The Guns of Shiloh Part 17

"Then keep close beside me. I don't know when I may want you for a message. Daybreak will be here in a half hour. The entire Army of the Ohio, led by General Buell in person will be in position then or very shortly afterward, and a new, and, we hope, a very different battle will begin."

Food and coffee were served to the men, and while the rain was still falling they formed in line and awaited the dawn. The desire to retrieve their fortunes was as strong among the farmer lads as it was among the officers who took care to spread among them the statement that Buell's army alone was as numerous as the Southern force, and probably more numerous since their enemy must have sustained terrible losses. Thus they stood patiently, while the rain thinned and the sun at last showed a red edge through floating clouds.

They waited yet a little while longer, and then the boom of a heavy gun in the forest told them that the enemy was advancing to begin the battle afresh. Again it was the Southern army that attacked, although it was no surprise now. Yet Beauregard and his generals were still sanguine of completing the victory. Their scouts and skirmishers had failed to discover that the entire army of Buell also was now in front of them.

Bragg was gathering his division on the left to hurl it like a thunderbolt upon Grant's shattered brigades. Hardee and the bishop-general were in the center, and Breckinridge led the right. But as they moved forward to attack the Union troops came out to meet them. Nelson had occupied the high ground between Lick and Owl Creeks, and his and the Southern troops met in a fierce clash shortly after dawn.

Beauregard, drawn by the firing at that point, and noticing the courage and tenacity with which the Northern troops held their ground, sending in volley after volley, divined at once that these were not the beaten troops of the day before, but new men. This swarthy general, volatile and dramatic, nevertheless had great penetration. He understood on the instant a fact that his soldiers did not comprehend until later. He knew that the whole army of Buell was now before him.

For the moment it was Beauregard and Buell who were the protagonists, instead of Grant and Johnston as on the day before. The Southern leader gathered all his forces and hurled them upon Nelson. Weary though the Southern soldiers were, their attack was made with utmost fire and vigor. A long and furious combat ensued. A Southern division under Cheatham rushed to the help of their fellows. Buell's forces were driven in again and again, and only his heavy batteries enabled him to regain his lost ground.

Buell led splendid troops that he had trained long and rigidly, and they had not been in the conflict the day before. Fresh and with unbroken ranks, not a man wounded or missing, they had entered the battle and both Grant and Buell, as well as their division commanders, expected an easy victory where the Army of the Ohio stood.

Buell, to his amazement, saw himself reduced to the defensive. He and Grant had reckoned that the decimated brigades of the South could not stand at all before him, but just as on the first day they came on with the fierce rebel yell, hurling themselves upon superior numbers, taking the cannon of their enemy, losing them, and retaking them and losing them again, but never yielding.

The great conflict increased in violence. Buell, a man of iron courage, saw that his soldiers must fight to the uttermost, not for victory only, but even to ward off defeat. The dawn was now far advanced. The rain had ceased, and the sun again shot down sheaves of fiery rays upon a vast low cloud of fire and smoke in which thousands of men met in desperate combat.

Nine o'clock came. It had been expected by Grant that Buell long before that time would have swept everything before him. But for three hours Buell had been fighting to keep himself from being swept away. The Southern troops seemed animated by that extraordinary battle fever and absolute contempt of death which distinguished them so often during this war. Buell's army was driven in on both flanks, and only the center held fast. It began to seem possible that the South, despite her reduced ranks might yet defeat both Northern armies. Another battery dashed up to the relief of the men in blue. It was charged at once by the men in gray so fiercely that the gunners were glad to escape with their guns, and once more the wild rebel yell of triumph swelled through the southern forest.

d.i.c.k, standing with his comrades on one of the ridges that they had defended so well, listened to the roar of conflict on the wing, ever increasing in volume, and watched the vast clouds of smoke gathering over the forest. He could see from where he stood the flash of rifle fire and the blaze of cannon, and both eye and ear told him that the battle was not moving back upon the South.

"It seems that we do not make headway, sir," he said to Colonel Winchester, who also stood by him, looking and listening.

"Not that I can perceive," replied the colonel, "and yet with the rush of forty thousand fresh troops of ours upon the field I deemed victory quick and easy. How the battle grows! How the South fights!"

Colonel Winchester walked away presently and joined Sherman, who was eagerly watching the mighty conflict, into which he knew that his own worn and shattered troops must sooner or later be drawn. He walked up and down in front of his lines, saying little but seeing everything. His tall form was seen by all his men. He, too, must have felt a singular thrill at that moment. He must have known that his star was rising. He, more than any other, with his valor, penetrating mind and decision had saved the Northern army from complete destruction the first day at Shiloh. He had not been able to avert defeat, but he had prevented utter ruin. His division alone had held together in the face of the Southern attack until night came.

Sherman must have recalled, too, how his statement that the North would need 200,000 troops in the west alone had been sneered at, and he had been called mad. But he neither boasted nor predicted, continuing to watch intently the swelling battle.

"I had enough fighting yesterday to last me a hundred years," said Warner to d.i.c.k, "but it seems that I'm to have more today. If the Johnnies had any regard for the rules of war they'd have retreated long ago."

"We'll win yet," said d.i.c.k hopefully, "but I don't think we can achieve any big victory. Look, there's General Grant himself."

Grant was pa.s.sing along his whole line. While leaving the main battle to Buell he retained general command and watched everything. He, too, observed the failure of Buell's army to drive the enemy before them, and he must have felt a sinking of the heart, but he did not show it. Instead he spoke only of victory, when he made any comment at all, and sent the members of his staff to make new arrangements. He must bring into action every gun and man he had or he would yet lose.

It was now 10 o'clock and the new battle had lasted with the utmost fury and desperation for four hours. d.i.c.k, after General Grant rode on, felt as if a sudden thrill had run through the whole army. He saw men rising from the earth and tightening their belts. He saw gunners gathering around their guns and making ready with the ammunition. He knew the remains of Grant's army were about to march upon the enemy, helping the Army of the Ohio to achieve the task that had proved so great.

Sherman, McClernand and other generals now pa.s.sed among their troops, cheering them, telling them that the time had come to win back what they had lost the day before, and that victory was sure. They called upon them for another great effort, and a shout rolled along the line of willing soldiers.

Sherman's whole division now raised itself up and rushed at the enemy, d.i.c.k and his comrades in the front of their own regiment. The whole Northern line was now engaged. Grant, true to his resolution, had hurled every man and every gun upon his foe.

The Southern generals felt the immense weight of the numbers that were now driving down upon them. Their decimated ranks could not withstand the charge of two armies. In the center where Buell's men, having stood fast from the first, were now advancing, they were compelled to give way and lost several guns. On the wings the heavy Northern brigades were advancing also, and the whole Southern line was pushed back. So much inferior was the South in numbers that her enemy began to overlap her on the flanks also.

A tremendous shout of exultation swept through the Northern ranks, as they felt themselves advancing. The promises of their generals were coming true, and there is nothing sweeter than victory after defeat. Fortune, after frowning upon her so long, was now smiling upon the North. The exultant cheer swept through the ranks again, and back came the defiant rebel yell.

A young soldier often feels what is happening with as true instinct as a general. d.i.c.k now knew that the North would recover the field, and that the South, cut down fearfully, though having performed prodigies of valor, must fight to save herself. He felt that the resistance in front of them was no longer invincible. He saw in the flash of the firing that the Southern ranks were thin, very thin, and he knew that there was no break in their own advance.

Now the sanguine Northern generals planned the entire destruction of the Southern army. There was only one road by which Beauregard could retreat to Corinth. A whole Northern division rushed in to block the way. Sherman, in his advance, came again to the ground around the little Methodist chapel of Shiloh which he had defended so well the day before, and crowded his whole force upon the Southern line at that point. Once more the primitive church in the woods looked down upon one of the most sanguinary conflicts of the whole war. If Sherman could break through the Southern line here Beauregard's whole army would be lost.

But the Southern soldiers were capable of another and a mighty effort. Their generals saw the danger and acted with their usual promptness and decision. They gathered together their shattered brigades and hurled them like a thunderbolt upon the Union left and center. The shock was terrific. Sherman, with all his staunchness and the valor of his men, was compelled to give way. McClernand, too, reeled back, others were driven in also. Whole brigades and regiments were cut to pieces or thrown in confusion. The Southerners cut a wide gap in the Northern army, through which they rushed in triumph, holding the Corinth road against every attack and making their rear secure.

Sherman's division, after its momentary repulse, gathered itself anew, and, although knowing now that the Southern army could not be entrapped, drove again with all its might upon the positions around the church. They pa.s.sed over the dead of the day before, and gathered increasing vigor, as they saw that the enemy was slowly drawing back.

Grant reformed his line, which had been shattered by the last fiery and successful attack of the South. Along the whole long line the trumpets sang the charge, and brigades and batteries advanced.

But the end of Shiloh was at hand. Despite the prodigies of valor performed by their men, the Southern generals saw that they could not longer hold the field. The junction of Grant and Buell, after all, had proved too much for them. The bugles sounded the retreat, and reluctantly they gave up the ground which they had won with so much courage and daring. They retreated rather as victors than defeated men, presenting a bristling front to the enemy until their regiments were lost in the forest, and beating off every attempt of skirmishers or cavalry to molest them.

It was the middle of the afternoon when the last shot was fired, and the Southern army at its leisure resumed its march toward Corinth, protected on the flanks by its cavalry, and carrying with it the a.s.surance that although not victorious over two armies it had been victorious over one, and had struck the most stunning blow yet known in American history.

When the last of the Southern regiments disappeared in the deep woods, d.i.c.k and many of those around him sank exhausted upon the ground. Even had they been ordered to follow they would have been incapable of it. Complete nervous collapse followed such days and nights as those through which they had pa.s.sed.

Nor did Grant and Buell wish to pursue. Their armies had been too terribly shaken to make another attack. Nearly fifteen thousand of their men had fallen and the dead and wounded still lay scattered widely through the woods. The South had lost almost as many. Nearly a third of her army had been killed or wounded in the battle, and yet they retired in good order, showing the desperate valor of these sons of hers.

The double army which had saved itself, but which had yet been unable to destroy its enemy, slept that night in the recovered camp. The generals discussed in subdued tones their narrow escape, and the soldiers, who now understood very well what had happened, talked of it in the same way.

"We knew that it was going to be a big war," said d.i.c.k, "but it's going to be far bigger than we thought."

"And we won't make that easy parade down to the Gulf," said Warner. "I'm thinking that a lot of lions are in the path."

"But we'll win!" said d.i.c.k. "In the end we'll surely win!"

Then after dreaming a little with his eyes open he fell asleep, gathering new strength for mighty campaigns yet to come.