234

THE NORTHERN FLOOD ROLLING ON.

[1862.

Stars and Stripes in Memphis. Halleck, as usual, engrossed in strategy, declined to supply the transportation.

But the great northern flood rolled on toward the Gulf, and in its resistless torrent was no refluent wave.

SIMULTANEOUSLY with the capture of Island Number Ten occurred the battle of Shiloh. The first reports were very wild, stating our loss at seventeen thousand, and asserting that the Union commander had been disastrously surprised, and hundreds of men bayoneted in their tents. It was even added that Grant was intoxicated during the action. This last fiction showed the tenacity of a bad name. Years before, Grant was intemperate; but he had abandoned the habit soon after the beginning of the war.

General Albert Sydney Johnson was killed, and Beauregard ultimately driven back, leaving his dead and wounded in our hands; but Jefferson Davis, with the usual Rebel policy, announced in a special message to the Confederate Congress :

"It has pleased Almighty God again to crown the Confederate arms with a glorious and decided victory over our invaders."

I went up the Tennessee River by a boat crowded with representatives-chiefly women-of the Sanitary Commissions of Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Chicago.

One evening, religious services were held in the

236

THE REVEREND ROBERT COLYER.

[1862

cabin. A clergyman exhorted his hearers, when they should arrive at the bloody field, to minister to the spiritual as well as physical wants of the sufferers. With special infelicity, he added:

"Many of them have doubtless been wicked men; but you can, at least, remind them of divine mercy, and tell them the story of the thief on the cross."

The next speaker, a quiet gentleman, wearing the blouse of a private soldier, after some remarks about practical religion, added:

"I can not agree with the last brother. I believe we shall best serve the souls of our wounded soldiers by ministering, for the present, simply to their bodies. For my own part, I feel that he who has fallen fighting for our country-for your Cause and mine-is more of a man than I am. He may have been wicked; but I think room will be found for him among the many mansions above. I should be ashamed to tell him the story of the thief on the cross."

Hearty, spontaneous clapping of hands through the crowded cabin followed this sentiment-a rather unusual demonstration for a prayer-meeting. The speaker was the Rev. Robert Colyer, of Chicago.

With officers who had participated in the battle, I visited every part of the field. The ground was broken by sharp hills, deep ravines, and dense timber, which the eye could not penetrate.

The reports of a surprise were substantially untrue. No man was bayoneted in his tent, or anywhere else, according to the best evidence I could obtain.

But the statements, said to come from Grant and Sherman, that they could not have been better prepared, had they known that Beauregard designed to attack, were also untrue. Our troops were not encamped ad

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A UNION ORATOR CAPTURED.

237

vantageously for battle. Raw and unarmed regiments were on the extreme front, which was not picketed or scouted as it should have been in the face of an enemy.

Beauregard attacked on Sunday morning at daylight. The Rebels greatly outnumbered the Unionists, and impetuously forced them back. Grant's army was entirely western. It contained representatives of nearly every county in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin.

Partially unprepared, and steadily driven back, often ill commanded and their organizations broken, the men fought with wonderful tenacity. It was almost a handto-hand conflict. Confederates and Loyalists, from behind trees, within thirty feet of each other, kept up a hot fire, shouting respectively, "Bull Run!" and "Donelson!"

Prentiss' shattered division, in that dense forest, was flanked before its commander knew that the supporting forces-McClernand on his right and Hurlbut on his left-had been driven back. Messengers sent to him by those commanders were killed. During a lull in the firing, Prentiss was lighting his cigar from the pipe of a soldier when he learned that the enemy was on both sides of him, half a mile in his rear. With the remnant

of his command he was captured.

Remaining in Rebel hands for six months, he was enabled to indulge in oratory to his heart's content. Southern papers announced, with intense indignation, that Prentiss-occupying, with his officers, an entire train-called out by the bystanders, was permitted to make radical Union speeches at many southern railway stations. Removed from prison to prison, the Illinois General continued to harangue the people, and his men to sing the "Star-Spangled Banner," until at last the Rebels were glad to exchange them.

238

GRANT AND SHERMAN IN BATTLE.

[1862.

Throughout the battle, Grant rode to and fro on the front, smoking his inevitable cigar, with his usual stolidity and good fortune. Horses and men were killed all around him, but he did not receive a scratch. On that wooded field, it was impossible for any one to keep advised of the progress of the struggle. Grant gave few orders, merely bidding his generals do the best they could.

Sherman had many hair-breadth 'scapes. His briddle-rein was cut off by a bullet within two inches of his fingers. As he was leaning forward in the saddle, a ball whistled through the top and back of his hat. His metallic shoulder-strap warded off another bullet, and a third passed through the palm of his hand. Three horses were shot under him. He was the hero of the day. All awarded to him the highest praise for skill and gallantry. He was promoted to a major-generalship, dating from the battle. His official report was a clear, vivid, and fascinating description of the conflict.

Five bullets penetrated the clothing of an officer on McClernand's staff, but did not break the skin. A ball knocked out two front teeth of a private in the Seventeenth Illinois Infantry, but did him no further injury. A rifle-shot passed through the head of a soldier in the First Missouri Artillery, coming out just above the ear, but did not prove fatal. Dr. Cornyn, of St. Louis, told me that he extracted a ball from the brain of one soldier, who, three days afterward, was on duty, with the bullet in his pocket.

More than a year afterward, at the battle of Fredericksburg, Captain Richard Cross, of the Fifth New Hampshire Infantry, noticed one of his men whose skull had been cut open by the fragment of a shell, with a section of it standing upright, leaving the brain exposed. Cross shut the piece of skull down like the lid of a tea