Varina Davis, Jefferson Davis: Ex-President of the Confederate States of America, A Memoir by his Wife, Volume 2

Chapter 23: Shiloh, 1862.-Corinth.

February IIth the evacuation of Bowling Green was begun and ended on the 13th, and General Beauregard left for Columbus, Ky.

On the 16th Fort Donelson fell.

The loss of Forts Henry and Donelson opened the river routes to Nashville and North Alabama, and thus turned the positions both at Bowling Green and Columbus, and subjected General Johnston to severe criticism. The President was appealed to, to remove him; but his confidence in General Johnston remained unimpaired. In a letter to the President, dated March 18, 1862, General Johnston himself writes: “The test of merit in my profession, with the people, is success. It is a hard rule, but I think it right.”

In reply to the letter from which the above [223] is an extract, the President wrote him as follows:

General Beauregard left Nashville on February 14th, to take charge in West Tennessee, and made his headquarters at Jackson, on February 7th.

He was somewhat prostrated with sickness, which partially disabled him through the campaign. The two grand divisions of his army were commanded by the able Generals Bragg and Polk. On March 26th he removed to Corinth.

The enemy commenced moving up the Tennessee River March 10th, with the design to mass the forces of Grant and Buell against the Confederate forces under Johnston and Beauregard at Corinth. General Grant assembled his army at Pittsburg Landing on March 17th.

The Confederate force at Corinth numbered about forty thousand, divided into four corps commanded respectively by Major-Generals Polk, Bragg, and Hardee, and Brigadier-General Breckinridge. General Beauregard was second in command under General Johnston. [225]

The orders for the march and battle of the Confederate army were issued on the afternoon of April 3d, and the movement began with the intention of striking the enemy at Pittsburg Landing on the 5th, but delays, caused by confusion and intermingling of corps upon the road, were so great that the line of battle was not formed in front of the enemy's outposts until late in the evening of that day.¹

General Bragg, in a monograph on the battle of Shiloh, says: “During the afternoon of the 5th, as the last of our troops were taking position, a casual and partly accidental meeting of general officers occurred just in rear of our second line, near the bivouac of General Bragg. The Commanderin-Chief, General Beauregard, Generals Polk, Bragg, and Breckinridge, are remembered as present. In a discussion of the causes of the delay and its incidents, it was mentioned that some of the troops, now in their third day only, were entirely out of food, though having marched with five days rations. General [226] Beauregard, confident our movement had been discovered by the enemy, urged its abandonment, a return to our camps for supplies, and a general change of programme. In this opinion no other seemed fully to concur; and when it was suggested that the enemy's supplies were much nearer, and could be had for the taking, General Johnston quietly remarked, ‘Gentlemen, we shall attack at daylight tomorrow.’ The meeting then dispersed, upon an invitation of the commanding general to meet at his tent that evening.” That meeting did not change their determination. “The next morning, about dawn of day, the 6th, as the troops were being put in motion, several generals again met at the camp-fire of the general-in-chief. The discussion was renewed, General Beauregard again expressing his dissent; when rapid firing in the front indicating that the attack had commenced, General Johnston closed the discussion by remarking: ‘ The battle has opened, gentlemen; it is too late to change our dispositions.’ He prepared to move to the front, and his subordinates promptly joined their respective commands, inspired by his coolness, confidence, and determination. Few men have equalled him in the possession and display, at the proper time, of these great qualities of the soldier.” [227]

The results of the first day of this famous battle are summarily presented in the following brief report of General Beauregard:

At 5 A. M., on the 6th instant, a reconnoitring party of the enemy having become engaged with our advanced pickets, the commander of the forces gave orders to begin the movement and attack as determined upon, except that Trabue's brigade of Breckinridge's division was detached and advanced to support the left of Bragg's corps and line of battle, then menaced by the enemy; and the other two brigades were directed to advance by the road to Hamburg to support Bragg's right; and at the same time Maney's regiment of Polk's corps was advanced by the same road to reinforce the regiment of cavalry and battery of four pieces, already thrown forward to watch and guard Grier's, Tanner's, and Borland's Fords of Lick Creek.

Thirty minutes after 5 A. M. our lines and columns were in motion, all animated evidently by a promising spirit. The front line was engaged at once, but advanced steadily, followed in due order, with equal resolution and steadiness, by the other lines, which were brought successively into action with rare skill, judgment, and gallantry by the several corps commanders, as the enemy made a stand with his masses rallied for the struggle [228] for his encampments. Like an Alpine avalanche our troops moved forward, despite the determined resistance of the enemy, until after 6 P. M., when we were in possession of all his encampments between the Owl and Lick Creeks but one; nearly all of his field-artillery, about thirty flags, colors, and standards, over three thousand prisoners, including a division commander (General Prentiss) and several brigade commanders, thousands of small-arms, an immense supply of subsistence, forage, and munitions of war, and a large amount of means of transportation, all the substantial fruits of a most complete victory — such, indeed, as rarely have followed the most successful battles, for never was an army so well provided as that of our enemy.

The remnant of his army had been driven in utter disorder to the immediate vicinity of Pittsburg, under the shelter of the heavy guns of his iron-clad gunboats, and we remained undisputed masters of his well-selected, admirably provided cantonments, after twelve hours of obstinate conflict with his forces, who had been beaten from them and the contiguous covert, but only by the sustained onset of all the men we could bring into action.

There are two words in this report which, if they could have been truthfully omitted, it would have been worth to us the surrender of [229] all “the substantial fruits of a most complete victory.” It says: “Our troops moved forward despite, the determined resistance of the enemy, until after 6 P. M., when we were in possession of all his encampments between the Owl and Lick Creeks, but one.” It was that “one” encampment that furnished a foothold for all the subsequent reinforcements sent by Buell, and gave occasion for the final withdrawal of our forces; whereas, if that had been captured, and the “waters of the Tennessee” reached, as General Johnston intended, it was not too much to expect that Grant's army would have surrendered; that Buell's forces would not have crossed the Tennessee.

General Johnston fell at 2.30 P. M., while his victorious army was pushing the enemy before him and in the full tide of glorious victory.

The mortal wound was from a Minie-ball, which tore the popliteal artery of the right leg. He did not live more than ten or fifteen minutes after receiving it. It was not necessarily fatal. General Johnston's own knowledge of surgery was adequate for its control by an extemporized tourniquet, had he been aware or regardful of its nature.

Dr. D. W. Yandell, his surgeon, had attended his person during most of the morning, but finding a large number of wounded men, [230] including many Federals, at one point, General Johnston ordered Yandell to stop there, establish a hospital, and give them his services. He said to Yandell, “These men were our enemies a moment ago, that are prisoners now; take care of them.” Yandell remonstrated against leaving him, but he was peremptory, and the doctor began his work. He saw General Johnston no more. Had Yandell remained with him, he would have had little difficulty with the wound. It was this act of unselfish charity which cost him his life. ²

When rumors began to be circulated in Richmond that a battle had been fought and won at Corinth, the President endured the keenest anxiety; when remonstrance was made against his depression he said, “I know Johnston, and if he is alive either good or bad news would have been communicated at once.” When at last the dreadful certainty settled upon him that General Johnston was no more, he said the cause could have spared a whole State better than that great soldier. He wrote of him in the “Rise and fall:”

Sidney Johnston fell in the sight of victory; the hour he had waited for, the event he had planned for, had arrived. His fame [231] was vindicated, but far dearer than this to his patriotic spirit was it with his dying eyes to behold his country's flag, so lately drooping in disaster, triumphantly advancing. In his fall the great pillar of the Southern Confederacy was crushed, and beneath its fragments the best hope of the Southwest lay buried. A highly educated and richly endowed soldier, his varied experience embraced also civil affairs, and his intimate knowledge of the country and people of the Southwest so highly qualified him for that special command, that it was not possible to fill the place made vacant by his death. Not for the first time did the fate of an army depend upon a single man, and the fortunes of a country hang, as in a balance, on the achievements of a single army. To take an example far from us, in time and place, when Turenne had, after months of successful manceuvring, finally forced his enemy into a position which gave assurance of victory, and had marshalled his forces for a decisive battle, he was, when making a preliminary reconnaissance, killed by a chance shot; then his successor, instead of attacking, retreated, and all which the one had gained for France, the other lost.

The extracts which have been given sufficiently prove that, when General Johnston [232] fell, the Confederate army was so fully victorious that, had the attack been vigorously pressed, General Grant and his army would before the setting of the sun have been fugitives or prisoners.

The command then devolved upon General Beauregard, who checked the advance all too soon. An hour more and the enemy would have surrendered or perished in the Tennessee. That this is not a reckless statement, let us hear what the actors in the battle have to say.

General Hardee, who commanded the first line, says in his report:

Upon the death of General Johnston, the command having devolved upon General Beauregard, the conflict was continued until sunset, and the advance divisions were within a few hundred. yards of Pittsburg, where the enemy were huddled in confusion, when the order to withdraw was received.

General Polk in his report says:

We had one hour or more of daylight still left, were within one hundred and fifty to four hundred yards of the enemy's position, and nothing seemed wanting to complete the most brilliant victory of the war but to press forward and make a vigorous assault on the demoralized remnant of his forces.

As the condition of affairs on the Confederate side has been plainly shown, what was that of the enemy, and what would have been the result of a further advance of the Confederates?

Colonel Geddes, of the Eighth Iowa Volunteers, says as follows:

About three P. M., all communications with the river (landing) ceased, and it became evident to me that the enemy was turning the right and left flanks of our army ...

About two o'clock the whole Union right, comprising the Forty-sixth Ohio, which had held that flank two hours or more, was driven back in disorder, and the Confederate forces cut the centre off from the landing soon after General Johnston's fall.

When General Beauregard sent the order for the battle to cease, Nelson's division of Buell's army had just arrived on the opposite bank of the river at Pittsburg, and was preparing to cross and go to the rescue of a beaten and demoralized army. The junction of the two Federal armies that General Johnston had tried to anticipate had been made.

In the “History of the Sixth Ohio Regiment,” by E. Hannaford, the arrival of Nelson is thus described:

On reaching the river opposite the battlefield, General Nelson looked in vain for the [237] promised boats. The two or three sternwheel steamers that were lying under the eastern bank, had come over simply to avoid the rush of the mob on the farther shore, not, however, until after some scores of the scared wretches had succeeded in getting on board.

Nelson had almost to force the captains of these boats to take his foremost regiment, the Thirty-sixth Indiana, across; and, having given orders to Colonel Ammen to get his brigade over as quickly as possible and then to follow in person, crossed to Pittsburg Landing. He was the first to ride off the boat, Dr. Bradford being the second. General Buell met him on the bank, and ordered the men formed rapidly into line as they should arrive, and moved to the front. “ You have had the advance throughout the march,” said Buell, “and here, General, is your opportunity. There is still one hour left in which to decide this fight.” At this time the roar of battle sounded appallingly near; everything was in confusion; thousands of panic-stricken fugitives were cowering under the bluff, filling the air with their cries and lamentations; and hundreds of teams, with all the debris of a beaten army, were commingled in the utmost disorder, and covered the landing down to the-water's edge. It was a sickening sight-one that has never [238] been adequately described, and never can be. Finding that words were thrown away upon the rabble around him, General Nelson afterward asked permission to open fire upon them. “ Get out of the way, you d-d cowards,” he exclaimed, furiously, as a rush was made toward one of the boats whence a detachment of the Sixth Ohio was disembarking; “get out of the way! If you won't fight yourselves let these men off that will. Sixth Ohio, follow me!”

Upon the bluff overlooking the landing, General Grant was met, moody and silent, and at that moment on foot. Colonel Ammen, having meanwhile transmitted to Colonels Bruce and Hazen the order to hurry the men across, reported to Nelson upon the bluff. The Thirty-sixth Indiana was over. Companies A, F, and D, of the Sixth Ohio were landing, and the Twenty-fourth, and the remaining companies of the Sixth Ohio, were either in the stream or in the act of disembarking. Grant told Ammen that he wanted him to support “ that battery on the left there,” pointing, as he spoke, to Captain Stone's battery; whereupon Colonel Ammen hastened to form such of his troops as had already arrived. While affairs were in this posture, a cannon-ball came whistling between the trees, took the head of one of Grant's orderlies off, [239] shot away the saddle from under Lieutenant Graves, one of Nelson's aids, and went plunging over the bluff into the river below, producing consternation indescribable among the thousands herded about the landing. “ Don't stop to form, Colonel, don't stop to form,” implored a staff officer, hurrying toward Colonel Ammen; “we shall all be massacred if you do! There isn't a man out yonder, on the left, between us and the rebels. For God's sake, Colonel, hurry your men forward.”

As soon as the Thirty-sixth Indiana could be formed, and, without waiting for the remainder of the brigade, Colonel Ammen moved it forward; General Buell, who had previously examined the ground, showing him where to post it. The position assigned it was only about two hundred yards from the bluff, on the extreme left of the Union line, if line it might have been called, and behind the crest of the hill that rises above the ravine before described. Companies A, F, and D, of the Sixth Ohio, formed on its left and a little in the rear, but the rebel attack was too far to their right to permit them to get into action that night. In this quarter the artillery had been left absolutely without any organized infantry support, and the handful of troops that still remained, chiefly cannoneers, were in extreme disorder, Had Bragg been [240] able to renew his assault upon this portion of the Union lines before the opportune arrival of Ammen's brigade---in all human probability he would have forced the position.

Says a staff officer of the Tenth Brigade, U. S. A.:

I doubt whether, on any battle-field during the war, any set of men ever formed under just such circumstances as the Sixth Ohio at Shiloh. I shall never forget the scene. More than half of our artillery was gone, our entire force driven into twelve or fifteen acres of ground, a thousand wagons and nearly all of the tents were captured, the enemy pressing forward almost in sight; batteries and musketry in front, and a cross-fire of cannon from above, and ten thousand panic-stricken men of our own fled out of the fight, hailing the troops just arriving with such cries as, “We're whipped! ” “The fight is lost! ” “ We're cut to pieces! ” “ It's no use to form! ” “ They're driving us into the river,” etc. In this terrible extremity the regiment fell quickly and orderly into line, and at the word moved gallantly forward. I could not resist the temptation of riding my iron-gray close up to the lines, and crying out, “Bully for the Sixth Ohio! ” The regiment was halted a short distance in the rear of the Thirty-sixth Indiana, the firing having materially slackened; [241] in a few minutes it ceased entirely. Within the next half-hour the deepening darkness, setting at rest the question of further fighting for that day, had decided the issue of the struggle: “Night and Blucher had both come.”

Mr. Davis, in reply to a letter from a friend, says: “There was no need to say more than you have said about Shiloh, concerning which, notwithstanding his report, where little was said of Sidney Johnston except the fact that he was killed, Beauregard has but two sustained claims. One to have prepared the order of march, which resulted in failure to bring the troops on the ground at the time and manner required; and the other, to have withdrawn the army at the moment of victory, and thus to have sacrificed all which the skill and heroism of Johnston had achieved.”

On the morning of the 7th, the enemy, now reinforced by Wallace's division and the army of Buell, advanced about six o'clock and opened a heavy fire of musketry and artillery.

The Confederates fought these new enemies with their accustomed valor and spirit, but after the junction of Buell and Grant had been effected, and General Johnston's plan for fighting them in detail miscarried by the delays incident upon getting the troops upon [242] the field, a retreat to Corinth became a necessity.

The field return of the army of Mississippi before the battle of Shiloh, showed a total of 40,335. The effective force of Grant's army was 49,314; reinforcements of Buell, 21,579; total, 70,893. The casualties were as follows: Confederates killed, wounded, and missing, 10,699; Grant's army, April 6th, 11,220, leaving for duty on the 7th, 59,673.

“About 9 P. M. on the evening that we crossed the river,” says Dr. Stephens, surgeon of the Sixth Ohio, “Lieutenant-Colonel Anderson ordered me to take charge of the old log-house on the top of the bluff (the same building, as it would appear, that General Grant had occupied during the day as headquarters), and there organize our regimental hospital, which was accordingly done, and the place made as comfortable as its bare walls and our scanty supplies would permit. About eleven o'clock our attention was called to some general and a staff officer seated close together on the top of two empty barrels that stood in the middle of one of the rooms. I thought it a strange place for them, and was still more surprised a few minutes afterward to hear the staff officer address his companion as General Grant. Both officers appeared to be much dejected (as was my impression [243] at the time), very little conversation, however, being carried on between them. Several times during the night, guns and pistols were fired close around the building by some of the demoralized troops at the landing. This appeared to annoy the General greatly, and once or twice he left his seat on the barrel, and, going to the door, cried, at the top of his voice, ‘ Stop that firing! ’ Once, on returning to his companion, he said, ‘The cowards! if they were to get their deserts, the first thing to be done in the morning would be to take a cannon and shell them out from there.’ The pair occupied their positions on the top of the barrels, ‘grand, gloomy, and peculiar,’ until daylight of Monday morning, when they disappeared as mysteriously as they came.” ³

On April gth, General H. W. Halleck left St. Louis and proceeded to assume command of the Federal force at Pittsburg Landing. A reorganization was made in which General Grant's divisions formed the right wing; those of General Buell the centre; and those of General Pope the left wing; and an advance on Corinth was commenced on April 28th, with a force exceeding 85,000 effectives. On May 2d he had reached within eight miles of Corinth, [244] and on the 21st his batteries were within three miles. His movements were very slow, and at night his army was protected by an intrenched camp; by day he was assailed by the Confederate skirmishers. At g A. M. of the 29th, Halleck's works were substantially done and the siege train brought forward.

The force of Beauregard was less than 45,ooo men. He estimated that of the enemy between 8^,000 to 9 r,000.

General Beauregard being unable to hold Corinth, commenced the removal of his sick preparatory to an evacuation on May 26th, and on the next day arrangements were made for falling back on the 29th. The evacuation was complete, not only the army but every piece of ordnance was withdrawn. The retreat was continued to Tupelo, the enemy not interfering.

On June 14th orders were sent to General Bragg from Richmond to proceed to Jackson, Miss., and temporarily to assume command of the department then under the command of General Lovell. The order concluded as follows:

On application to General Beauregard for the necessary orders, he replied:

You cannot possibly go. My health does not permit me to remain in charge alone here. This evening my two physicians were insisting that I should go away for one or two weeks, furnishing me with another certificate for that purpose, and I have concluded to go, intending to see you to-morrow on the subject; and I leave you in command.

The certificate of the surgeons was as follows:

These facts were telegraphed to the President at once by General Bragg. Soon after Mr. Davis sent him another telegram, renewing the order, and expressing his surprise that he should have hesitated to obey, when the original order stated “the necessity is urgent and abso/ue.” Before this second telegram was received by General Bragg, General [246] Beauregard had transferred the command of the army to him, and had departed for Bladen Springs. General Bragg thus describes the subsequent proceedings:

Prepared to move, I telegraphed back to the President that the altered conditions induced me to await orders. In reply to this I was immediately notified by telegraph of my assignment to “permanent command of the army.”

The telegram read as follows:

Richmond, June 20, 1862.
General Braxton Bragg, Tupelo, Miss.

Your despatch informing me that General Beauregard had turned over the command to you and left for Mobile on surgeons' certificate was duly received.

You are assigned permanently to the command of the department, as will be more formally notified to you by the Secretary of War.

You will correspond directly and receive orders and instructions from the Government in relation to your future operations.

Jefferson Davis.

As the telegrams sent to Secretary of War Stanton, after the evacuation of Corinth, are of such a remarkable character, and evincing so little regard for the truth that they are [247] amusing, I cannot refrain from adding the following as specimens:

Halleck's Headquarters, June 4th.

General Pope with 40,000 is thirty miles south of Corinth, pushing enemy hard. He already reports 10,000 prisoners and deserters from the enemy, and 15,000 stand ofarms captured. Thousands of the enemy are throwing away their arms. A farmer says that when Beauregard had learned that Colonel Elliott had cut the railroad on his line of retreat, he becamefrantic and told his men to save themselves as best they could. ...

H. W. Halleck, Major-General (Commanding). To E. M. Stanton, Secretary of War.

Corinth, June 9, 1862.

The enemy has fallen back to Saltillo (Tupelo?), fifty miles by rail and near seventy by wagon road. General Pope estimates rebel loss from casualties, prisoners, and desertions at over 20,000, and General Buell at between 20,000 and 30,000. An Englishman employed in the Confederate Commissary Department says they had 120,000 men in Corinth, and that they cannot muster much over 80,000. Some fresh graves on the road have been opened andfoundfilled with arms (?).

H. W. Halleck, Major-General.