A Blaze of Glory (54 page)
Though Wallace’s achievements are many, he is never able to erase the stain of his failure at Shiloh. Despite the relentless blame laid upon him, Wallace’s civilian life is noteworthy for one other accomplishment: He begins a career as a novelist, and in 1880 he authors
Ben-Hur
, which comes to be the most successful American novel of the nineteenth century.
He dies in Crawfordsville, Indiana, in 1905, at age seventy-seven.
WILLIAM H. L. WALLACE
After suffering a severe head wound, then left on the battlefield by the urgent retreat of his own staff, Wallace is inexplicably abandoned by retreating Confederates, who can only have assumed he was too near death to be considered a valuable prisoner. His survival throughout the dismal night of April 6 is considered miraculous by those who serve him, and his wife, Ann, welcomes her barely conscious husband to her arms at the Cherry Mansion in Savannah, Tennessee. For the next three days, Wallace passes in and out of consciousness, but according to his wife, he is very aware of her presence, and on April 10, he offers her his final words:
“We meet in heaven.”
He is forty years old.
THOSE WHO WORE GRAY
PIERRE G. T. BEAUREGARD
After Shiloh, Beauregard’s illness returns, and he embarks on a temporary leave in June 1862. But Jefferson Davis sees an opportunity to punish the man he blames for the great failure at Shiloh. Using the excuse that Beauregard has abandoned his post without permission, Davis replaces Beauregard in the West with Braxton Bragg, and orders Beauregard back to Charleston, South Carolina. Beauregard, who still relishes his public reputation as the
Hero of Fort Sumter
, is not altogether unhappy with the assignment, and performs adequately by defending the city from various assaults, primarily from the U.S. Navy.
While he is eventually given command of all Confederate territory up through southern Virginia, his command ceases where Robert E. Lee’s begins, and Beauregard enhances his reputation once more on the Virginia peninsula by successfully confronting the forces of the inept Union general Benjamin Butler. In late 1864, as Grant’s army presses southward through Virginia, Lee’s command is expanded, and conflict erupts between Lee and Beauregard, who, during the war, are never friends. With Davis backing Lee, Beauregard’s command, which includes Petersburg, Virginia, becomes subservient to Lee’s. Despite the slight, Beauregard performs a masterful defense and maneuver that thwarts the first Federal attempts at capturing Petersburg. In October 1864, Beauregard is approached reluctantly by Davis to resume command in the West, and Beauregard, eager to reclaim the public’s attention, accepts the post. But Beauregard’s authority there is mostly ignored by both Richard Taylor in Texas and John Bell Hood in Tennessee. In December 1864, when Hood’s army is destroyed by the twin disasters at Franklin and Nashville, Beauregard realizes the post Davis has given him has become virtually nonexistent. Beauregard moves east once more, and mobilizes an army to confront the rapid advances of William T. Sherman through Georgia. No longer in command of any theater, Beauregard accepts a subordinate role to Joseph Johnston in the South’s final stand in the Carolinas. In late April 1865, both men participate in the negotiations to surrender to Sherman, concluding the war in the East.
Beauregard returns to New Orleans, and in 1866 he serves as president of first one, then a second railroad, but his arrogance makes enemies, and in 1876, he is removed by the railroad’s dissatisfied shareholders. In 1877, he and Jubal Early share the duty of supervisor of the Louisiana Lottery, which elevates both men again into the public eye. But the job is seen by many as unseemly, promoting gambling in an era when the South’s interests lie in rebuilding their economy.
From 1865 onward, Beauregard’s reputation as a superb military leader is enhanced overseas, and he is offered positions of command in the armies of Brazil, Romania, and Egypt. Though tempted, he does not accept.
The dislike between Beauregard and Jefferson Davis boils into a full-blown feud, both men penning works that criticize the other. In 1889, when Davis dies, Beauregard refuses to accept the privilege of leading the funeral procession, replying to the invitation by saying,
“I am no hypocrite.”
Beauregard remains sensitive to the criticism leveled at him for the failure at Shiloh, and he cannot completely escape the mystique surrounding Albert Sidney Johnston, though he attempts to do so by encouraging his former subordinate, Thomas Jordan, to write his
more precise
version of the battle. That work does little except fuel the debates.
He dies in 1893 in New Orleans, at age seventy-four.
ISHAM HARRIS
Though harboring an intense dislike for Pierre Beauregard, Harris continues to serve on his staff, and when Beauregard is relieved of the command in the West, Harris accepts the same post with Beauregard’s successor, Braxton Bragg. He continues in that role through the evolving commands in the Confederate West, serving as well on the staffs of John Bell Hood and Joseph Johnston.
After the war, Harris flees what he fears will be a brutal fate, and moves first to Mexico, then to England. As Reconstruction unfolds, and Harris understands that influential Confederates are not being executed en masse, he returns and settles into a law practice in Memphis. Always dedicated to public service, he remains a popular public figure in Tennessee, and in 1877 is elected to the United States Senate. He is reelected four times, and his influence and reputation land him the office of Senate president pro tempore in 1893, a post he holds for two years. In the 1896 presidental election, he campaigns vigorously for William Jennings Bryan, but the exertion of that effort, combined with the crushing blow of Bryan’s defeat, takes a toll on Harris. He dies in Washington in 1897, at age seventy-nine, and is buried in Memphis.
THOMAS JORDAN
Jordan continues his loyal service to Beauregard throughout the rest of the war, and after Shiloh, Beauregard secures his promotion to brigadier general.
As well as his own history of Shiloh, Jordan coauthors a biography of Nathan Bedford Forrest, and contributes mightily to the feud between Beauregard and Jefferson Davis by attacking Davis in print at every opportunity.
He serves as editor of a Memphis newspaper, but his reputation among the Southern military hierarchy inspires an invitation from Cuban insurgents, who are struggling to free Cuba from Spanish control. In 1869, he accepts the post as commanding general of the insurgency, and is moderately successful in several actions against the Spanish army. But the job is not one he can complete, and after a year, he returns to the United States, settling in New York City. He dies there in 1895, at age seventy-six.
JAMES SEELEY
The young cavalry officer continues his service to Nathan Bedford Forrest and participates in the planning for what will become Forrest’s enormously effective raids through southern and central Tennessee. But he returns home to Memphis for a brief leave in late May 1862, and is thus witness to the naval battle in early June that results in the Union occupation of that city. Seeking to protect his wife and family, Lieutenant Seeley is captured attempting to flee the city, and is transported to Camp Douglas, near Chicago. In December 1862 he is released through an officer exchange, and returns to service in the cavalry under Nathan Bedford Forrest.
THE LEGACY OF ALBERT SIDNEY JOHNSTON
From all I have been able to gather, the conception, or plan of battle was excellent. It was a complete surprise; and at the moment of General Johnston’s fall … we were successful all along the lines. The enemy was broken and routed and in full retreat. We were moving our commands toward the river with nothing in sight to oppose our easy march.… My conviction is that, had General Johnston survived, his victory would have been complete.… Sometimes the hopes of millions of people depend upon one head and one arm. The West perished with Albert Sidney Johnston, and the Southern country followed
.
—GENERAL R. L. GIBSON, BRAGG’S CORPS
One more resolute movement forward would have captured Grant and his whole army
.
—GENERAL JAMES R. CHALMERS, BRAGG’S CORPS
Commanding generals are liable to be killed during engagements; and the fact that when he was shot, Johnston was leading a brigade to induce it to make a charge which had been repeatedly ordered, is evidence that there was neither the universal demoralization on our side nor the unbounded confidence on theirs which has been claimed. There was in fact no hour during the day when I doubted the eventual defeat of the enemy
.
—ULYSSES S. GRANT
The debate continues.
The night of April 6, Johnston’s body is first placed in Shiloh Church, until well after dark, and after General Beauregard’s order terminates the day’s fighting. He is then transported from the battlefield to Corinth, and placed in the house belonging to Mrs. Inge, who had been his hostess during his stay in the town. There the body is embalmed with whiskey, and thus prepared for burial. The army is officially notified of their general’s death on April 10, after their arduous return to Corinth, though by then few had not heard the news.
Transported by rail to New Orleans, Johnston’s body lies in state in City Hall, and is visited by enormous throngs of the citizenry. On April 11, he is buried in New Orleans’s St. Louis Cemetery. But it is known by Johnston’s family that his wish is to be buried in Texas, and so five years later, after considerable wrangling between the family, the city of New Orleans, and the legislatures of both states, the general’s body is relocated to the Texas State Cemetery in Austin.
No discussion in these pages will solve the enormous “what-if” questions that follow Johnston’s death, despite the lamentations of Jefferson Davis: “When Sidney Johnston fell, it was the turning point of our fate; for we had no other hand to take up his work in the West.”
Or that of Confederate general Richard Taylor: “Had it been possible for one heart, one mind, and one arm to save her cause, [the South] lost them when Albert Sidney Johnston fell on the field at Shiloh.”
Speculation will continue, both North and South, that the outcome of the battle, the war, and American history might have been changed entirely had Johnston lived. Regardless, there is little question that if Johnston had been on the field, the fight on April 6 would not have concluded the way it did. Either Grant’s army would have been severed from Pittsburg Landing, thus forcing certain surrender, or the final Confederate surge would have been blunted by the mass of artillery and the increasing number of Federal infantry that lined the ground above the steep hillsides around Dill Branch and the landing itself. Regardless: Every war has its heroes, those who cement their place in the hearts of their countrymen. In the Eastern Theater of the war, no death carries the emotional power produced by the fall of Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. In the West, that same power is unequaled by the death of Albert Sidney Johnston.
Following Johnston’s death, command of the various Southern armies flows through the hands of a half-dozen men whose various successes and marked failures define the history and the outcome of the war. It is those peculiar moments and tragic accidents in every event that alter our history. The death of Albert Sidney Johnston is one of those moments. That a battle was fought at all around Shiloh Church is another.
Ulysses Grant’s dismissal of the possibility of Southern victory at Shiloh comes directly from his memoirs, written very late in his life. In his earlier writings, he offers us something of a contradiction to that view: “I knew Albert Sidney Johnston before the war, I had a high opinion of his talents. When war broke out, he was regarded as the coming man of the Confederacy. I shared that opinion … but he died too soon, as Stonewall Jackson died, too soon for us to say what he would have done under the later and altered conditions of the war.”
T
he Battle of Shiloh is one of the great tragedies of the Civil War. But regrettably, those stories are many, and the cast of characters enormous. When the men who serve Ulysses Grant are moved away from the great force assembled by Henry Halleck, they begin a new campaign, and a new chapter of the war that will end in yet another dramatic and costly clash of the armies, the commanders, and the men who carry the musket. That place is Vicksburg.
God grant that it may end soon, and yet I do not see any hope for its early termination. The future grows darker. Those persons who reason themselves into the belief that peace will soon come or at least that the war will soon cease, are blinded and mislead by their wishes
.
—DR. LUNSFORD YANDELL, APRIL 21, 1862
For my friend Morris Miller
ALSO BY JEFF SHAARA
Gods and Generals
The Last Full Measure
Gone for Soldiers
Rise to Rebellion
The Glorious Cause
To the Last Man
Jeff Shaara’s Civil War Battlefields
The Rising Tide
The Steel Wave
No Less Than Victory
The Final Storm
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jeff Shaara is the
New York Times
bestselling author of
The Final Storm
,
No Less Than Victory
,
The Steel Wave
,
The Rising Tide
,
To the Last Man
,
The Glorious Cause
,
Rise to Rebellion
, and
Gone for Soldiers
, as well as
Gods and Generals
and
The Last Full Measure
—two novels that complete the Civil War trilogy that began with his father’s Pulitzer Prize–winning classic,
The Killer Angels
. Jeff was born into a family of Italian immigrants in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He grew up in Tallahassee, Florida, and graduated from Florida State University. He lives in Tallahassee.
JeffShaara.com
Jeff Shaara is available for select readings and lectures.
To inquire about a possible appearance, please contact the
Random House Speakers Bureau at 212-572-2013 or
[email protected]
.
