Moving in columns of fours, Moore’s Bluecoats reached the northwest corner of the Seay Field, when suddenly the Confederates poured a heavy fire into them. Captain Saxe and several others were killed in the first volley, while Moore’s right leg was shattered by a musket ball and he was forced to leave the field. Woodyard assumed command and deployed his men in line of battle across the brow of a slight rise in the ground in the cotton field, facing west against the fast shooting Southerners.20
For perhaps an hour Woodyard engaged in a sharp fire fight. Discovering the Confederates were trying to turn his right flank, he pulled his men back into the woods north of the cotton field. The pressure was heavy, but help was on the way, for three companies of the Sixteenth Wisconsin were on the way up. Somehow Captain George H. Fox, Company B, discovered the seriousness of the situation and went dashing into the camp area shouting, “Company A is fighting, and we must go and help them.”21 The company commanders soon reported to Woodyard, who directed them to take a new position east of the field, then gradually retiring on it with the rest of his men. The new position was on a slight rise in the ground, which gave the Federals a little protection from enemy gunfire. Within minutes, however, the Northerners were forced to avoid being outflanked.22
In the brigade area the remainder of the Twelfth Michigan and Twenty-fifth Missouri were fully equipped and drawn up in formation, ready to advance. More wounded were coming into the area as General Prentiss came riding up to Colonel Peabody, sharply reined his horse, and with deep emotion exclaimed, “Colonel Peabody, I will hold you personally responsible for bringing on this engagement,” to which, with severe dignity and ill concealed contempt, Colonel Peabody answered, “I am personally responsible for all my official acts.”23
The brigade was immediately deployed just south of the Rhea Field. The troopers could hear gunfire from the woods in front and soon could observe bluecoated men slowly moving toward them, firing as they retreated. It was Colonel Woodyard and his men making a fighting retreat on the brigade. Peabody and the other officers soon had the new arrivals unscrambled and arranged in the line of battle.
A little after 7:30, sharp skirmishing broke out, followed by a series of rather disorganized charges delivered by the men of Wood’s and Shaver’s brigades. Although the firing was rapidly picking up, only Colonel Peabody’s brigade was under heavy attack so far. Was this simply a Confederate reconnaissance in force—an attempt to feel out the strength and position of the Union army—or was it an all out attack? At this early hour, who could say?
There is no record that Colonel Peabody’s men picked up any prisoners in these early actions, and the men’s view of the battle was simply that of the enemy in the front. It is doubtful if Peabody realized what he had accomplished, for shortly he would lie dead on the field. But by his action in sending Major Powell’s predawn patrol and by subsequently bringing on the engagement with Brigadier General Hindman’s command, he deprived the South of complete tactical surprise and gave thousands of Union soldiers precious minutes to grab up their rifles and assemble with their regiments.24
Where was the Union army’s commander, the man whose job it was to evaluate the significance of Colonel Peabody’s action? “Sam” Grant was on the way, stepping ashore at Pittsburg Landing a little after Peabody’s entire brigade was committed. His ankle was still painfully swollen, and the general probably spent a restless night upstairs in his ornate but comfortable bed at the William Cherry House in Savannah. A little after dawn, Grant hobbled downstairs on his crutches to find that his trusted aide, John A. Rawlins, had already collected and opened the day’s mail. Awakened before dawn by an orderly, Rawlins had also started the closing of headquarters at the house in preparation for the move to Pittsburg Landing as soon as General Buell arrived. Grant took the letters, which dealt with routine matters, and began browsing through them while awaiting word that breakfast was ready.
Brigadier General John Cook, just back from leave, wandered in to have breakfast and began chatting with General Grant. About 6:00 a.m., an orderly announced that breakfast was ready, and soon the dining room crackled with the sounds of hungry officers eating. Then another orderly, Private Edward N. Trembly, came in and reported there was firing up the river.25 Coffee cups and forks were quickly pushed back on the table as Grant quietly spoke. “Gentlemen,” he said, “The ball is in motion. Let’s be off.”26
General Grant wrote two dispatches, one to Major General Buell and the other to Brigadier General Nelson, both of whom were breakfasting at the latter’s headquarters, where they heard the opening sounds of the battle. To Buell, Grant wrote:
Heavy firing is heard up the river, indicating plainly that an attack has been made upon our most advanced positions. This necessitates my joining the forces up the river instead of meeting to-day, as I had contemplated. I have directed General Nelson to move to the river with his division. He can march to opposite Pittsburg.27
The reference to General Nelson referred to the second note, which Grant dictated to Rawlins just before leaving the Cherry House. It informed Nelson that “An attack having been made on our forces, you will move your entire command to the river opposite Pittsburg. You can obtain a guide easily in the village.”28
The two notes finished, Grant limped aboard the waiting headquarters steamer Tigress as quickly as he was able and headed for the front. Ironically, even as the Tigress pulled away from the Savannah landing, General Buell was walking toward the Cherry House with his chief of staff, Colonel James B. Fry. Probably due to a lapse in staff work, Grant was not informed of Buell’s arrival at Nelson’s headquarters the night before. Because of the mistake, it would be many hours before the note would reach the general, who would be busily chasing around trying to find Grant.29
The missing Grant, busily steaming toward the rapidly increasing sounds of gunfire, directed the steamer’s captain to pull in at Crump’s Landing next to the headquarters boat of his Third Division’s commander, General Lew Wallace. Wallace was on deck waiting when the Tigress pulled alongside, and Grant simply leaned over the railing and shouted across. His orders were to hold the division in instant readiness to move and to send patrols out to ascertain if Johnston was also moving on Crump’s Landing.30
It was a comparatively simple order. Somehow in the next few hours, however, things would go terribly wrong, and Wallace would find himself with the opportunity of saving the day and becoming one of the nation’s great heroes. But fortune would not break his way; instead, Wallace would spend the next forty-three years of his life defending his actions at Shiloh.
A few thousand yards farther Grant’s steamer reached the Landing with an additional passenger on board, Ohio war correspondent Whitelaw Reid. The newspaperman had quietly slipped onto the steamer while it was tied up at Crump’s Landing. Grant and his aides climbed ashore while orderlies prepared their mounts, unmindful of Reid’s presence. For years thereafter, General Grant probably regretted that neither he nor his staff had tossed the pushy reporter into the Tennessee River.31
It was now around 8:00 a.m. or a little after, and the Landing was still a comparatively serene spot. Some stragglers were beginning to come in with their tales of disaster, but for the most part the men standing near the Landing were on guard duty or were members of regiments waiting for orders to move up. It was with the latter that Grant began exercising his command. He ordered the Twenty-third Missouri to proceed to Prentiss’ headquarters and form up with the Sixth Division. The regiment’s colonel, Jacob Tindall, immediately moved out, unknowingly going forward to meet death a mere three thousand yards away.32
A little farther up the bluff, Grant found Colonel Hugh T. Reid and his Fifteenth Iowa. Grant immediately told Reid to draw ammunition, to form across the Landing road, to halt all stragglers, and to stand by for further orders. Colonel Reid looked very confused, as if not certain with whom he was talking. Realizing this, Grant remarked, “I am General Grant.” Reid instantly caught on, and joining up with the Six
teenth Iowa, also standing by awaiting orders, he carried out his new general’s instructions.33
Most of Grant’s staff officers quickly fanned out from the Landing with orders to subordinate commanders, while others were put to work handling supply problems. One of Grant’s volunteer aides, G. G. Pride, took charge of transporting ammunition from the Landing to the fighting units.34
Grant moved inland to try and find out just what the situation was. Half a mile from the river he ran into General W. H. L. Wallace and learned that this was no mere isolated attack, but a full-scale onslaught from most or all of the Southern army. Grant instantly decided that the main fight would be at Shiloh and not at Crump’s Landing, and that the two widely separated segments of his army must be unified as quickly as possible.
Grant’s most trusted officer and friend, Captain John Rawlins, was told to return to the Tigress and locate the general’s district quartermaster officer, Captain A. S. Baxter. Rawlins headed for the river and soon found the quartermaster officer at the landing, whereupon he gave him Grant’s oral message. Afraid that he might confuse part of it, Captain Baxter had Rawlins write it out. Within minutes the Tigress was headed for Crump’s Landing with Captain Baxter aboard, and Rawlins started for the front to locate Grant.35
According to General Lew Wallace it was “exactly 11:30” when the Tigress arrived at Crump’s and he was handed an unsigned message, purporting to be from Grant. Wallace said that his adjutant, Frederick Knefler, placed the order in his sword belt and later lost it. In his autobiography, Wallace maintained that Grant ordered him to link up with the right of the army, to form a line of battle, and to be “governed by circumstances.”36 In his report of a year later, Rawlins claimed that the order directed Lew Wallace to move to Pittsburg Landing by the River Road, to form his division in the rear of the camp of the other Wallace, W. H. L., and await instructions from Grant.37
It was fine and good that Lew Wallace would soon be arriving to help, or so Grant thought back at the battlefield; but in the meantime there were other powerful reinforcements close at hand. To Buell, whose whereabouts were still uncertain, Grant addressed a new message saying the army was under “very spirited” attack and that the “appearance of fresh troops on the field now would have a powerful effect, both by inspiring our men and disheartening the enemy.” Grant suggested that Buell leave all of his baggage on the east side of the river, admitting that his speedy arrival might “save the day for us.” The general did not make the mistake of underestimating the Confederate army, telling Buell their force was over one hundred thousand strong.38
Nelson was the next recipient of an order. The giant Kentuckian was told to “hurry up your command as fast as possible. The boats will be in readiness to transport … your command across the river. All looks well, but it is necessary for you to push forward as fast as possible.”39
What thoughts ran through General Grant’s mind this early in the morning with the situation in a state of flux? Did he worry about how badly scattered his five divisions were, and if there was still time to pull them together into some sort of stable battle line? Did he admit within his own mind that he and his entire army were taken by surprise and badly off balance, for this early morning’s work was clearly unexpected.
General Grant’s ambiguous attitude on the subject of surprise was clearly revealed in a letter that he wrote, which appeared in the New York Herald less than four weeks later. After criticizing some of his officers for cowardice, Grant proclaimed, “As to the talk about a surprise here, nothing could be more false. If the enemy had sent word when and how they would attack we could not have been better prepared.” Yet, a few sentences later, Grant candidly announced that he “did not believe, however, that they intended to make a determined attack, but were simply making reconnaissance in force.”40
Grant’s close friend, W. T. Sherman—whose feelings for his superior are best illustrated in the remark, “I stood by him when he was drunk and he stood by me when I was crazy”—was even more bitter on the question of surprise. Writing to his United States Senator brother John Sherman, he claimed the charges of surprise were “all simply false.” He went on to say, “We knew the enemy was in our front, but in what form could not tell, and I was always ready for an attack.”41 In another letter to his brother, written two weeks later, Sherman passionately denied that his division was surprised, but he ended with, “I confess I did not think Beauregard would abandon his railroad to attack us on our base.”42 In a third letter to John, “Cump” explained that “we all knew the enemy was on our front, but we had to guess at his purpose.”43
In his autobiography, Lew Wallace noted the Union army was taken by “surprise,” but he was not on the scene when the fighting began, although he was in a good position to find out what had transpired.44
As senior officers Grant and Sherman were naturally reluctant to admit surprise, but many of the lower ranks possessed no hesitation in expressing themselves. To William H. Chamberlain of the Eighty-first Ohio, the Union army was “entirely ignorant of the presence of an enemy” until the firing actually began.45
In a letter to a friend, Private John Ruckman candidly declared, “on last Sunday morning the rebels attacked us and took us on surprise and such a time I never heard of before. We were unprepared to meet them. We were not expecting them.”46
Lieutenant Payson Shumway recorded in his diary that the attack was not expected and that “surprise was never more complete.”47
The Fifteenth Illinois heard picket firing at dawn, but ignored it and was taken by surprise,48 while musician John Cockerill of the Twenty-fourth Ohio first realized the battle was in progress when he heard heavy artillery fire.49
Peter Dobbins of the Thirteenth Iowa discovered the battle while taking a “refreshing walk and washing off in a branch not far from the camp.” Before his ablutions were finished, Dobbins said he “herd firing in the front but I supposed it was gards firing there guns off so I did not mind it any but in a short time I was summoned by the long roll which told very plane what was up.”50
Dobbins was not the only innocent who mistook the sounds of Peabody’s guns. Many of the soldiers, hearing the noise from Colonel Peabody’s brigade, assumed it was merely a skirmish of pickets or Federal soldiers indulging in a little target practice.51 Private William Harvey of the Fifty-seventh Illinois aptly put it this way: “It was not very much of a surprise.”52
Surprised or not, General Grant found himself with the makings of a first class disaster on his hands. At Belmont and Fort Donelson he had fought his way out of bad situations. The next few hours would show if he could repeat his feat on this violent Sunday morning.
Chapter 8
Around Shiloh Church
FROM THE MAIN DECK of the sloop of war Hornet to the command of a regiment of Ohio volunteers was quite a step-up. In the predawn hours of that Sunday morning, thirty-year-old Colonel Jesse Appler of the Fifty-third Ohio likely wished he were back on deck of his old ship, as every owl’s hoot and each frog’s croak sounded like a whole division of Confederate infantry sneaking upon the regimental camp.
Finally Colonel Appler could stand it no longer. He decided to send out an extra sixteen-man picket post as additional security precaution. A few minutes later, however, these same men came running back into camp, reporting gunfire in a field to their left and the presence of Confederate troops in front of the Third Brigade position.
The already nervous colonel, who had spent quite a sleepless night in the camp area, ordered his adjutant, Lieutenant Ephraim C. Dawes, to tell Colonel Hildebrand the army was about to be attacked. Changing his mind, Appler told Dawes to wait, and he directed a private to carry the information to Hildebrand. The soldier had gone but a few yards when a member of the Twenty-fifth Missouri, Powell’s patrol, came running into camp with a bullet hole in one of his arms, excitedly shouting, “Get into line; the rebels are coming.”1
The courier private was called back, and instead Lieutenant Colonel
Robert A. Fulton was sent to Colonel Hildebrand’s headquarters. The regimental quartermaster, Lieutenant Joseph Warner Fulton, was ordered to report to General Sherman with the new information. Within a few minutes Lieutenant Fulton came running back, and speaking in a very low voice, told his colonel, “General Sherman says you must be badly scared over there.”2
If General Sherman was unenthusiastic over Colonel Appler’s information, Colonel Hildebrand proved more receptive and ordered two companies of the Fifty-third to establish an advance picket post as an added security measure.3
As the minutes passed the regiments of Sherman’s division gradually began forming up, alarmed by the increasing volume and closeness of gunfire if not by Appler’s report. By around 7:00 a.m., Hildebrand’s picket post could observe Confederate skirmishers moving toward them slowly. This was Pat Cleburne’s outfit. Sludging wearily through the mud, Cleburne’s Second Brigade gradually moved toward its rendezvous with Sherman, its advance protected by a screen of skirmishers from the Fifteenth Arkansas and the Sixth Mississippi Infantry.4
A sharp fire fight developed as the fighting Irishman’s skirmishers located Hildebrand’s outpost.5 It was be coming increasingly obvious to the officers of the Third Brigade that this was something more than a mere reconnaissance in force. General Sherman and his staff came riding up along side the Fifty-third Ohio. Sherman took out his binoculars and began examining the surrounding area, but his vantage point was a poor one, and he was able to get but a limited view of the situation. Just then some Confederate skirmishers emerged from the thick brush along the little stream running in front and alongside the Fifty-third’s camp. Lieutenant E. C. Dawes spotted the advancing Rebels and exclaimed in horror to Lieutenant Eustace H. Ball of Company E, “Ball, Sherman will be shot.” Just out of the sick bed, the plucky Ball ran to ward Sherman, screaming at the top of his voice, “General, look to your right.”6 Sherman dropped his glasses and immediately shifted positions as a volley of musket balls sprayed the spot he had just vacated. His orderly, Private Thomas D. Holliday, fell to the ground dead, and Sherman received a buckshot in the hand, exclaiming, “My God, we are attacked.”7
Shiloh and the Western Campaign of 1862 Page 16
