see ’em; they tuke a skeer,—the Federals fell back so easy, they was afraid of some trick. Thar was such a vast amount of ’em they couldn’t all get to the Landing. Some got drowned trying to swim Snake Creek. Numbers and numbers tried to swim the river. A Federal officer told me he saw his men swim out a little ways, get cold, then wind up together, and go to hugging each other, and sink.” Such are the traditions of the fight which have passed into the memory of the country people; but they should be taken with considerable allowance.

On the level river bottom opposite the Landing we found an extensive cornfield, bounded by heavy timber beyond. Under that shore the gun-boats lay where they shelled the advancing Rebels. It was there, emerging from the timber into the open field, that our defeated army saw, that Sunday evening, first the advanced cavalry, then a whole division of Buell’s army coming to the rescue,—banners flying and bayonets glittering among the trees. Glad sight! No wonder the runaways under the bluffs made the welkin ring with their cheers! If Buell did not arrive in time to save that day, he was in time to save the next, and turn defeat into victory.

Taking the Hamburg Road up the river, we reached the scene of General Prentiss’s disaster. The Rebels were in our camps that Sunday morning almost before the alarm of attack was given. First came the wild cries of the pickets rushing in, accompanied by the scattering shots of the enemy, and followed instantly by shells hurtling through the tents, in which the inmates were just rousing from sleep; then, sweeping like an avalanche through the woods, the terrible resistless battlefront of the enemy.

“Into the just-aroused camps thronged the Rebel regiments, firing sharp volleys as they came, and springing towards our laggards with the bayonet. Some were shot down as they were running, without weapons, hatless, coatless, toward the river. Others fell as they were disentangling themselves from the flaps that formed the doors to their tents; others as they were buckling on their accoutrements; a few, it was even said, as they were vainly trying to impress on the cruelly-exultant enemy their readiness to surrender. Officers were wounded in their beds, and left for dead, who, through the whole two days’ struggle, lay there gasping in their agony, and on Monday evening were found in their gore, inside their tents, and still able to tell the tale.”[13]

The houses all along the road were burned. In Prentiss’s front was a farm, all laid waste, the orchard shot to pieces and destroyed by balls. The woods all around were killed, perforated with countless holes, as by the bills of woodpeckers.

Striking the Hamburg and Purdy road, we went west to the spot where the Rebel General Sydney A. Johnston fell, pierced by a mortal wound. Zeek then piloted me through the woods to the Corinth Road, where, time pressing, I took leave of him, sorry I could not accept his invitation to go home with him to dinner. It was five miles to his father’s house; it was twenty miles to Corinth; and the day was already half spent.

Footnote 13:

“Agate,” in the _Cincinnati Gazette_, who furnished the best contemporaneous account of this battle.