The correspondent of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who was taken prisoner by the rebels while with Gen. Prentiss’ division at Pittsburg early Sunday morning, furnishes that paper with some interesting incidents of the conflict which have not been anticipated in other reports. On [Sunday] night the rebels who occupied our camps were very jolly, and confident of satisfactorily finishing up their work on the following day. Trunks and boxes were broken open and their contents greedily appropriated. Gen. Prentiss and most of the prisoners captured on Sunday were hurriedly disarmed and started for Corinth. Some surgeons and hospital stewards, with the wounded and disabled were left behind. On Monday about 2 P.M., orders were given to remove these remaining prisoners to Corinth, but the flight of the rebels soon became so precipitate that the prisoners’ guard, at first consisting of one hundred men, dwindled down in fifteen minutes’ time to about fifty, and these last not long after began to be more concerned for their own safety than for that of their charges as a natural consequence, several of the captives, among them the writer, effected their escape. He continues:
The last determined stand had been made where I now stood in a dense cover of blackjack bushes. At this time occurred the deadly contest which took place between several Alabama regiments and a number of our own, from the different States, and which ended the fight on Monday. These Alabamians were mostly armed with flintlock muskets, undoubtedly those stolen by Floyd, some hundreds of which were here returned to the Federal Government in a significant manner.
The bushy cover had not saved them from almost utter annihilation. Pressed on the left by our forces in the road, and partially flanked on the right by our artillery, the destruction of these butternut jean-clothed rebels was beyond the power of pen to describe.
It seemed as if becoming bewildered, they had endeavored to retreat several times, but each time encountered our men at an opening in a small clover field of one or two acres where they were actually piled up along the fence, quite a number settling down between the stakes, and remaining there in death, while others, their legs and feet becoming entangled in the rails, died so suddenly that they hung in various positions, as if in the act of climbing over the fence.
Although the fight as this place was brief, the loss of life on the part of the enemy was greater than at any part of the whole battleground, including a space of four miles front by one and a half broad. I concluded to make an estimate of the number killed just about this vicinity, and set about counting them up, until my number of dead men, clothed in rebel attire, reached four hundred and twenty-six, while those in the Union uniform were eighty-nine.
I found no other locality, however, where this great disparity between the Union and rebel killed existed. It is just to say, and there are those who accompanied me on the battlefield the subsequent day prepared to assert the same, that the killed of the enemy are one third greater than ours, while our wounded perhaps somewhat exceed theirs. A rigid scrutiny enables me to speak positively on this topic. They labored diligently all day Sunday, through the night, and again until the retreat, carrying away their wounded and most prominent dead, such as it was possible for them to possess themselves of, thereby compelling those who were wounded in the retreat to become our prisoners. The number captured in this way was perhaps about five hundred.
SHILO [sic] FIELD AN HOUR AFTER THE BATTLE.
It was curious to see the strategy resorted to by some of the wounded rebels or their friends. While surveying the killed and wounded in a thickly wooded locality, but where trunks of large trees lay about in a half rotten state, I stepped upon one to look about the ground and hearing something move at my feet, looked down upon what was evidently the figure of a man, covered up by a blanket, and lying close up alongside the log. The ground was thickly strewn about him with bodies, many of whom I found only to be wounded. Lifting the blanket from the wounded man’s face, as I dismounted from the log, he immediately faltered out, “Oh, sir, I’m wounded; don’t hurt me my leg is broken and I’m so cold and wet.”
Within three feet of this wounded Secessionist lay a dead Unionist, with his hair and whiskers burned off. Just at this period two or three of our men came up, and observing the horrid spectacle of their dead brother in arms, with his hair, whiskers and clothes so burned, addressed the wounded man referred to in violent terms, accusing them of aiding in setting fire to their comrades. For a moment I felt apprehensive that they might retaliate, but upon his assuring them that many on both sides were burned in a similar manner, quiet was soon restored. I soon learned that the leaves and dead undergrowth had been fired in various places by the explosion of shells, and also by burning wads, the fire communicating to the bodies and burning them shockingly. – Some of the wounded must have been burned to death, as I observed on or two lying upon their backs, with their hands crossed before their faces, as a person naturally does when smoke or heat becomes annoying.
Replacing the blanket over the face of the wounded man, I proceeded to step over another log near by, and was considerably startled by a loud exclamation of pain from another wounded rebel. Having stepped on a small stick that hurt a wounded limb of his by its sudden movement, he was compelled to cry out. He, too, was snugly laid up on ordinary, close alongside a fallen tree. His wound was serious and the poor man begged for some assistance. The only thing that I could do was to get him a little water, and promise that somebody would soon come to his relief. I do not think he received any however, before the following day, as it was more than we could do to attend to our own suffering men, night being near. – “What will you do with us?” said the wounded man to me. “Take you, dress your wounds, give you plenty to eat, and in all probability, when you are able, require you to take the oath of allegiance, and then send you home to your family, if you have one.”
“Oh, God!” replied the suffering man; “I have a family, sir, and that just what my old woman told me. She said if the Northern men was so ugly and bad as our Generals says, they must ha’ changed a heap.” Occasionally there was a pause, accompanied by a distorted countenance that showed the painful character of his wound. “Stranger,” continued the prostrate man, “I’ve got six little boys at home, and the biggest just goes of errands. I live on the ____ river in Alabama, (the name sounded so peculiar that I was not able to recollect it;) ‘taint further than that cottonwood from the bank, where my house stands.” “What has your wife to maintain the family with, or does the State help them?” said I. “Oh, she’s shifty, my wife is, stranger – she’s mighty shifty; she’s a Northern born woman, and her father lives in Wisconsin now. I never was North before; I married my wife in Alabama.”
I was obliged to leave this man, who possessed an undercurrent of nobility, although his superficial knowledge had allowed him to follow the fortunes of base leaders. He persisted in saying, as I left him, that he was certain he never had killed a man.
THE STUDY OF ATTITUDES.
Perhaps a finer opportunity has not for many generations occurred than that after the battle for the study of attitudes. There was the old man, his locks sprinkled with gray, kneeling besides a stump, as if in the attitude of prayer his face now resting in his hands and head inclining on the top, apparently having gone to sleep in death while in the act of devotion. A ghastly wound in the side told of his end.
Another powerful-looking man had just placed a cartridge in the muzzle of his gun, and had the ramrod in his right hand, as if about to ram it down. Death caught him in the moment, and as he lay with upturned face the right hand clenched the gun, and left the ramrod. There are many instances similar to this last. One soldier had loaded his piece and paused to take a chew of tobacco. Beside his body lay the gun, and in his right hand was a flat plug of tobacco, bearing the imprint of his teeth.
In one place lay nine men, four or five of ours and about as many rebels, who, from indications must have had a hand to hand fight. They were dead and bore wounds made evidently with bayonets and bullets. Two had hold of another’s hair, and others were clenched in a variety of ways. One seemed to have had a grip in the throat of his antagonist, and been compelled to relinquish it, judging from the frigid marks. The most singular attitude of any that I ever observed, was that of a Union soldier, the position of whose body was similar to that of a boy’s when he is playing at leap-frog.
Some had lain down quietly with their heads resting against a stump or a tree, their caps resting on their faces, and had thus died alone and unattended. Yet the calmness and repose of the countenance, as one raised the covering indicated a peaceful departure to the spirit world. Death caused by a bullet leaves a quiet calm look behind, while a bursting shell, bayonet or sword carry with them a horror that remains depicted in death.
It was an excellent time to choose a gun. – All the different patterns, I think, must have been there, and in such large variety that an Arab even could have found his chosen Algerine rifle. There were the Harper’s Ferry rifles, old and new pattern; Springfield rifles, with the Maynard primers and without; the “Tower” Enfield rifles, Mississippi rifles, double and single barrel shot-guns, rifles bearing the Palmetto stamp, and made at Columbia, South Carolina, and Fayetteville, North Carolina; swords of various kinds, reeking with blood; broken and bent scabbards, partially discharged revolvers, and military trappings in such endless variety that to have possessed them would have been the fortune of any individual.
In the cleared field fronting the peach orchard; before referred to, a variety of bullets might have been gathered – and even the following day – as they were lying about on the ground like fruit form a heavily-laden tree after a storm.
– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, May 3, 1862, p. 2
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