The correspondent of the Cincinnati Gazette gives a long, but very vivid and doubtless correct description of this battle. We have not room for all of it. It would fill our whole paper. We select a few items:
TOPOGRAPHICAL POSITION OF OUR TROOPS.
And, first, of our positions. Let the reader understand that the Pittsburg Landing is simply a narrow ravine, down which a road passes to the river bank, between high bluffs on either side. There is no town at all – two log huts comprise all the improvements visible. Back from the river is a rolling country, cut up with numerous ravines, partially under cultivation, but perhaps the greater part thickly wooded, with some underbrush. The soil is clayey, and the roads on Sunday morning were good. From the Landing a road leads direct to Corinth, twenty miles distant. A mile or two out this road forks; one branch is the lower Corinth road, and the other the ridge Corinth road. A short distance out another road takes off to the left, crosses Lick Creek, and leads to the river at Hamburg, some miles further up. On the right, two separate roads lead off to Purdy, and another, a new one, across Snake Creek to Crump’s Landing on the river below. Besides these the whole country inside our lines is cut up with roads leading to our different camps; and beyond the lines is the most inextricable maze of cross-roads, intersecting everything and leading everywhere, in which it was ever my ill fortune to become entangled.
On and between these roads, at distances of from two to four or five miles from Pittsburg Landing, lay five divisions of Major General Grant’s army that Sunday morning. The advance line was formed by three divisions – Brig. Gen. Sherman’s, Brig. Gen. Prentiss’, and Major General McClernand’s. Between these and the landing, lay the two others – Brig. Gen. Hurlbut’s, and Major Gen. Smith’s commanded, in the absence (from sickness) of that admirable officer, by Brig. Gen. W. H. L. Wallace.
Our advance line, beginning at the extreme left, was thus formed. On the Hamburg road, just this side of the crossing of Lick Creek, and under bluffs on this opposite bank that commanded the position, lay Col. D. Stuart’s brigade of Gen. Sherman’s division. Some three or four miles distant from this brigade, on the lower Corinth road, and between that and the one to Purdy, lay the remaining brigades of Sherman’s division, McDowell’s forming the extreme right of our whole advance line, Hildebrand’s coming next to it, and Buckland’s next. Next to Buckland’s brigade, though rather behind a portion of Sherman’s, lay Major General McClernand’s division, and between it and Stuart’s brigade, already mentioned as forming our extreme left lay Brig. Gen. Prentiss’ division, completing the line.
Back of this line, within a mile of the Landing, lay Hurlbut’s division, stretching across the Corinth road, and, W. H. L. Wallace’s to the right. Such was the position of our troops at Pittsburg Landing, at daybreak Sunday Morning. Major General Lew. Wallace’s division lay at Crump’s Landing, some miles below, and was not ordered up till about half-past 7 o’clock that day.
OUR MEN SURPRISED.
Almost at dawn, Sherman’s pickets were driven in; a very little later Prentiss’s were, and the enemy were into the camps almost as soon as were the pickets themselves.
Here began scenes which let us hope, will have no parallel in our remaining annals of the war. Many, particularly among our officers, were not yet out of bed. Others were dressing, others washing, others cooking, a few eating their breakfast. Many guns were unloaded, accoutrements laying pell mell, ammunition was ill supplied – in short, the camps were completely surprised – disgracefully, might be added, unless some one can hereafter give some yet undiscovered reason to the contrary – and were taken at almost every possible disadvantage.
The first wild cries from the pickets rushing in and the few scattering shots that preceded their arrival aroused the regiments to a sense of their peril; an instant afterwards rattling volleys of musketry poured through the tents, while, before there was time for though of preparations, there came rushing through the woods, with lines of battle sweeping the whole fronts of the division camps and bending down on their flank, the fine, dashing compact columns of the enemy.
Into the just-aroused camps thronged the rebel regiments, firing sharp volleys as they came, and springing forward upon our laggards with the bayonet, for, while their artillery, already in position, was tossing shells to the further side of the encampments, scores were shot down as they were running, without weapons, hatless, coatless, toward the river. The searching bullets found other poor unfortunates in their tents, and there, all unheeding now, they still slumbered, while the unseen foe rushed on. 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; others, as they were vainly trying to impress on the cruelly exultant enemy their readiness to surrender.
Officers were bayoneted in their beds, and left for dead, who, through the two whole days’ fearful 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.
Such were the fearful disasters that opened the rebel onset on the line of Buckland’s brigade, in Sherman’s division. Similar, though perhaps less terrible in some of the details, were the fates of Prentiss’ entire front.
Meantime what they could our shattered regiments did. Falling rapidly back through the heavy woods till they gained a protecting ridge, firing as they ran, and making what resistance men thus situated might, Sherman’s men succeeded in partially checking the rush of the enemy, long enough to form their hasty line of battle. Meantime the other two brigades of the division (to the right), spring hastily to their arms and had barely done so when the enemy’s lines came sweeping up against their fronts, too, and the battle thus opened fiercely along Sherman’s whole line on the right.
Buckland’s brigade had been compelled to abandon their camps without a struggle. Some of the regiments, it is even said, ran without firing a gun. Col. Apler’s 53d Ohio is loudly complained of on this score, and others are mentioned. It is certain that parts of regiments, both here and in other divisions, ran disgracefully. – Yet they were not wholly without excuse. They were raw troops, just from the usual idleness of our ”camps of instruction;" hundreds of them had never heard a gun fired in anger; their officers, for the most part, were equally inexperienced; they had been reposing in fancied security, and were awaked, perhaps from sweet dreams of home and wives and children, by the stunning roar of cannon in their very midst, and the bursting of bomb shells among their tents, to see only the serried columns of the magnificent rebel advance, and through the blinding, stifling smoke, the hasty retreat of comrades and supports, right and left. Certainly, it is sad enough but hardly surprising that under such circumstances some should run. Half as much caused the wild panic at Bull Run, for which the nation, as one man, became a loud-mouthed apologist.
But they ran – here as in Prentiss’ division, of which last more in a moment – and the enemy did not fail to profit by the wild disorder. As Buckland’s brigade fell back, McClernand threw forward his left to support it. Meanwhile Sherman was doing his best to rally his troops – dashing along the lines, encouraging them everywhere by his presence, and exposing his own life with the same freedom with which he demanded their [sic] offer of theirs, he did much to save the division from utter destruction. Hildebrand and McDowell were compelled to retire their brigades from their camps across the little ravine behind; but here, for a time, they made a gallant defense, while what was left of Buckland’s was falling back in such order as it might, and leaving McClernand’s left to take their place, and check the wave of rebel advance.
THE REBEL PLAN OF ATTACK.
During Friday and Saturday the rebels had marched out of Corinth, about 70,000 strong in three great divisions. Sidney Johnston had general command of the whole army, and particularly of the centre. Braxton Bragg and Beauregard had the wings. Hardee, Polk, Breckinridge, Cheatham and others, held subordinate commands. On Thursday Johnston issued a proclamation to the army, announcing to them in grandiloquent terms that he was about to lead them against the invaders, and that they would soon celebrate the great, decisive victory of the war, in which they had repelled the invading column, redeemed Tennessee, and preserved the Southern Confederacy.
Their general plan of attack is said by prisoners to have been to strike our centre first (composed, as the reader will remember, of Prentiss’ and McClernand’s divisions,) pierce the centre, and then pour in their troops to attack on each side the wings into which they would thus cut our army.
THE CLOSE OF SUNDAY’S FIGHT.
We have reached the last act in the tragedy of Sunday. It is half past 4 o’clock. Our front line of divisions has been lost since half past 10. Our reserve line is gone, too. The rebels occupy the camps of every division save that of W. H. L. Wallace. Our whole army is crowded in the region of Wallace’s camps, and took a circuit of half to two thirds of a mile around the Landing. We have been falling back all day. We can do it no more. The next result puts us into the river, and there are not transports enough to cross a single division till the enemy would be upon us.
Lew Wallace’s division might turn the tide for us – it is made of fighting men – but where is it? Why has it not been thundering on the right for three hours past? We did not know that it was not ordered up till noon. Buell is coming but he has been doing it all day, and all last week. His advance guard is across the river now, waiting for ferriage; but what is an advance guard with sixty thousand victorious foes in front of us?
We have lost nearly all our camps and camp equipage. We have lost nearly half our field artillery. We have lost a division General and two or three regiments of our soldiers as prisoners. We have lost – how dreadfully we are afraid to think – in killed and wounded. The hospitals are full to overflowing. A long ridge bluff is set apart for surgical uses. It is covered with the maimed, the dead and dying. And our men are discouraged by prolonged defeat. Nothing but the most energetic exertion, on the part of the officers prevents them from becoming demoralized. Regiments have lost their favorite field officers, companies the captains whom they have always looked to, with that implicit faith the soldier learns, to lead them to battle.
Mean time there is a lull in the firing. For the first time since sunrise you fail to catch the angry rattle of musketry or the heavy booming of the field guns. Either the enemy must be preparing for the grand, final rush that is to crown the day’s success and save the Southern Confederacy, or they are puzzled by our last retreat, and are moving cautiously lest we spring some trap upon them. Let us embrace the opportunity and look about the landing. We pass the old log house, lately post office, now full of wounded and surgeons, which constitutes the “Pittsburgh” part of the Landing. General Grant and staff are in a group beside it. The General is confident. – “We can hold them off til to-morrow; then they’ll be exhausted, and we’ll go at them with fresh troops.” A great crowd is collected around the building – all in uniforms, most of them with guns. And yet we are needing troops in the front so sorely.
COWARDS.
On the bluffs above the river is a sight that may well make our cheeks tingle with shame for some of our soldiers. There are not less than three thousand skulkers lining the banks. Ask them why they don’t go to their places in the line, “Oh, our regiment is cut to pieces.” – “Why don’t you go to where it is forming again?” “I can’t find it,” and the hulk looks as if that would be the very last thing he would want to do.
Officers are around among them, trying to hunt up their men, storming, coaxing, commanding – cursing I am afraid. One strange fellow – a Major, if I remember aright – is making a sort of elevated, superfine Forth of July speech to every body that will listen to him. He means well, certainly: “Men of Kentucky, of Illinois, of Ohio, of Iowa, of Indiana, I implore of you, I beg of you, come up now. Help us through two hours more. By all that you hold dear, by the homes you hope to defend, by the flag you love, by the States you honor, by all your love of country, by your hatred of treason, I conjure you, come up and do your duty now!” And so on for quantity. “That feller’s a good speaker,” was the only response I heard, and the fellow who gave it nestled more snugly behind his tree as he spoke.
I knew well enough the nature of the skulking animal in an army during a battle. I had seen their performances before, but never on so large a scale, never with such an utter sickness of heart as I looked, as now. Still I do not believe there was very much more than the average percentage. It was a big army, and the runaways all sought the Landing.
ARRIVAL OF GEN. BUELL.
Looking across the Tennessee we see a body of cavalry awaiting transportation over. They are said to be Buell’s advance, yet they have been there an hour or two alone. But suddenly there is a rustling among the runaways. It is! It is! You see the gleaming of the gun-barrels, you catch amid the leaves and under growth down the opposite side of the river glimpses of the steady, swinging tramp of trained soldiers. A DIVISION of Buell’s army is here! And the men who have left their regiments on the field send up three cheers for Buell. They cheering! May it parch their throats, as if they had been breathing the Simoon!
Here comes a boat across with a Lieutenant and two or three privates of the Signal Corps. Some orders are instantly given to the officer and as instantly telegraphed to the other side by the mysterious wavings and raising and droppings of the flags. A steamer comes up with pontoons on board. With which a bridge could be speedily thrown across. Unaccountably [enough] to on-lookers, she slowly reconnoiters and steams back again. Perhaps, after all, it is better to have no bridge there. It simplifies the question, takes escape out of the count, and leaves it victory or death – to the cowards that slink behind the bluffs as well as to the brave men who peril their lives to do the State some service on the fields beyond. Preparations go rapidly forward for crossing the division (Gen. Nelson’s, which has the advance of Buell’s army) on the dozen or so transports that have been tied up along the bank.
We have spent but a few minutes on the bluff but they are the golden minutes that count for years. Well was it for that driven, defeated but not disgraced army of Gen. Grant’s that those minutes were improved. Col. Webster, Chief of Staff, and an artillery officer of no [moad] ability, had arranged the guns that he could collect, of those that remained to us, in a sort of semi circle, protecting the Landing, and bearing chiefly on our center and left, by which the rebs were pretty sure to advance. Corps of artillerists to man them were improvised from all the batteries that could be collected. Twenty-two guns in all were placed in position. Two of them were heavy siege guns, long thirty twos. Where they came from I do not know; what battery the belonged to I have no idea; I only know that they were there, in the right place, half a mile back from the bluff, sweeping the approaches by the left, and by the ridge Corinth road; that there was nobody to work them; that Dr. Cornyn, Surgeon of Frank Blair’s old first Missouri Artillery, proffered his service, that they were gladly accepted, and that he did work them to such effect as to lay out an ample work for scores of his professional brethren on the other side of the fight.
Remember the situation. It was half-past four o’clock – perhaps a quarter later still. Every division of our army of the field had been repulsed. The enemy were in the camps of four out of five of them. We were driven to within a little over half a mile of the Landing. Behind us was a deep rapid river. Before us was a victorious enemy. And still there was an hour for fighting. “Oh, that night or Blutcher would come!” Oh, that night or Lew Wallace would come! Nelson’s division of Buell’s army evidently couldn’t cross in time to do us much good. We didn’t yet know whether Lew. Wallace wasn’t on the ground. In the justice of a righteous cause, and in that semi circle of twenty two guns in position lay all the hope we could see.
Suddenly a broad, sulphurous flash of light leaped out from the darkening woods; and thro’ the glare and smoke came whistling the leaden hail. The rebels were making their crowning effort for the day, and, as was expected when our guns were hastily placed, they came from our left and center. They had wasted their fire at 1,000 yards. Instantaneously our deep-mouthed bull-dogs flung out their sonorous response. The rebel artillery opened, and shell and round shot came tearing across the open space back of the bluff. May I be forgiven for the malicious thought, but I certainly did which one or two might drop behind the bluff among the skulkers hovering under the hill at the river’s edge.
Very handsome was the response our broken infantry battalions poured in. The enemy soon had reason to remember that, if not
“Still in their ashes live the wonted fires,” at least still in the fragments lived the ancient valor that had made the short-lived rebel successes already cost so dear.
THE WORK OF SUNDAY NIGHT.
With the exception of the gunboat bombardment, the night seemed to have passed in entire quiet. A heavy thunderstorm had come up about midnight, and though we were all shivering over the ducking, the surgeons assured us that a better thing could not have happened. The ground they said, was covered with wounded not yet found, or whom we were unable to bring from the field. The moisture would to some extent cool the burning, parching thirst which is one of the chief terrors of the lying wounded, and help less on the battle field, and the falling water was the best dressing for the wounds.
The regiments of Buell’s division were still disembarking at the Landing. Many had taken their places; the rest hurried on out as fast as they landed, and fell in to the rear of their brigade lines, for reserves. I stood for a few moments at the Landing, curious to see how these fine fellows would march out to the field where they knew reverses had crowded so thickly upon us the day before, and where many of them must lie down to sleep their last sleep ere the sun, then rising, should sink again. There was little of that vulgar vanity of valor which was so conspicuous in all the movements of our rawer troops eight or nine months ago. There was no noisy and senseless yelling, no shouting of boasts, no calling on onlookers to “Show us where the cowardly secesh is, and we’ll clean ‘em out double quick.” These men understood the work before them; they went to it as brave men should determinedly, hopefully, calmly.
It soon became evident that the gunboat bombardment through the night had not been without a most important effect in changing the very conditions under which re renewed the struggle. The sun had gone down with the enemy’s lines clasping us tight on the centre and left, pushing us to the river, and leaving us little over half a mile out into all the broad space we had held in the morning. The gunboats had cut the coils and loosened the construction. As we soon learned, their shells had made the old position of our extreme left, which the rebels had been pleasantly occupying, utterly untenable. Instead of being able to slip up on us through the night, as they had probably intended, they were compelled to fall back from point to point; each time, as they had found places they thought out of range, a shell would come dropping in; nowhere within range could they lie, but the troublesome visitors would find them out; and, to end the matter, they fell back beyond our inner camps and thus lost more than half the ground they had gained by our four o’clock retreat the afternoon before.
Less easily accounted for was a movement of theirs on our right. They had held here a steep bluff, covered with underbrush, as their advanced line. Through the night they abandoned this, which gave them the best possible position for opposing Lew. Wallace, and had fallen back across some open fields to the scrub-oak woods beyond. The advantage of compelling our advance over unprotected openings, while they maintained a sheltered position, was obvious, but certainly not so great as that of holding a height which artillery and infantry would make as difficult to take as many a fort. Nevertheless, they fell back.
THE GUNBOATS OPEN FIRE.
The rebel infantry gained no ground, but the furious cannonading and musketry continued. – Suddenly new actors entered on the stage. Our Cincinnati wooden gunboats, the O. A. Taylor and the Lexington, who had been all day impatiently chafing for their time to come. The opportunity was theirs. The rebels were attacking on our left, lying where Stuart’s Brigade had lain on Licking creek, in the morning, and stretching thence in on the Hamburg road, and across toward our old centre as far as Hurlbut’s camps. Steaming up to the mouth of the little creek, the boats rounded to. There was the ravine, cut through the bluff as if on purpose for their shells.
Eager to avenge the death of their commanding General (now known to have been killed a couple of hours before), and to complete the victory they believed to be within their grasp, the rebels had incautiously ventured within reach of their most dreaded antagonists, as broadside after broadside of seven inch shells and sixty-four pound shot soon taught them. – This was a foe they had hardly counted on, and the unexpected fire in the flank and rear sadly disconcerted their well laid plans. The boats fired admirably, and with a rapidity that was astonishing. Our twenty-two land guns kept up their stormy thunder; and thus, amidst a crash, and roar, and scream of shells, and demon-like hiss of Minnie balls that Sabbath evening wore away. We held the enemy at bay; it was enough. The prospect for the morrow was forboding, but sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. We had had plenty of evil that day – of course, therefore, the text was applicable. Before dark the 30th Indiana, from Nelson’s advance brigade had crossed, advanced into line with Grant’s forces at the double quick, and had put in fourteen rounds as an earnest of what should be forthcoming on the morrow.
The enemy suddenly slackened his fire. His grand object had been defeated; he had not finished his task in a day; but there is evidence that officers and men alike shared the confidence that their morning assault would be final. As the sounds of battle died away, and Division Generals drew of their men, Buell had arrived and Lew Wallace had been heard from. – Both would be ready by morning, a council of war was held, and it was decided that as soon as possible after daybreak we should attack the enemy, now snugly quartered in our camps. – Lew. Wallace who was coming in on the new road from Crump’s Landing, and crossing Snake creek just above the Illinois Wallace’s (W. H. L.) camps, was to take the right and sweep back toward the position from which Sherman had been driven on Sunday morning. Nelson was to take the extreme left. Buell promised to put in Tom Crittenden, next to Nelson, and McCook next to him, by a seasonable hour in the morning. The gap between McCook and Lew Wallace was to be filled with the reorganized divisions of Grant’s old army; Hurlbut coming next too McCook, then McClernand and Sherman closing the gap between McClernand and Lew Wallace.
WANT OF SYSTEM ON OUR SIDE.
The reader who is patient enough to wade through this narration will scarcely fail to observe that thus far I have said little or nothing of any plan of attack or defense among our commanders. It has been simply because I have failed to see any evidences of such a plan. To me it seemed on Sunday as if every Division General at least – not to say, in many cases, every individual soldier – imitated the good old Isrealitish plan of action, by which every man did what seemed good in his own eyes. There may have been an infinite amount of generalship displayed in superintending our various defeats and re-formations and retreats, but to me it seemed of that microscopic character that required the magnifying powers of a special permit for exclusive newspaper telegraphing on Government lines to discover. Sunday night there was, as has been said, a council of war, but if the Major General Commanding developed any plans there beyond the simple arrangement of our line of battle, I am very certain that some of the Division Commanders didn’t find it out. Stubborn fighting alone delayed our losses on Sunday; stubborn fighting alone saved us when we had reached the point beyond which came the child’s “jumping off place;” and stubborn fighting, with such generalship as individual division commanders displayed, regained on Monday what we had lost before.
THE NIGHT BETWEEN THE BATTLES.
Stealthily the troops crept to their new position, and lay down in line of battle on their arms. All through the night Buell’s men were marching up from Savannah to the point opposite Pittsburg Landing, and being ferried across, or were coming up on transports. By an hour after dark Lew. Wallace had his division in. Through the misdirection he had received he had started on the Snake Creek road [proper], which would have brought him in on the enemy’s rear, miles from any support and where he would have been gobbled at a mouthful. Getting back to the right road had delayed him. He at once ascertained the positions of certain rebel batteries which lay in front of him on our right, that threatened absolutely to bar his advance in the morning, and selected positions for a couple of his batteries, from which they could silence the one he dreaded. Placing these in position, and arranging his brigades for support, took him till one o’clock in the morning. Then his wearied men lay down to snatch a few hours of sleep before entering the valley of the Shadow of Death on the morrow.
By nine o’clock all was hushed near the Landing. The host of combatants that three hours before had been deep in the work of human destruction had all sunk silently to the earth, “the wearied to sleep, the wounded to die.” The stars looked out upon the scene and all breathed the natural quiet and calm of a sabbath evening. But presently there came a flash that spread like sheet lightning over the ripples of the river current, and the roar of a heavy naval gun went echoing up and down the bluffs, through the unnatural stillness of the night. Others speedily followed. But the flash you could just discern the black outline of the piratical looking hull, and see how the gunboat gracefully settled into the water at the recoil; the smoke soon cast up a thin veil that seemed only to soften and sweeten the scene; from the woods away inland you caught faintly the muffled explosion of the shell, like the knell of the spirit that was taking its flight.
We knew nothing then of the effect of this gunboat cannonading, which was vigorously kept up till nearly morning, and it only served to remind us the more vividly of the day’s disasters – of the fact that half a mile off lay a victorious enemy, commanded by the most dashing of their Generals, and of the question one scarcely dared ask himself, “What to-morrow?” We were defeated; our dead and dying were around us; days could hardly sum up our losses. And then came the grand refrain of Whittier’s – written after Manassas, I believe, but of that night, apparently far more applicable to this greater than Manassas.
“Under the cloud and through the sea:”
Sons of the Saints who faced their Jordan flood,
In fierce Atlantic’s unretreating wave –
Who by the Red Sea of their glorious blood
Reached the freedom that your blood shall save!
O countrymen! God’s day is not yet done!
He leaveth not his people utterly!
Count it a covenant, that He leads us on
Beneath the cloud and through the crimson sea!
THE KILLED AND WOUNDED.
I do not pretend to give more than an estimate; but I have made the estimate with some care, going to the Adjutants of different regiments that had been in as heavy fighting as any – getting statements of their losses, sure to be very nearly if not quite accurate, and approximating thus from the loss of a dozen regiments to the probably loss of all. I have ridden over the ground, too – have seen the dead and wounded lying over the field – have noted the numbers in the hospitals and on the boats. As the result of it all, I do not believe our loss in killed and wounded will number over thirty-five hundred to four thousand. The question of prisoners is another matter.
Reports that certain regiments only have half the men answering the roll call indicate nothing. – The regiments are all more or less disorganized, and the soldiers scattered everywhere. Many go home with the sick; many are nurses in the hospitals, many keep out of sight seeing all they can.
THE NUMBERS ENGAGED.
The best opinions of the strength with which the rebels attacked us place their numbers at sixty thousand. They may have been reinforced five to ten thousand Sunday night.
Grant had scarcely forty thousand effective men on Sunday. Of these, half a dozen regiments were utterly raw, had scarcely had their guns long enough to know how to handle them. Some were supplied with weapons on they way up.
Buell passed three divisions that took part in the action – Nelson’s Crittenden’s and McCook’s. They numbered say twenty thousand – a liberal estimate. Lew. Wallace came up on Monday, with say seven thousand more. That gives us, counting the Sunday men as all effective again, sixty-seven thousand on Monday on our side, against sixty to seventy thousand rebels. It was not numbers that gained us the day, it was fighting. All honor to our Northern soldiers for it.
– Published in the Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, April 19, 1862
TOPOGRAPHICAL POSITION OF OUR TROOPS.
And, first, of our positions. Let the reader understand that the Pittsburg Landing is simply a narrow ravine, down which a road passes to the river bank, between high bluffs on either side. There is no town at all – two log huts comprise all the improvements visible. Back from the river is a rolling country, cut up with numerous ravines, partially under cultivation, but perhaps the greater part thickly wooded, with some underbrush. The soil is clayey, and the roads on Sunday morning were good. From the Landing a road leads direct to Corinth, twenty miles distant. A mile or two out this road forks; one branch is the lower Corinth road, and the other the ridge Corinth road. A short distance out another road takes off to the left, crosses Lick Creek, and leads to the river at Hamburg, some miles further up. On the right, two separate roads lead off to Purdy, and another, a new one, across Snake Creek to Crump’s Landing on the river below. Besides these the whole country inside our lines is cut up with roads leading to our different camps; and beyond the lines is the most inextricable maze of cross-roads, intersecting everything and leading everywhere, in which it was ever my ill fortune to become entangled.
On and between these roads, at distances of from two to four or five miles from Pittsburg Landing, lay five divisions of Major General Grant’s army that Sunday morning. The advance line was formed by three divisions – Brig. Gen. Sherman’s, Brig. Gen. Prentiss’, and Major General McClernand’s. Between these and the landing, lay the two others – Brig. Gen. Hurlbut’s, and Major Gen. Smith’s commanded, in the absence (from sickness) of that admirable officer, by Brig. Gen. W. H. L. Wallace.
Our advance line, beginning at the extreme left, was thus formed. On the Hamburg road, just this side of the crossing of Lick Creek, and under bluffs on this opposite bank that commanded the position, lay Col. D. Stuart’s brigade of Gen. Sherman’s division. Some three or four miles distant from this brigade, on the lower Corinth road, and between that and the one to Purdy, lay the remaining brigades of Sherman’s division, McDowell’s forming the extreme right of our whole advance line, Hildebrand’s coming next to it, and Buckland’s next. Next to Buckland’s brigade, though rather behind a portion of Sherman’s, lay Major General McClernand’s division, and between it and Stuart’s brigade, already mentioned as forming our extreme left lay Brig. Gen. Prentiss’ division, completing the line.
Back of this line, within a mile of the Landing, lay Hurlbut’s division, stretching across the Corinth road, and, W. H. L. Wallace’s to the right. Such was the position of our troops at Pittsburg Landing, at daybreak Sunday Morning. Major General Lew. Wallace’s division lay at Crump’s Landing, some miles below, and was not ordered up till about half-past 7 o’clock that day.
OUR MEN SURPRISED.
Almost at dawn, Sherman’s pickets were driven in; a very little later Prentiss’s were, and the enemy were into the camps almost as soon as were the pickets themselves.
Here began scenes which let us hope, will have no parallel in our remaining annals of the war. Many, particularly among our officers, were not yet out of bed. Others were dressing, others washing, others cooking, a few eating their breakfast. Many guns were unloaded, accoutrements laying pell mell, ammunition was ill supplied – in short, the camps were completely surprised – disgracefully, might be added, unless some one can hereafter give some yet undiscovered reason to the contrary – and were taken at almost every possible disadvantage.
The first wild cries from the pickets rushing in and the few scattering shots that preceded their arrival aroused the regiments to a sense of their peril; an instant afterwards rattling volleys of musketry poured through the tents, while, before there was time for though of preparations, there came rushing through the woods, with lines of battle sweeping the whole fronts of the division camps and bending down on their flank, the fine, dashing compact columns of the enemy.
Into the just-aroused camps thronged the rebel regiments, firing sharp volleys as they came, and springing forward upon our laggards with the bayonet, for, while their artillery, already in position, was tossing shells to the further side of the encampments, scores were shot down as they were running, without weapons, hatless, coatless, toward the river. The searching bullets found other poor unfortunates in their tents, and there, all unheeding now, they still slumbered, while the unseen foe rushed on. 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; others, as they were vainly trying to impress on the cruelly exultant enemy their readiness to surrender.
Officers were bayoneted in their beds, and left for dead, who, through the two whole days’ fearful 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.
Such were the fearful disasters that opened the rebel onset on the line of Buckland’s brigade, in Sherman’s division. Similar, though perhaps less terrible in some of the details, were the fates of Prentiss’ entire front.
Meantime what they could our shattered regiments did. Falling rapidly back through the heavy woods till they gained a protecting ridge, firing as they ran, and making what resistance men thus situated might, Sherman’s men succeeded in partially checking the rush of the enemy, long enough to form their hasty line of battle. Meantime the other two brigades of the division (to the right), spring hastily to their arms and had barely done so when the enemy’s lines came sweeping up against their fronts, too, and the battle thus opened fiercely along Sherman’s whole line on the right.
Buckland’s brigade had been compelled to abandon their camps without a struggle. Some of the regiments, it is even said, ran without firing a gun. Col. Apler’s 53d Ohio is loudly complained of on this score, and others are mentioned. It is certain that parts of regiments, both here and in other divisions, ran disgracefully. – Yet they were not wholly without excuse. They were raw troops, just from the usual idleness of our ”camps of instruction;" hundreds of them had never heard a gun fired in anger; their officers, for the most part, were equally inexperienced; they had been reposing in fancied security, and were awaked, perhaps from sweet dreams of home and wives and children, by the stunning roar of cannon in their very midst, and the bursting of bomb shells among their tents, to see only the serried columns of the magnificent rebel advance, and through the blinding, stifling smoke, the hasty retreat of comrades and supports, right and left. Certainly, it is sad enough but hardly surprising that under such circumstances some should run. Half as much caused the wild panic at Bull Run, for which the nation, as one man, became a loud-mouthed apologist.
But they ran – here as in Prentiss’ division, of which last more in a moment – and the enemy did not fail to profit by the wild disorder. As Buckland’s brigade fell back, McClernand threw forward his left to support it. Meanwhile Sherman was doing his best to rally his troops – dashing along the lines, encouraging them everywhere by his presence, and exposing his own life with the same freedom with which he demanded their [sic] offer of theirs, he did much to save the division from utter destruction. Hildebrand and McDowell were compelled to retire their brigades from their camps across the little ravine behind; but here, for a time, they made a gallant defense, while what was left of Buckland’s was falling back in such order as it might, and leaving McClernand’s left to take their place, and check the wave of rebel advance.
THE REBEL PLAN OF ATTACK.
During Friday and Saturday the rebels had marched out of Corinth, about 70,000 strong in three great divisions. Sidney Johnston had general command of the whole army, and particularly of the centre. Braxton Bragg and Beauregard had the wings. Hardee, Polk, Breckinridge, Cheatham and others, held subordinate commands. On Thursday Johnston issued a proclamation to the army, announcing to them in grandiloquent terms that he was about to lead them against the invaders, and that they would soon celebrate the great, decisive victory of the war, in which they had repelled the invading column, redeemed Tennessee, and preserved the Southern Confederacy.
Their general plan of attack is said by prisoners to have been to strike our centre first (composed, as the reader will remember, of Prentiss’ and McClernand’s divisions,) pierce the centre, and then pour in their troops to attack on each side the wings into which they would thus cut our army.
THE CLOSE OF SUNDAY’S FIGHT.
We have reached the last act in the tragedy of Sunday. It is half past 4 o’clock. Our front line of divisions has been lost since half past 10. Our reserve line is gone, too. The rebels occupy the camps of every division save that of W. H. L. Wallace. Our whole army is crowded in the region of Wallace’s camps, and took a circuit of half to two thirds of a mile around the Landing. We have been falling back all day. We can do it no more. The next result puts us into the river, and there are not transports enough to cross a single division till the enemy would be upon us.
Lew Wallace’s division might turn the tide for us – it is made of fighting men – but where is it? Why has it not been thundering on the right for three hours past? We did not know that it was not ordered up till noon. Buell is coming but he has been doing it all day, and all last week. His advance guard is across the river now, waiting for ferriage; but what is an advance guard with sixty thousand victorious foes in front of us?
We have lost nearly all our camps and camp equipage. We have lost nearly half our field artillery. We have lost a division General and two or three regiments of our soldiers as prisoners. We have lost – how dreadfully we are afraid to think – in killed and wounded. The hospitals are full to overflowing. A long ridge bluff is set apart for surgical uses. It is covered with the maimed, the dead and dying. And our men are discouraged by prolonged defeat. Nothing but the most energetic exertion, on the part of the officers prevents them from becoming demoralized. Regiments have lost their favorite field officers, companies the captains whom they have always looked to, with that implicit faith the soldier learns, to lead them to battle.
Mean time there is a lull in the firing. For the first time since sunrise you fail to catch the angry rattle of musketry or the heavy booming of the field guns. Either the enemy must be preparing for the grand, final rush that is to crown the day’s success and save the Southern Confederacy, or they are puzzled by our last retreat, and are moving cautiously lest we spring some trap upon them. Let us embrace the opportunity and look about the landing. We pass the old log house, lately post office, now full of wounded and surgeons, which constitutes the “Pittsburgh” part of the Landing. General Grant and staff are in a group beside it. The General is confident. – “We can hold them off til to-morrow; then they’ll be exhausted, and we’ll go at them with fresh troops.” A great crowd is collected around the building – all in uniforms, most of them with guns. And yet we are needing troops in the front so sorely.
COWARDS.
On the bluffs above the river is a sight that may well make our cheeks tingle with shame for some of our soldiers. There are not less than three thousand skulkers lining the banks. Ask them why they don’t go to their places in the line, “Oh, our regiment is cut to pieces.” – “Why don’t you go to where it is forming again?” “I can’t find it,” and the hulk looks as if that would be the very last thing he would want to do.
Officers are around among them, trying to hunt up their men, storming, coaxing, commanding – cursing I am afraid. One strange fellow – a Major, if I remember aright – is making a sort of elevated, superfine Forth of July speech to every body that will listen to him. He means well, certainly: “Men of Kentucky, of Illinois, of Ohio, of Iowa, of Indiana, I implore of you, I beg of you, come up now. Help us through two hours more. By all that you hold dear, by the homes you hope to defend, by the flag you love, by the States you honor, by all your love of country, by your hatred of treason, I conjure you, come up and do your duty now!” And so on for quantity. “That feller’s a good speaker,” was the only response I heard, and the fellow who gave it nestled more snugly behind his tree as he spoke.
I knew well enough the nature of the skulking animal in an army during a battle. I had seen their performances before, but never on so large a scale, never with such an utter sickness of heart as I looked, as now. Still I do not believe there was very much more than the average percentage. It was a big army, and the runaways all sought the Landing.
ARRIVAL OF GEN. BUELL.
Looking across the Tennessee we see a body of cavalry awaiting transportation over. They are said to be Buell’s advance, yet they have been there an hour or two alone. But suddenly there is a rustling among the runaways. It is! It is! You see the gleaming of the gun-barrels, you catch amid the leaves and under growth down the opposite side of the river glimpses of the steady, swinging tramp of trained soldiers. A DIVISION of Buell’s army is here! And the men who have left their regiments on the field send up three cheers for Buell. They cheering! May it parch their throats, as if they had been breathing the Simoon!
Here comes a boat across with a Lieutenant and two or three privates of the Signal Corps. Some orders are instantly given to the officer and as instantly telegraphed to the other side by the mysterious wavings and raising and droppings of the flags. A steamer comes up with pontoons on board. With which a bridge could be speedily thrown across. Unaccountably [enough] to on-lookers, she slowly reconnoiters and steams back again. Perhaps, after all, it is better to have no bridge there. It simplifies the question, takes escape out of the count, and leaves it victory or death – to the cowards that slink behind the bluffs as well as to the brave men who peril their lives to do the State some service on the fields beyond. Preparations go rapidly forward for crossing the division (Gen. Nelson’s, which has the advance of Buell’s army) on the dozen or so transports that have been tied up along the bank.
We have spent but a few minutes on the bluff but they are the golden minutes that count for years. Well was it for that driven, defeated but not disgraced army of Gen. Grant’s that those minutes were improved. Col. Webster, Chief of Staff, and an artillery officer of no [moad] ability, had arranged the guns that he could collect, of those that remained to us, in a sort of semi circle, protecting the Landing, and bearing chiefly on our center and left, by which the rebs were pretty sure to advance. Corps of artillerists to man them were improvised from all the batteries that could be collected. Twenty-two guns in all were placed in position. Two of them were heavy siege guns, long thirty twos. Where they came from I do not know; what battery the belonged to I have no idea; I only know that they were there, in the right place, half a mile back from the bluff, sweeping the approaches by the left, and by the ridge Corinth road; that there was nobody to work them; that Dr. Cornyn, Surgeon of Frank Blair’s old first Missouri Artillery, proffered his service, that they were gladly accepted, and that he did work them to such effect as to lay out an ample work for scores of his professional brethren on the other side of the fight.
Remember the situation. It was half-past four o’clock – perhaps a quarter later still. Every division of our army of the field had been repulsed. The enemy were in the camps of four out of five of them. We were driven to within a little over half a mile of the Landing. Behind us was a deep rapid river. Before us was a victorious enemy. And still there was an hour for fighting. “Oh, that night or Blutcher would come!” Oh, that night or Lew Wallace would come! Nelson’s division of Buell’s army evidently couldn’t cross in time to do us much good. We didn’t yet know whether Lew. Wallace wasn’t on the ground. In the justice of a righteous cause, and in that semi circle of twenty two guns in position lay all the hope we could see.
Suddenly a broad, sulphurous flash of light leaped out from the darkening woods; and thro’ the glare and smoke came whistling the leaden hail. The rebels were making their crowning effort for the day, and, as was expected when our guns were hastily placed, they came from our left and center. They had wasted their fire at 1,000 yards. Instantaneously our deep-mouthed bull-dogs flung out their sonorous response. The rebel artillery opened, and shell and round shot came tearing across the open space back of the bluff. May I be forgiven for the malicious thought, but I certainly did which one or two might drop behind the bluff among the skulkers hovering under the hill at the river’s edge.
Very handsome was the response our broken infantry battalions poured in. The enemy soon had reason to remember that, if not
“Still in their ashes live the wonted fires,” at least still in the fragments lived the ancient valor that had made the short-lived rebel successes already cost so dear.
THE WORK OF SUNDAY NIGHT.
With the exception of the gunboat bombardment, the night seemed to have passed in entire quiet. A heavy thunderstorm had come up about midnight, and though we were all shivering over the ducking, the surgeons assured us that a better thing could not have happened. The ground they said, was covered with wounded not yet found, or whom we were unable to bring from the field. The moisture would to some extent cool the burning, parching thirst which is one of the chief terrors of the lying wounded, and help less on the battle field, and the falling water was the best dressing for the wounds.
The regiments of Buell’s division were still disembarking at the Landing. Many had taken their places; the rest hurried on out as fast as they landed, and fell in to the rear of their brigade lines, for reserves. I stood for a few moments at the Landing, curious to see how these fine fellows would march out to the field where they knew reverses had crowded so thickly upon us the day before, and where many of them must lie down to sleep their last sleep ere the sun, then rising, should sink again. There was little of that vulgar vanity of valor which was so conspicuous in all the movements of our rawer troops eight or nine months ago. There was no noisy and senseless yelling, no shouting of boasts, no calling on onlookers to “Show us where the cowardly secesh is, and we’ll clean ‘em out double quick.” These men understood the work before them; they went to it as brave men should determinedly, hopefully, calmly.
It soon became evident that the gunboat bombardment through the night had not been without a most important effect in changing the very conditions under which re renewed the struggle. The sun had gone down with the enemy’s lines clasping us tight on the centre and left, pushing us to the river, and leaving us little over half a mile out into all the broad space we had held in the morning. The gunboats had cut the coils and loosened the construction. As we soon learned, their shells had made the old position of our extreme left, which the rebels had been pleasantly occupying, utterly untenable. Instead of being able to slip up on us through the night, as they had probably intended, they were compelled to fall back from point to point; each time, as they had found places they thought out of range, a shell would come dropping in; nowhere within range could they lie, but the troublesome visitors would find them out; and, to end the matter, they fell back beyond our inner camps and thus lost more than half the ground they had gained by our four o’clock retreat the afternoon before.
Less easily accounted for was a movement of theirs on our right. They had held here a steep bluff, covered with underbrush, as their advanced line. Through the night they abandoned this, which gave them the best possible position for opposing Lew. Wallace, and had fallen back across some open fields to the scrub-oak woods beyond. The advantage of compelling our advance over unprotected openings, while they maintained a sheltered position, was obvious, but certainly not so great as that of holding a height which artillery and infantry would make as difficult to take as many a fort. Nevertheless, they fell back.
THE GUNBOATS OPEN FIRE.
The rebel infantry gained no ground, but the furious cannonading and musketry continued. – Suddenly new actors entered on the stage. Our Cincinnati wooden gunboats, the O. A. Taylor and the Lexington, who had been all day impatiently chafing for their time to come. The opportunity was theirs. The rebels were attacking on our left, lying where Stuart’s Brigade had lain on Licking creek, in the morning, and stretching thence in on the Hamburg road, and across toward our old centre as far as Hurlbut’s camps. Steaming up to the mouth of the little creek, the boats rounded to. There was the ravine, cut through the bluff as if on purpose for their shells.
Eager to avenge the death of their commanding General (now known to have been killed a couple of hours before), and to complete the victory they believed to be within their grasp, the rebels had incautiously ventured within reach of their most dreaded antagonists, as broadside after broadside of seven inch shells and sixty-four pound shot soon taught them. – This was a foe they had hardly counted on, and the unexpected fire in the flank and rear sadly disconcerted their well laid plans. The boats fired admirably, and with a rapidity that was astonishing. Our twenty-two land guns kept up their stormy thunder; and thus, amidst a crash, and roar, and scream of shells, and demon-like hiss of Minnie balls that Sabbath evening wore away. We held the enemy at bay; it was enough. The prospect for the morrow was forboding, but sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. We had had plenty of evil that day – of course, therefore, the text was applicable. Before dark the 30th Indiana, from Nelson’s advance brigade had crossed, advanced into line with Grant’s forces at the double quick, and had put in fourteen rounds as an earnest of what should be forthcoming on the morrow.
The enemy suddenly slackened his fire. His grand object had been defeated; he had not finished his task in a day; but there is evidence that officers and men alike shared the confidence that their morning assault would be final. As the sounds of battle died away, and Division Generals drew of their men, Buell had arrived and Lew Wallace had been heard from. – Both would be ready by morning, a council of war was held, and it was decided that as soon as possible after daybreak we should attack the enemy, now snugly quartered in our camps. – Lew. Wallace who was coming in on the new road from Crump’s Landing, and crossing Snake creek just above the Illinois Wallace’s (W. H. L.) camps, was to take the right and sweep back toward the position from which Sherman had been driven on Sunday morning. Nelson was to take the extreme left. Buell promised to put in Tom Crittenden, next to Nelson, and McCook next to him, by a seasonable hour in the morning. The gap between McCook and Lew Wallace was to be filled with the reorganized divisions of Grant’s old army; Hurlbut coming next too McCook, then McClernand and Sherman closing the gap between McClernand and Lew Wallace.
WANT OF SYSTEM ON OUR SIDE.
The reader who is patient enough to wade through this narration will scarcely fail to observe that thus far I have said little or nothing of any plan of attack or defense among our commanders. It has been simply because I have failed to see any evidences of such a plan. To me it seemed on Sunday as if every Division General at least – not to say, in many cases, every individual soldier – imitated the good old Isrealitish plan of action, by which every man did what seemed good in his own eyes. There may have been an infinite amount of generalship displayed in superintending our various defeats and re-formations and retreats, but to me it seemed of that microscopic character that required the magnifying powers of a special permit for exclusive newspaper telegraphing on Government lines to discover. Sunday night there was, as has been said, a council of war, but if the Major General Commanding developed any plans there beyond the simple arrangement of our line of battle, I am very certain that some of the Division Commanders didn’t find it out. Stubborn fighting alone delayed our losses on Sunday; stubborn fighting alone saved us when we had reached the point beyond which came the child’s “jumping off place;” and stubborn fighting, with such generalship as individual division commanders displayed, regained on Monday what we had lost before.
THE NIGHT BETWEEN THE BATTLES.
Stealthily the troops crept to their new position, and lay down in line of battle on their arms. All through the night Buell’s men were marching up from Savannah to the point opposite Pittsburg Landing, and being ferried across, or were coming up on transports. By an hour after dark Lew. Wallace had his division in. Through the misdirection he had received he had started on the Snake Creek road [proper], which would have brought him in on the enemy’s rear, miles from any support and where he would have been gobbled at a mouthful. Getting back to the right road had delayed him. He at once ascertained the positions of certain rebel batteries which lay in front of him on our right, that threatened absolutely to bar his advance in the morning, and selected positions for a couple of his batteries, from which they could silence the one he dreaded. Placing these in position, and arranging his brigades for support, took him till one o’clock in the morning. Then his wearied men lay down to snatch a few hours of sleep before entering the valley of the Shadow of Death on the morrow.
By nine o’clock all was hushed near the Landing. The host of combatants that three hours before had been deep in the work of human destruction had all sunk silently to the earth, “the wearied to sleep, the wounded to die.” The stars looked out upon the scene and all breathed the natural quiet and calm of a sabbath evening. But presently there came a flash that spread like sheet lightning over the ripples of the river current, and the roar of a heavy naval gun went echoing up and down the bluffs, through the unnatural stillness of the night. Others speedily followed. But the flash you could just discern the black outline of the piratical looking hull, and see how the gunboat gracefully settled into the water at the recoil; the smoke soon cast up a thin veil that seemed only to soften and sweeten the scene; from the woods away inland you caught faintly the muffled explosion of the shell, like the knell of the spirit that was taking its flight.
We knew nothing then of the effect of this gunboat cannonading, which was vigorously kept up till nearly morning, and it only served to remind us the more vividly of the day’s disasters – of the fact that half a mile off lay a victorious enemy, commanded by the most dashing of their Generals, and of the question one scarcely dared ask himself, “What to-morrow?” We were defeated; our dead and dying were around us; days could hardly sum up our losses. And then came the grand refrain of Whittier’s – written after Manassas, I believe, but of that night, apparently far more applicable to this greater than Manassas.
“Under the cloud and through the sea:”
Sons of the Saints who faced their Jordan flood,
In fierce Atlantic’s unretreating wave –
Who by the Red Sea of their glorious blood
Reached the freedom that your blood shall save!
O countrymen! God’s day is not yet done!
He leaveth not his people utterly!
Count it a covenant, that He leads us on
Beneath the cloud and through the crimson sea!
THE KILLED AND WOUNDED.
I do not pretend to give more than an estimate; but I have made the estimate with some care, going to the Adjutants of different regiments that had been in as heavy fighting as any – getting statements of their losses, sure to be very nearly if not quite accurate, and approximating thus from the loss of a dozen regiments to the probably loss of all. I have ridden over the ground, too – have seen the dead and wounded lying over the field – have noted the numbers in the hospitals and on the boats. As the result of it all, I do not believe our loss in killed and wounded will number over thirty-five hundred to four thousand. The question of prisoners is another matter.
Reports that certain regiments only have half the men answering the roll call indicate nothing. – The regiments are all more or less disorganized, and the soldiers scattered everywhere. Many go home with the sick; many are nurses in the hospitals, many keep out of sight seeing all they can.
THE NUMBERS ENGAGED.
The best opinions of the strength with which the rebels attacked us place their numbers at sixty thousand. They may have been reinforced five to ten thousand Sunday night.
Grant had scarcely forty thousand effective men on Sunday. Of these, half a dozen regiments were utterly raw, had scarcely had their guns long enough to know how to handle them. Some were supplied with weapons on they way up.
Buell passed three divisions that took part in the action – Nelson’s Crittenden’s and McCook’s. They numbered say twenty thousand – a liberal estimate. Lew. Wallace came up on Monday, with say seven thousand more. That gives us, counting the Sunday men as all effective again, sixty-seven thousand on Monday on our side, against sixty to seventy thousand rebels. It was not numbers that gained us the day, it was fighting. All honor to our Northern soldiers for it.
– Published in the Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, April 19, 1862
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