The Guns of Shiloh: A Story of the Great Western Campaign by Joseph A. Altsheler (portable ebook reader txt) 📗

the ground for some distance, and also the river on which the gunboats and transports were now gathered in a fleet.

Colonel Winchester beckoned to him.

“All right this morning, Dick?” he said.

“Yes, sir; I'm ready for my duty.”

“And you, too, Warner and Pennington?”

“We are, sir,” they replied together.

“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.

Dick, 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 Dick, “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 Dick hopefully, “but I don't think we can achieve any big victory. Look, there's General Grant himself.”

Grant was passing 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