Robert Underwood Johnson, Clarence Clough Buell, Battles and Leaders of the Civil War. Volume 3.

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[60]

Notes of a staff-officer at Perryville.¹

by J. Montgomery Wright, Major, Assistant Adjutant-General, U. S. V.

The situation at Louisville in the latter part of September, 1862, was not unlike that at Washington after the first battle of Bull Run. The belief was entertained by many that Bragg would capture the city, and not a few had removed their money and valuables across the Ohio River,. not over-assured that Bragg might not follow them to the lakes. Nelson had sworn that he would hold the city so long as a house remained standing or a soldier was alive, and he had issued an order that all the women, children, and non-combatants should leave the place and seek safety in Indiana. He had only raw troops and convalescent veterans, and few citizens believed that he could hold out against an attack. His tragic death occurred a few days later.²

Buell's arrival changed the situation of affairs. The uncertain defensive suddenly gave way to an aggressive attitude, and speculation turned from whether Bragg would capture Louisville to whether Buell would capture Bragg.

The country through which Buell's army marched is almost destitute of water, but at Perryville a stream flowed between the contending armies, and access to that water was equally important to both armies. Buell accompanied the center corps (Gilbert's), and the advance reached this stream on the evening of October 7th. From that time until the stream was crossed there was constant fighting for access to it, and the only restriction on this fighting was that it should not bring on an engagement until the time for the general attack should arrive. An incident will illustrate the scarcity of water. I obtained a canteenful, and about dark on October 7th, after giving myself a good brushing and a couple of dry rubs without feeling much cleaner, my careless announcement that I was about to take a tin-dipper bath brought General Buell out of his tent with a rather mandatory suggestion that I pour the water back into my canteen and save it for an emergency. The emergency did not come to me, but on the morning of October 9th that water helped to relieve the suffering of some wounded men who lay between the two armies.

At Buell's headquarters, on the 8th, preparations were going on for the intended attack, and the information was eagerly waited for that Crittenden had reached his position on the right. Fighting for water went on in our front, and it was understood that it extended all along the line, but no battle was expected that day. McCook was at Buell's headquarters in the morning, and received, I believe, some oral instructions regarding the contemplated attack. It was understood that care would be taken not to bring on a general engagement, and no importance was attached to the sounds that reached us of artillery-firing at the front of the center. Of course the young officers of the staff, of whom I was one, were not taken into conference by General Buell, but we all knew that the subject of attention that morning was the whereabouts of Crittenden's corps, and the placing it in position on the right for the general engagement that was to be brought on as soon as the army was in line. We all saw McCook going serenely away like a general carrying his orders with him.

In the afternoon we moved out for a position nearer Crittenden, as I inferred from the direction taken. A message came from the line on the left center to General Buell, and in a few moments Colonel James B. Fry, our chief of staff, called me up, and sent me with an order to General Gilbert, commanding the center corps, to send at once two brigades to reinforce General McCook, commanding the left corps. Thus I came to be a witness to some of the curious features of Perryville.

I did not know what was going on at the left, and Colonel Fry did not inform me. He told me what to say to General Gilbert, and to go fast, and taking one of the general's orderlies with me, I [61] started on my errand. I found General Gilbert at the front, and as he had no staff-officer at hand at the moment, he asked me to go to General Schoepf, one of his division commanders, with the order. Schoepf promptly detached two brigades, and he told me I had better go on ahead and find out where they were to go. There was no sound to direct me, and as I tried to take an air line I passed outside the Union lines and was overtaken by a cavalry officer, who gave me the pleasing information that I was riding toward the enemy's pickets. Now up to this time I had heard no sound of battle; I had heard no artillery in front of me, and no heavy infantry-firing. I rode back, and passed behind the cavalry regiment which was deployed in the woods, and started in the direction indicated to me by the officer who called me back. At some distance I overtook an ambulance train, urged to its best speed, and then I knew that something serious was on hand. This was the first intimation I had that one of the fiercest struggles of the war was at that moment raging almost within my sight.

Directed by the officers in charge of the ambulances I made another detour, and pushing on at greater speed I suddenly turned into a road, and there before me, within a few hundred yards, the battle of Perryville burst into view, and the roar of the artillery and the continuous rattle of the musketry first broke upon my ear. It was the finest spectacle I ever saw. It was wholly unexpected, and it fixed me with astonishment. It was like tearing away a curtain from the front of a great picture, or the sudden bursting of a thunder-cloud when the sky in front seems serene and clear. I had seen an unlooked — for storm at sea, with hardly a moment's notice, hurl itself out of the clouds and lash the ocean into a foam of wild rage. But here there was not the warning of an instant. At one bound my horse carried me from stillness into the uproar of battle. One turn from a lonely bridle-path through the woods brought me face to face with the bloody struggle of thousands of men.

Waiting for news to carry back, I saw and heard some of the unhappy occurrences of Perryville. I saw young Forman, with the remnant of his company of the 15th Kentucky regiment, withdrawn to make way for the reenforcements, and as they silently passed me they seemed to stagger and reel like men who had been beating against a great storm. Forman had the colors in his hand, and he and several of his little group of men had their hands upon their chests and their lips apart as though they had difficulty in breathing. They filed into a field, and without thought of shot or shell they lay down on the ground apparently in a state of exhaustion. I joined a mounted group about a young officer, and heard Rumsey Wing, one of Jackson's volunteer aides, telling of that general's death and the scattering of the raw division he commanded. I remembered how I had gone up to Shiloh with Terrill's battery in a small steamer, and how, as the first streak of daylight came, Terrill, sitting on the deck near me, had recited a line about the beauty of the dawn, and had wondered how the day would close upon us all. I asked about Terrill, who now commanded a brigade, and was told that he had been carried to the rear to die. I thought of the accomplished, good, and brave Parsons,--whom I had seen knocked down seven times in a fight with a bigger man at West Point, without ever a thought of quitting so long as he could get up, and who lived to take orders in the church, and die at Memphis of the yellow fever, ministering to the last to the spiritual wants of his parishioners,--and I asked about Parsons's battery. His raw infantry support had broken, and stunned by the disaster that he thought had overtaken the whole army, he stood by his guns until every horse and every man had gone, and the enemy was almost touching him, and had been dragged away at last by one of his men who had come back to the rescue. His battery was a wreck and no one knew then where he was. And so the news came in of men I knew and men with friends about me.