Shiloh, 1862 (7 page)

That same morning, a captain and two sergeants from the 77th Ohio strolled away from their camp to visit a nearby cotton plantation about a quarter mile to the south. As they reached a line of trees they beheld, across a field, “the enemy in force, and to all appearances they were getting breakfast. We saw infantry, cavalry and artillery very plainly.”

The captain sent one of the sergeants dashing to Sherman’s headquarters, but by this time Sherman was so annoyed that he ordered the sergeant
arrested
for sounding a false alarm!

The next day Col. Jesse Appler, commanding the 53rd Ohio, sent Sherman a report of gray-clad infantry in woods to his front. Appler had already called his soldiers to arms when Sherman responded by having a messenger tell Appler, in front of his men, “Take your damned regiment back to Ohio. There is no enemy nearer than Corinth!”

Major Ricker’s Rebel prisoners, who had been confined in the Shiloh church, presently became talkative with their guards and boasted that there was a great Confederate army poised to attack next day. In response to a guard’s inquiry as to whether there were enough “greybacks” in the woods to make “interesting hunting,” a resentful Rebel private told him, “Yes, and there’s more than you’uns have ever seen, and if you ain’t mighty careful, they’ll run you into hell or into the river before tomorrow night.”

None of these things seemed to faze Cump Sherman or Sam Grant. From the time the Union forces began arriving at Pittsburg Landing, Confederate cavalry had kept a close eye on them, and skirmishes were inevitable, some of them deadly. But even as the
reports began to pile up ominously in the early days of April there was little or no alarm that something besides enemy cavalry or an infantry company or two might be lurking in the deep woods.

Sherman seemed more determined than ever to put the lie to scaredy-cats. “For weeks,” he scoffed, “old women reported that [the Rebel army] was coming, sometimes with 100,000, sometimes with 300,000.” He brushed off these worried reports by saying that at worst the Confederates were conducting a “reconnaissance in force.” He even estimated its strength as being “two regiments of infantry and an artillery battery.”

On April 5, the very eve of battle, Sherman sent a note to Grant in response to an inquiry about enemy activity in the army’s front: “I have no doubt that nothing will occur today other than some picket firing. The enemy is saucy, but got the worst of it yesterday and will not press our pickets far. I do not apprehend anything like an attack on our position.”

That evening, secure in his mansion downriver, Grant doubtless relied on Sherman’s appraisal when he sent a telegram to Major General Halleck, his superior in St. Louis, “The main force of the enemy is at Corinth and points east. I have scarcely the faintest idea of an attack (general one) being made upon us, but will be prepared should such a thing take place.” As he wrote those lines, the advance regiments of a 40,000-man Rebel army were not a mile away from the Union encampment at Pittsburg Landing.

All that Saturday, April 5, there was a growing “uneasiness” among the officers and men in the southernmost camps—the men of Sherman’s and Prentiss’s divisions—for it was they who had either seen for themselves or heard animated reports and rumors that the Rebels were in great strength in the woods to their front.
They were accustomed to seeing Confederate cavalry watching them at discreet distances from the fringes of the forest, but lately the news was more menacing.

That afternoon Prentiss, a dour-faced Virginia-born, Missouribred ropemaker, failed Republican politician, Mexican War veteran, and direct
Mayflower
descendant with dazzling blue eyes and an Amish-style beard, held a review of his division in Spain Field, during which Maj. James. E. Powell, an experienced soldier of the 25th Missouri, spotted a large body of enemy cavalry hovering on the edges of the woods, taking in the proceedings. He notified Prentiss, who decided to investigate with a reconnaissance at 4 p.m. of five companies, commanded by Col. David Moore. This patrol marched about a mile to the southwest where, in Seay Field, they came upon several black slaves who said they had seen about 200 Confederate cavalry a while earlier. By then it was nearly twilight and the men “could hear the enemy moving in every direction,” according to one of the soldiers; that was enough for Moore, and he withdrew the patrol and reported seeing no Rebels.

After dark, Capt. Gilbert D. Johnson, a company commander in the 12th Michigan who had been sent to reinforce the regiment’s picket lines, reported there was definitely suspicious movement in the woods to his front. He took his story to General Prentiss, who, like Sherman before him, replied, in effect, that there was nothing to worry about.

No one in high command, it seemed, wanted to upset the applecart and suggest that the Union encampment was in danger, but that did not satisfy Captain Johnson, who, along with the
habitually suspicious Major Powell, went to see General Prentiss’s First Brigade commander, Col. Everett Peabody, a six-foot-one, 240-pound bear of a man, with a disposition to match. Peabody was a Massachusetts-born, Harvard-educated engineer who had moved to St. Joseph 11 years earlier and became one of the most prominent rail builders in the West. With his wary New England upbringing and engineer’s practicality Peabody was just skeptical enough to risk the wrath of his superiors. After hearing out Johnson and Powell, Peabody ordered them to muster five companies—some 400 men—from Powell’s 25th Missouri and Johnson’s 12th Michigan and find out just what in hell was going on in the misty dews and damps beyond their encampment.

It was well past the midnight hour on Sunday, April 6, when Major Powell’s patrol filed out toward the forbidding line of trees to the south. He marched them again toward Seay Field, where earlier they had encountered the slaves. Cautiously feeling their way in the darkness, with the sickle moon just a pale sliver hanging low in the western sky, they reached another clearing.

Suddenly shots rang out, then the sound of horses’ hooves: Rebel cavalry. Powell ordered the patrol to form a skirmish line and pressed forward. If he had known what he was headed for, he would have been horrified—as any sane man would—for he was marching nearly straight into the 10,000-man corps of the Rebel general William J. Hardee, who in the Old Army had written the standard West Point textbook
Rifle and Light Infantry Tactics
and was now waiting patiently for daylight to launch his attack.

Joseph Ruff was a 20-year-old German immigrant who had hired
himself out to Michigan farmers for $16 a month
⁴
before he joined the army and landed as a private in the 12th Michigan Volunteer Infantry. He had just been detailed as cook for the week, but when Captain Johnson commenced rounding up men for the reconnaissance patrol Ruff decided to join up. Now he was fumbling along in the false dawn past deserted log cabins disturbed only by “the crowing of fowls,” until they came to that 40-acre open spot in the timber beyond Seay Field, which turned out to be farmer Fraley’s field.

“When we halted the first streak of daylight had appeared,” Ruff remembered. “As we watched, we noticed something white moving through the brush and in another moment we spied a horseman whose movements we made out to be those of an enemy,” he said. Then, suddenly, came “the crack of several muskets, and bullets were soon whizzing after us.”

Ruff and the others began forming in line and advancing, firing at the unseen Rebels as the sky first paled gray, then pink, and the landscape revealed “a rise of ground which seemed to be covered with thick underbrush,” from which they could see “the flashes of Rebel guns.” Several of the Michiganders were wounded, one mortally as the fire became thicker and faster. Ruff took cover, only to have “several enemy bullets driven into the tree about the line of my head. One just clipped by my right ear,” he said. Around him, men began to fall in irregular ways; some uttered peculiar noises. The
world was suddenly out of kilter, as though the beauty of the bright Tennessee sunrise was merely a prelude to death, and that nature, with all her morning splendor, was mocking mankind’s folly.

Major Powell’s patrol had disturbed a picket outpost of Mississippians from Hardee’s corps, and their compatriots responded like an angry swarm of bees. As daylight finally came streaming through the woods, this savage little fight at last touched off what was to be thus far the bloodiest battle in American military history. It would be remembered as the most brutal battle in the West during the entire Civil War.

As the weight of the Confederate force began to tell, Powell sent a note with a messenger telling Colonel Peabody that they had encountered a Rebel force of 3,000 and were being driven back. Just as the New Englander was digesting this news, his division commander, General Prentiss, who had heard the shooting in the woods, rode into camp wondering what all the racket was about. When he learned that Peabody had sent out a reconnaissance, Prentiss became irate, accusing him of starting a battle without permission. Peabody retorted, “You’ll soon see that I am not mistaken.” Prentiss then ordered Colonel Moore, who had led yesterday’s patrol, to take another five infantry companies out to reinforce Powell, who was clearly involved in some kind of fight. Prentiss then moved on.

It seemed to several observers on the scene that Moore and his force had barely disappeared across the field and into the woods before the racket of the skirmishing quickly “doubled in intensity.” Men listened and glanced at one other in alarm. Peabody then ordered his drummer to beat the long roll. He was taking no chances.

As the soldiers began to fall in and Peabody called for his horse,
Prentiss reappeared in a cloud of dust and high dudgeon, confronting him from the height of his mount. “Colonel Peabody,” he cried, “I will hold you personally responsible for bringing on this engagement.” No doubt Prentiss was infuriated that he, himself, would be held responsible by Grant and the others. Peabody replied with a defiant salute and an unmistakable air of disgust—“If I brought on the fight, I am to lead the van”—and without further adieu he cantered away toward the sound of the firing.

Back at Fraley Field Major Powell’s patrol had taken a serious fright. As they stubbornly withdrew into the forest away from the mounting Confederate opposition, those men who looked back were stunned to behold an entire Rebel line of battle emerge from the woods and fields—21 regiments—nearly 10,000 men, many flags flying, officers on horseback, swords drawn, gun barrels glinting, sergeants shouting orders. Their breaths caught tight as they watched this Rebel line come crashing toward them.

At just this juncture Colonel Moore’s relief column collided with the head of Powell’s withdrawal. Before noticing the Rebel battle line, Moore began to rebuke Powell’s men for running away. “He rated us cowards for retreating,” said Private Ruff. “We warned him not to be too bold or he would get into trouble.” Moore rejected this perfectly sound advice, and pressed on—dragooning Powell’s unwounded men to accompany him until he, too, encountered the Confederate attack in motion.

Moore quickly sized up the situation and became intent on buying time for the unsuspecting Union ranks back in the camps. After sending for reinforcements, he and the remnants of Major Powell’s command fought a tooth-and-nail delaying action that cost Moore his leg and Major Powell his life and saw most of their force “nearly
annihilated or put to rout.” But the 25 minutes that their lopsided little battle lasted was worth a thousand times the effort in blood and tears, because Moore and Powell had bought enough time to prevent the Rebel attack from falling on Prentiss’s division completely unexpected.

Over in his own camp Sherman had heard the commotion and decided to investigate. A few minutes earlier, a messenger sent by Moore had warned Sherman that Rebel units were marching toward his front. Barely an hour earlier he had discounted a similar alarm sent by the ever anxious Colonel Appler, but all these reports had finally spurred the nervous-natured Sherman to action despite his best efforts to remain calm in the face of whatever was causing everybody else to be so jumpy.

In most of his sector it had been, thus far, a typical Sunday morning on the “plain of Pittsburg Landing,” as Sherman had dubbed it. Soldiers had finished their breakfast and were attending to routine tasks such as washing clothes or writing letters or simply lounging around; some were engaged in playing cards or other games of chance, while still others attended services conducted by brigade chaplains on the lovely Sabbath day. It was cool, bright, clear, and too early in the year for bugs. The orchards were in full blossom, oaks were tasseling, dogwoods and redbuds were blooming, and an inordinate number of those on hand recorded in diaries and memoirs how many birds were singing in the trees; some singled out robins, some bluebirds or mourning doves. Others noted the disharmony of the sounds of the birds and the distant spatter of gunfire.

Accompanied by his staff, Sherman shortly after 7 a.m. rode out into farmer Rhea’s open field in front of the 53rd Ohio, Colonel Appler’s bothersome regiment. Appler himself had been fretting half the night as he listened to the sporadic firing somewhere out in the darkness. About six, one of Major Powell’s men came staggering wild-eyed and bloody into his camp shouting, “Get into line, the Rebels are coming!” Appler once more ordered the long roll drumbeat and sent his quartermaster to alert Sherman. As the 53rd Ohio’s bedraggled officers and men began falling into line, the quartermaster returned with a sarcastic message that he delivered to Appler confidentially: “General Sherman says you must be badly scared over there.”