Will waited, not wanting to be too compliant, with an air of desperate independence not lost on the unflappable captain, before he inched his way into the stuffy atmosphere of the tent. Cigar smoke wafted from the figure seated behind a table set against one canvas wall: a man with a shock of fiery red hair and a stubbly red beard. The eyes of the man took Will in at once before turning back to the papers in front of him.
“What’s your regiment?” the man asked, straightening his cigar and letting it roll easily from one side of his mouth to the other.
“First Alabama,” Will replied, purposefully leaving off the appellation of respect for rank.
“I suppose we will have to arrange for an exchange—one lieutenant of infantry and privates for a lieutenant of cavalry and privates,” the man said, shifting his chair away from the desk and leaning back.
Will stood in silence.
“You were on a reconnaissance patrol, Lieutenant?”
“You could call it that, yes, sir,” Will replied in a sullen, listless tone as he dug the toe of his shoe into the grass floor of the tent.
“You come awfully close for a patrol; I imagine you people was involved in that affair at Michie’s again. You people took some of my 5th Ohio troopers a few days back, so I suppose they returned the favor today.”
“I led that little affair,” Will said tartly.
“You won’t be leading anymore,” the man said dryly with a long, satisfied puff.
Will said nothing.
“Major Riker says he ran into cavalry, infantry, and a battery at Michie’s after chasing you 1st Alabamans away. That’s a pretty heavy patrol. You wouldn’t be foolish enough to be planning an attack, would you?”
Will replied with a blank stare.
“Ahh, what would a subaltern know of his commanding general’s overall plan? But you would know what your orders were. So, you were ordered to get as close as you could to our camps. Then what?”
“Ask for the immediate surrender of every Yankee we could find,” Will said saucily.
The man smiled slightly before removing the cigar from his lips. “Captain, get this man some hot coffee and then send him with the others to the landing.”
“Come along, Reb,” the captain said and held open the flap of the tent. Will stepped back out into the cigar-free, musty air. His guard didn’t seem in a hurry to take him anywhere. Groups of Union soldiers gawked at him as they went about their business, and Will’s gut trembled. He was on display—the only thing that was missing was the cage or the stocks where he could be held in place whilst being pelted with rotten food. Wooden tables were laid out with vegetables being prepared by the officers’ mess, and a coffeepot boiled lazily over a fire pit. Chilled from the soaking, Will inched his way toward the flames and warmed his hands. They were red, shriveled, and painful. The cooks prepared a repast of boiled potatoes and salt horse, the common appellation for the cured beef supplied the army: salty, tough, and tasted like it had come from emaciated horseflesh. Chunks of the stuff were boiling in a pot, the surface of the water a nasty, bubbling brine. A sergeant sat slowly stirring the broth and looked up in surprise as Will approached.
“Get him a cup, will you, Sergeant?” the captain asked.
****
“What you think, sir?”asked the major who’d been quietly smoking in the corner of the wall tent.
General Sherman, cocking his head to one side, pondered a moment. “Damned cocky Reb. Ask for our surrender?” he repeated and spit a flake of cigar leaf out of his mouth with a sour expression.
William T. Sherman had made a nuisance of himself months before as commander of the Federal forces in Kentucky, firing missives and demands for reinforcements to the War Department, convinced his mere twenty thousand soldiers were not enough. He needed four times that number and was not shy about it. Instead of soldiers, Sherman had received only silence—and eventually a dismissal. Thought to have gone mad, he had been removed from command and allowed to cool his heels in St. Louis without assignment, his career as good as dead. Now given a division to command under Grant, he wasn’t about to make the same mistake. Sherman wasn’t seeing the Rebels behind every tree any longer; that was for others to cry wolf about.
“Damned close is what I think. That many Rebels in and around Michie’s is nothing but trouble, but I can’t believe they’re a preamble to an attack. We’ll send out patrols like normal just to make sure. Inform General Prentiss he’s had some activity in front of his camps and leave it at that. I’ll inform the general of today’s excitement.”
****
“Here ya go, Reb,” the sergeant said as he handed Will a tin cup steaming with the most glorious smell he’d smelled in a long while. Crushed coffee beans sat nearby in a muslin sack, and the whole mess smelled delightful. Fresh food! Not just dried corn flour and salt pork or a ration of weevil-infested flour, but real hoecakes and butter in quantities he’d not seen since before the war.
Seated at the table leisurely smoking a pipe sat a captain of cavalry who eyed Will cautiously.
“You one o’ them Alabamans we took this morn?” the captain asked, exhaling a cloud of delicious-smelling tobacco.
“Sure, 1st Alabama. I heard we took a few of yourn a few days back; I guess we got us a regular tit for tat,” Will replied between sips of the black liquid. Coffee was a luxury they saw on the rare occasions some made it through the blockade or Federal stores were taken. A quantity did make it through, but it was sold for such a premium that little made it to the commissary. Quartermasters were experimenting with other stimulants for the soldiery, but nothing quite filled the void.
“You people been active of late,” the man stated and then returned the stem of the pipe to his lips and puffed thoughtfully.
“No more so than you.” Will recollected his capture of Federals at Michie’s days before.
“Some say youse is a little too active for pickets but is preparing for something.”
“We is … we is plannin’ to push you into the Tennessee,” Will said and grinned.
“Shor, shor, but not likely. Don’t get me wrong, you may well be meanin’ ta do that shor; but I may be excused if I say that I doubt you can do it. This is a mighty army building up here, and quite defensible if you decide to press our pickets again. But that weren’t your object, were it?”
“Can’t say. Gen’l Johnston don’t keep me in his counsel,” Will replied earnestly. The coffee was fortifying his mouth too.
“Captain.” General Sherman emerged from the tent and stood for a moment in repose. He was tall and gaunt but snappily attired in a general’s frock coat, bow tie, and vest. The man’s eyes were hard and piercing, his red-toned stubble and mustache creating an impression of seriousness and professionalism. Will guessed he was a West Pointer by the way he carried himself. “Take this to the landing and find General Grant. He takes the steamer back to Savannah each evening, and you should be able to catch him; take the prisoner with you with my compliments.” With a brief nod at Will, the general retreated back into the tent.
“C’mon, Lieutenant, time to go an’ say hullo to your friends,” the captain said and rose from the table, snuffing his pipe.
****
The rich farmland along the Tennessee River was lush and would have been in the beginnings of planting season if the Federal army hadn’t decided to make this spot its staging area. The fields were growing a crop of tents instead of corn. The farmhouses were beset by camps, and the loyal tenants had left them behind. Now they were headquarters buildings for Yankee generals. Fence rails and posts were but a memory, long ago having been burned on cook fires. Will Hunter and his escort rode down the Corinth road in silence. Artillery batteries sat in repose, hub to hub in camps, and infantry battalions drilled on parade grounds unconcerned with the morning’s happenings.
The ride to Pittsburg Landing took them through landscape that looked much the same, white canvas and green trees. Coming into view of the river, the land sloped down to
its banks where its flow was easy and calm, cut by the steamers anchored close by, ferrying goods to and fro from boats manhandled by civilians. The captain motioned Will over to where the small group of prisoners from the morning’s fight were huddled. Several of the wounded were laid out on stretchers waiting to be moved downstream to a hospital steamer moored at Savannah. Captain Kearns was one of them.
The Federal captain strode up to an officer and saluted. “Major Rawlins, sir, General Sherman’s report.”
“This them?” Major Rawlins asked, nodding his head at the gaggle of Confederates.
“Yes sir, 1st Alabama Cavalry,” the captain replied.
“Very well, thank you, Captain,” the major said and waited for the other to salute.
Rawlins turned to a man seated at a camp desk in the shade of the Pitt house leafing through a handful of papers and chewing a cigar. He sat with his left leg fully extended, favoring it and looking uncomfortable while ignoring everything going on around him. He wore a pained expression as he absently massaged his leg and studied his papers as if no one else was about.
“Sir, General Sherman’s report of some activity in his front today. He’s also forwarded some prisoners.” Major Rawlins tried to hand the man the report.
Ulysses Simpson Grant, of the twin victories of Forts Donelson and Henry, waved the papers away. In his hand were dispatches from Washington and St. Louis, telegrams that had been received and sent over a thousand miles of cable and by river transport to his very hand. Grant let the last telegram drop unceremoniously to the desktop and angrily whipped the cigar from his mouth. Forgetting his injured leg, he stood and took a step, wincing as he did so.
Looking at his aide-de-camp, Major John Rawlins, he shook his head. “General Halleck insists on leading his armies from the safety of St. Louis but equally insists on approving my every move. Nelson’s advance has arrived in Savannah; Buell is finally finished playing engineer, and he expects to be completely up by tomorrow. Halleck let General Smith funnel recruits here without organization or care, and now he wants me to march on Corinth! This isn’t an army yet!”
“Sir, General Sherman’s report,” Major Rawlins tried again.
Quickly scanning the paper, Grant looked over at the handful of Rebel prisoners. Will studied the man closely. There was not a Confederate in the western army who had not heard his name before, usually in connection with the generals who had cowardly surrendered Fort Donelson to this man. He was not much to behold. Will nodded in recognition when Grant’s eyes lit upon him. The man did not so much as notice.
So this was the man General Johnston had moved heaven and earth to put an army together to defeat, Will thought. He was dressed in a plain frock coat bearing his rank of Major General, with two stars on his shoulders but otherwise not bearing much else to identify him as a soldier. Will was unimpressed.
“Send to General Halleck about the encounter and the casualties; tell him I scarce to have the faintest idea of an attack by the enemy, nor do I see evidence of a threat to either Pittsburg Landing or Crumps Landing, but I will be prepared to meet one.”
Will smiled faintly. With the scrap this morning and the evidence of a threat standing in front of them, Grant’s utterance was humorous.
“Nelson’s division arrives today and the next, and I expect the other two divisions to arrive shortly afterward. My plan is to send the whole lot to Hamburg, four miles upriver from Pittsburg with a clear road on to Corinth. McPherson has gone to Hamburg to report on the defensibility of the place. Notify division commanders to see to their defenses.” Grant finished his dictation and looked again over the dozen Confederates.
Eyeing the soggy end of his cigar, Grant gingerly walked toward his horse. “Tell Captain Woodruff I’ll want an escort, I’m headed to Sherman and Prentiss’s camps. Inform General Sherman I want to see where this fight took place.”
Three days earlier, Grant’s horse had slipped in mud and fallen while he and it negotiated a narrow exit from the transport that ferried him back and forth between Savannah and Pittsburg Landing each day. Unable to get about easily on crutches and unwilling to just ride about in an ambulance, Grant made a point of being seen each and every day at the landing, but riding was painful. Limping noticeably, Grant mounted his horse slowly and nudged it forward at a speed he could have walked. He and the cavalry escort leisurely made their way down the Pittsburg Landing road and out of sight.
Finding Kearns, Will knelt down by the man. He was lying on his good side and in terrible pain. His arm had been bandaged, and he lay staring at the ground.
“Come to finish the job, Hunter?” Kearns said acidly.
“No, but I don’t rightly know why I’d even care to ask how you doin’.”
“How does it look like! When you get exchanged I’ll see to it you’re thrown in the stockade and drummed out of the service.”
“You git plenty of letter-writin’ time in the hospital. Don’t think I shot you, but it don’t matter anyhow. You was going to leave me behind, so that payback enough.”
“I heard what that private said … said you shot at me, an’ that is enough to get you disgraced and out of the army!”
“If it were me, you’d be dead an’ I’d be talkin’ to myself right now, Captain!” Will said and walked away.
A short distance away, Will sat down and crossed his legs. It was odd being idle. There had always been something to do, but now every moment was under someone’s eye. They were deep in the midst of the enemy; he would not be able to wander far without notice. Will chewed his mustache. If he had shot Kearns he’d acted stupidly, but it had happened without thought. Kearns could still do him a great deal of harm should he be released with just one letter to the governor and then to Colonel Clanton. He would be relieved of command and even imprisoned for threatening a superior officer. If not for Kearns and the blasted superiority of the slaver class, he might have already been commanding his own troop.
Will tossed a rock and exhaled sharply. As far as the Yankees were concerned, he was just another prisoner, and they wouldn’t care if he had shot his commanding officer. Surrendering was not the end of the line, and exchange was a probability. Kearns and his grudge, or whatever it was, that was the problem. If he did what he threatened, Will’s military career was over.
Will tossed another rock and watched it bounce down the slope leading to the river landing before he bowed his head. Losing his chance to make something of himself with the 1st Alabama depressed him more than being a prisoner.
Perhaps he should have taken better aim.
Chapter 7
Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee, April 8, 1862
Will Hunter sat idle with hundreds of other Confederate prisoners captured in battle. Prisoners trickled in the morning of the sixth of April as he and his tiny band of cavalry from the 1st Alabama waited to be moved upriver. Cannon and musket fire told them what they already knew: that Johnston’s attack had commenced. Soon, they were under heavier guard and surrounded by a sea of fugitives that had run from the fighting. Their hearts were light and spirits high that they might soon be liberated, but by evening those hopes sank as the last Confederate push failed and Union reinforcements arrived. The tens of prisoners soon became hundreds, and they were shunted downriver with the wounded to Savannah, Tennessee, and out of escape’s way. Eventually their hundreds became a thousand or more as prisoners hourly disembarked from the riverboats.
The crowd of prisoners was segregated by enlisted men and commissioned officers, the officers enjoying a little more comfort but all feeling the humiliation of being under guard. The officers, of their own accord, segregated themselves into equal ranks. A scattering of colonels huddled by themselves amidst the numerous captains, lieutenants, and majors. The talk, however, was nothing encouraging. No one could say for sure where they were headed. The temporary camp at Savannah was not much of a camp. The prisoners found whatever space on the ground would accommodate them. Those like Will had been there without shelter
and with little food for three days. Some of the slightly wounded were in a bad way, with fevers and wounds turning gangrenous. These were given what shade there was during the day and tended to by their own surgeons, but the smell of diseased flesh and blood was raising an odor that was sickening.
Rumors abounded about Johnson’s Island, Ohio. It was not a place to be sent. Three miles out into Lake Erie in Sandusky Bay, it was deemed to be the safest place to keep prisoners with little avenue for escape. Being in the middle of a lake was not the reason it had such a bad reputation. Being in the middle of Lake Erie was. Storms with winds over forty miles an hour, heavy snowfall in the winter, and heavy rainfall in the summer kept the inmates in constant discomfort; the wet and cold produced diseases and a high death rate. Otherwise healthy men came out sick from inaction Escape was difficult. They would rather be kept on land, dry land, where the only water came from a well. It was infamous for being a hard place.
The big fight was over. Will heard it from Savannah and watched as more and more of his fellow Confederates were landed and replaced by Union soldiers headed upriver toward the sound. Soon, whole divisions of the blue backs were marching in and being ferried upriver and on into the dark. It was the same the next day, and the next, and the next. The whole area was crawling with Union soldiers, and the crowd of prisoners grew and grew, sad looking, dispirited Confederate soldiers. From the recently arrived, Will learned that the Confederate attack had nearly achieved its goal of driving the Federals into the river. But the soldiers he’d seen arriving on foot late in the day were the undoing of Johnston’s plans, and the next day the Confederates were driven back, all the way back to Corinth.
At first it had not been easy to sit and watch the Yankees go about their business without letting on they were about to be attacked. Will hadn’t known the grand design, but he knew enough and had figured out enough to know that it was coming soon. He had felt sorry for himself that he was going to miss out on the great victory that was sure to come. The victory vanished in the sorry tales his fellow captives brought back with them.
The Shiloh Series: Books 1-3 Page 40
