by Mark Nesbitt
In postwar years, a controversy would emerge as to why Confederate commander Beauregard called a halt to his troops’ advance instead of driving the Federals into the Tennessee River. The argument, like many in the years following the war, was made to bolster or defend reputations. The fact is that Beauregard, by 6:00 P.M., commanded exhausted, disorganized troops who would be attacking at dusk a solid, reorganized Federal line supported by field artillery and naval guns. The Confederates, in their minds, had already won a stunning victory and captured the Yankees’ camps, thousands of prisoners, and forty artillery pieces. The next day, after resting, they would mop up. Grant, however, had other plans.
Late in the day, the future author of Ben Hur, Maj. Gen. Lew Wallace, finally arrived on the Shiloh battlefield with his division. For years after the war, controversy would surround the six-mile march, which should have taken two hours but instead took seven. Don Carlos Buell’s Army of the Ohio was ferried across the Tennessee River all night long in the pouring rain to swell the number of fresh troops in Grant’s army by some 25,000. Before dawn on April 7, Grant was ready to attack the still-disorganized rebels.
As Grant’s troops marched, they were shocked by the sight of the mutilated dead and groaning wounded, soaked by the night’s storms. By 10:00 A.M. Confederates had become somewhat reorganized and their defense stiffened about a mile and a half from the Tennessee River. As the Federals advanced, determined pockets of Confederates held out, sometimes engaging in hand-to-hand fighting, stopping and driving back portions of the Union attack.
On all parts of the Union line fierce fighting raged throughout the morning and early afternoon, gradually pressing the rebels back until the Northerners had regained their camps from which they were driven the day before. After they thought they had won a complete victory the day before, Confederate morale plunged, a condition obvious to even Beauregard. A final rear guard was established by the Southerners at 3:00 P.M. By 5:00 P.M., much of their army had retreated toward Corinth.
Union reinforcements arriving at Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River helped turn the battle in favor of the Federals.
Again, over the years, hindsight would plague the combatants with questions. Grant was nearly removed from command by critics questioning why he did not pursue the defeated enemy. He had his reasons, not the least of which was lack of cavalry, necessary to garnering information on enemy ambushes during any pursuit. Later, Northern newspapers clamored for Grant’s removal because he had been “surprised” by the enemy. Lincoln silenced critics by reportedly saying simply, “I can’t spare this man. He fights.”
The country was stunned by the massive casualties. There were more soldiers killed, wounded, and missing in just two days of the Battle of Shiloh than in all of America’s previous wars added together. Beauregard listed his casualties as 10,699; Grant’s losses were recorded at 13,047.
Shiloh Ghosts
Both sides buried their dead in mass trench graves. In 1866, Union soldiers were removed and reburied in the newly established National Cemetery overlooking Pittsburg Landing. Only five of the several mass burial sites for the Confederates were discovered and marked. To this day, the bodies remain buried on the field of Shiloh. Many believe the spirits of these men remain as well.
The Phantom Drummer Boy
Perhaps the most famous ghost story about Shiloh is that of a phantom drummer boy. There have been reports of drums heard on the battlefield when no drummer is present. The sounds are attributed to a youth that won a victory by mistake.
Shiloh was fought fairly early in the war. By April 1862, the armies and their commanders were still learning their deadly trades. Drummer boys were no exception. Many boys had to learn to play the drum before they could learn the meaning of the different beats as commands to the soldiers. And battles wait for no man . . . or boy.
In a particularly critical moment at Shiloh, the drummer was told to sound the beat for the advance, which he did. The soldiers advanced and fought gallantly until they were outnumbered. The commanding officer then told the drummer boy to tap out the drumbeat meaning retreat. Instead the drummer pounded out “advance” again. The commander was horrified. His men began to attack rather than retreat. He commanded the drummer to beat out “retreat,” but the boy could only apologize. He hadn’t had time to learn “retreat.” The commander was frantic. His men were advancing into the jaws of death. Suddenly, the enemy began to withdraw before his men and his attack was successful, thanks in part to the drummer boy’s ignorance of the drumbeats.
The story goes on that in the ensuing advance, the drummer boy was killed, his drum smashed to pieces. Still, however, these many years later, his cadence can be heard rolling from the distance across the fields of Shiloh.
Some say that the drummer was John Clem, the famous “Drummer Boy of Shiloh,” whose spirit roams the fields tapping out rhythms. But that must be a case of mistaken identity. Though John Clem was indeed associated with the Union Army, he first served with the 22nd Michigan, which hadn’t even been formed when Shiloh occurred in April 1862. Clem, however, did ride an artillery caisson into the Battle of Chickamauga, carrying a musket cut down to fit his stature. With it he shot a Confederate colonel who had the temerity to demand the boy’s surrender. For his action Clem was promoted to sergeant and became the youngest soldier to attain the rank of noncommissioned officer in the U. S. Army.
After the Battle of Chickamauga, a Civil War song was written called “The Drummer Boy of Shiloh.” Many later assumed that Clem was the subject of that song, in which the drummer boy died. But the “Drummer Boy of Chickamauga” was alive and well. He would be captured in October 1863, relieved of his miniature Union uniform, and then exchanged to participate in several other battles with the Army of the Cumberland. He would be wounded two times before being discharged in 1864. He later rejoined the Army, finally retiring as a brigadier general. So while the ghost drummer boy of Shiloh plays on, his identity remains unknown.
Bloody Pond
Another haunted site is Bloody Pond. During the battle wounded soldiers and horses congregated at the small pond to quench their thirst. After a while, so many wounded men had used the pond that it was tinted red.
There’s a legend that permeates the history of the battlefield of Shiloh that, at certain unpredictable times, the water in the pond turns crimson again, as if to remind those in this and future generations of the horror of war.
Those trying to explain the phenomena contend that it is the sunset reflecting in Bloody Pond that makes the water appear red; but then it would be stained red every night with the setting sun, and it clearly isn’t. Perhaps, others say, it’s the clay around it that tints it when it rains particularly hard; but apparently it happens when there has been no rain. One final theory is that there is a particular type of algae that grows in the pond at certain times of the year and paints the water the color of blood. But the water is bloody for only a few hours, and there is no algae that grows, dies, and disappears in that short amount of time.
The Bloody Pond at Shiloh, where the waters are said to turn red on occasion.
The Vanishing Man in Gray
A visitor to the park reported a strange event on the website Off the Beaten Path (www.offthebeatenpath.ws/Battlefields/GhostsOfShilohBattlefield). He and a friend were parked near the Bloody Pond. The park was deserted and so they felt a little uneasy when they looked in the rearview mirrors and saw a man dressed in gray approaching their car from behind. They were slightly confused, as well, because they had just driven down that stretch of road and hadn’t seen anyone. Had he hidden so that he could “ambush” them? They wanted to get a picture and the driver stepped out of the car while the passenger continued to watch the man approach. When the driver got out, he looked back to keep an eye on the man but could not see him anymore. Even using his camera’s zoom lens, the man had disappeared from his sight. But the passenger could still see the man in the rearview mirror. Looking over to the driver and encou
raging him to get back in the car, the passenger looked back into the mirror and the man had vanished.
They later compared notes and figured they both observed the man in the mirrors for three to four minutes. Even though the man was walking, he never seemed to get closer to them and they realized that while he was visible in the mirrors, he could not be seen once the driver got out of the car.
The Caretaker’s House
Then there is the old caretaker’s house in the park. Although the happenings there might seem bizarre to some, those who follow the supernatural will find the events are all too common, if unexplainable. They seem like the work of a poltergeist, because they consist of the sound of footsteps roaming about the floor when no one can be seen, doors opening and closing by themselves, and disembodied voices being heard. As well, there are the sounds so common on all battlefields: gunshots and cannons in the distance, the sounds at night of a marching column of men, and the hoarse shouts of masses of men going into battle emanating from uninhabited woods.
EVP and Dowsing Rod Findings
The burials at Shiloh were, for the most part, in mass graves. At this stage in the war, no one had ever seen this many dead men in one place, let alone knew what to do with them all. At Shiloh they gathered the dead together and buried them in common graves. According to the National Park Service there were something like ten or twelve mass gravesites filled to capacity after the battle with the bodies of the slain. Today, the locations of only five are known. Using dowsing rods, my wife Carol may have found at least one more.
We were at one of the mass gravesites for Confederate soldiers on the battlefield and she began to walk back and forth around and behind it. The rods were crossing periodically, both on either side of the marked area and behind the marked mass grave, indicating that there may be soldiers buried outside the marked boundaries of the grave.
Confederate dead at Shiloh were interred in mass graves such as this one.
I also had several opportunities to attempt to gather EVP. In recording #1603, after I ask any soldier to shout his name, at 5 seconds I hear a soft voice say, “Paxton Knuble,” or “Knugle,” a Germanic-sounding name. Later, in recording #1626, I attempted the same technique of asking someone to shout out his name. At 3 seconds I hear a soft voice say “Joe King,” and then at 5 seconds into the recording, I hear the name, “Murphy.”
Descending into the little swale where Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston was taken after a bullet clipped an artery and he bled to death, I began to address the Confederate commander. In recording #1642, I ask the general if he’s still here and, at 4 seconds, I hear the words, “Now, the vein.” Was he describing his own wound that killed him? Then, in the same recording, at 11 seconds, I hear what sounds like a female voice saying, “You hurt me.”
Finally, I record another one of those mysterious clicks at 3 seconds. The remarkable thing is that I actually heard it live. I ask the general if that was him, and at 5 seconds, I get the answer, “It could be.”
Finally, we had lunch at a local establishment just a mile or so away from the park. There is a legend about a grave on the bank of the Tennessee River at the far end of the restaurant’s parking lot. Sometime prior to the Civil War, a body washed up in this vicinity. He had no identification, but the man who owned the property buried him near where he found him. Apparently, the spirit of the dead man has interacted with some of the early and more recent patrons. Later, someone named him “Elmo” and made sure that he had a stone marking his grave. At the grave I attempted to capture some EVP from Elmo and got recording #1453. I asked Elmo if he still likes to haunt this place. At 3 seconds into the recording, I hear a soft voice say, “I hate this place.”
The Peninsula
In the spring of 1862, the Virginia Peninsula was central in Union general George B. McClellan’s plan to strike at Richmond and end the war. He would land an amphibious force at the tip of the Peninsula and march his army straight towards the Confederate capital. The campaign was the largest and most intricate of any campaign to that point in American military history. Assembling a flotilla of 389 ships, on March 17, McClellan began transporting his army over three weeks down the Potomac River from Alexandria to the Chesapeake Bay, disembarking at Federal-held Fort Monroe.
Once he began the overland part of his campaign, he realized that the roads in that part of Virginia were not going to cooperate with his plan of “rapid marches” toward Richmond. The rural dirt roads soon became quagmires from the heavy use an army demanded; mud sucked at the shoes of the men and bogged down the artillery.
As he advanced up the Peninsula, he ran into the Confederate fortifications along the Warwick River near Yorktown, the old Revolutionary War siege site. His scouts and officers reported some 100,000 rebels in those works, which extended from the York to the James River. McClellan decided they were too strong to take by assault and began planning a siege. Little did he know that he had been the victim of a Confederate ruse.
Confederate general John B. Magruder commanded only 13,000 men to man the Warwick defensive works, but marched them around in full view of McClellan’s scouts so that they counted the same rebel soldiers several times over. McClellan taking time to bring up and mount his heavy guns for the siege gave Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston time to bring his troops from above Richmond to support Magruder.
By the end of April, McClellan’s siege lines were ready. On May 4, after a heavy nighttime bombardment from the Confederates, Union skirmishers inched forward in silence and made an incredible discovery: the Confederates were gone.
It had been Johnston’s plan to withdraw from the Warwick line because of its vulnerability to flank fire from Union gunboats on both the York and the James. As well, he wanted to establish a defense closer to the capital, within supporting distance of other Confederate forces moving toward Richmond’s defense. As Johnston retreated, Union troops attacked his rearguard at Fort Magruder and fought in the streets of the old colonial capital of Williamsburg.
In the meantime, thanks to the Union Army’s advance up the Peninsula, the Federal Navy was sailing up the James River toward Richmond. As Confederates abandoned the eastern Peninsula, Gosport Navy Yard was also given up and the famous Confederate ironclad Virginia (the U.S. Navy ship Merrimac captured and converted to ironclad), which had terrorized the Union fleet since March, had to be scuttled, freeing the James to U.S. gunboats.
The danger to Richmond from naval bombardment was clear, and while telling the populace to remain calm, politicians sent their own families inland. Frantic Confederate sailors sank obstructions in the river, but at 7:30 A.M., May 15, the Federal flotilla rounded the bend and engaged with Confederate artillery on Drewry’s Bluff. After three hours of plunging artillery fire and sharpshooters picking off sailors, the gunboats retired. Richmonders rejoiced.
But there was still the threat of McClellan’s land force advancing up the Peninsula. On May 16, Johnston established battle lines at a crossroads called Seven Pines using the Chickahominy River, which was prone to flooding into a swamp, as part of his defense. Though Johnston had spent the previous three weeks withdrawing, he had in mind the strategy to draw McClellan farther from Fort Monroe; should the Yankees be defeated, they would have a long retreat, dogged every step of the way back down the Peninsula by the Confederates.
Meantime, Stonewall Jackson’s “foot cavalry” was making swift marches up and down the Shenandoah Valley, covering some 600 miles and engaging the enemy in five pitched battles. His actions accomplished what the Confederate high command wanted: Jackson drew Union troops away from McClellan’s threat to Richmond.
By the end of May, McClellan had established a base of supplies at White House Landing on the Pamunkey River, a tributary to the York and railhead for the Richmond & York River Railroad. In order to protect this base and attack Johnston, McClellan had to stretch his army across the Chickahominy, effectively splitting it before the enemy. As long as the river remained low, both wings could support
one another via the few bridges across the river.
Johnston realized that, at least south of the Chickahominy, he outnumbered the Federals significantly. On May 31, he attacked. The two-day battle of Seven Pines (called Fair Oaks by the Federals) was complicated by the torrential rain the night before the battle and by confusing Confederate orders that were altered by subordinates before the battle had begun. Nevertheless, the Confederates stopped the Yankee movement on Richmond for the time being, but with a cost. Some 6,100 Confederates (and 5,000 Federals) became casualties in the battle. One significant Southern casualty was their commander, Joseph E. Johnston, who was wounded. President Jefferson Davis sent Robert E. Lee to replace him and command the army in the field.
Lee immediately ordered the fortifications around Richmond to be strengthened and had his men dig in whenever they halted. There was concern that he might not be aggressive enough to command an army in the field; however, his first decision, upon consulting with Davis, was to attack the Yankees.
McClellan, on the other hand, had halted his offensive up the Peninsula and called on Washington for more troops. Though 30,000 were sent by mid-June, he felt he needed more.
Lee also needed something more: information. He sent his twenty-nine-year-old cavalry commander, J. E. B. Stuart, to locate McClellan’s right flank. Once he found it, Stuart realized that the Union cavalry was expecting him to return the way he had come and was organizing to stop him. Instead of retracing his hoofprints, he rode completely around the Federal army and returned to Lee, his command virtually unscathed, with the information he needed.
