Shiloh (2 page)

It worked so well on paper—the flat, clean paper. On paper,
in the colonel's lamp-lit office, when we saw a problem it was easy to fix; all
we had to do was direct that corps commanders regulate their columns so as not
to delay each other, halting until crossroads were cleared, keeping their files
well closed, and so forth. It didn’t work out that way on the ground, which was
neither flat nor clean—nor, as it turned out, dry. The troops were green. Most
of them had never been on a real tactical march before, and many of them
received their arms for the first time when they assembled in their camps that
Thursday morning; frequently, during halts, I saw sergeants showing recruits
how to load their muskets the regulation way. They were in high spirits,
advancing on an enemy who for the past three months had been pushing us
steadily backward over hundreds of miles of our own country, and they marched
with a holiday air, carrying their muskets like hunters, so that the column
bristled with
gunbarrels
glinting at jaunty angles
like pins in a cushion.

I stood with General Johnston beside the road and watched
them go past, men of all ages and from all sections of the country, wearing
homemade uniforms, many of them, and carrying every kind of firearm, from modem
Springfields and Enfields, back to smoothbore flintlock muskets which were fired
last in the War of 1812. When the 9th Texas swung past, we saw an elderly
private who marched with the firm step of the oldtime regular. He was singing.

         
"I’ve
shot at many a Mexican

         
And many a
Injun too

         
But I never
thought I'd draw a bead

         
On
Yankee-Doodle-Do."

The general turned to me with a smile. He too was marching
against the flag he had served most of his life. During the period when he was
being hailed as the savior of liberty there were page-long biographies of him
in all the newspapers, but they were as full of errors as they were of praise.
I know because I had the true story from my father, who spent many a night
beside a campfire with him down in Texas.

Albert Sidney Johnston had just passed his fifty-ninth
birthday at the time of the battle. He was born in Kentucky, the youngest son
of a doctor. After two years at Transylvania University he went to West Point.
He was nineteen, older than most of the cadets and more serious. Leonidas Polk,
the future bishop-general, was his roommate. Jefferson Davis, who also had
followed him at Transylvania, was two classes below him. Johnston graduated
high in his class and thus was privileged to choose his branch of service. He
declined a position as aide to General Scott and chose the infantry. That was
characteristic, as you’ll see— sometimes he behaved like a man in search of
death.

While he was a young Lieutenant, stationed at Jefferson
Barracks, he attended a ball in St Louis where he met the girl he married a
year later. She was from Louisville, and I have heard my father say she had the
loveliest singing voice he ever heard. In the spring and summer of 1832 she
stayed home with her parents while her husband went to fight in the Black Hawk
War. When he returned he found her dying. Physicians pronounced her lungs weak,
bled her freely and often, and put her on a diet of goat's milk and Iceland
moss.

Johnston resigned from the army and came home to nurse her.
That was 1833, the year the stars fell. In late summer of the second year she
died. After her death he retired to a farm near St Louis where they had
intended to live when he left the army. But life was intolerable there, too
filled with memories of the things they had planned together. It was at this
time that he heard Stephen Austin speak in Louisville and threw in with the
Texas revolutionists.

He joined as a private trooper but soon he was appointed
adjutant general. When he was made commander of the Texas army and proceeded to
his post, he found that Felix Huston, who was serving as acting commander—Old
Leather Britches, he was called— felt that being superseded was an affront he couldn’t
abide with honor. Though he did not blame Johnston personally, he decided his
only redress was to challenge him to a duel. He sent Johnston the following
note:
I really esteem your character,
& know that you must be sensible of the delicacy of my situation. I
therefore propose a meeting between us, in as short a period as you can make
convenient.

Johnston replied:
After
reciprocating the sentiments of respect and esteem which you have been pleased
to express toward me, it only remains to accord you the meeting proposed. I
have designated 7 o’clock, a.m., tomorrow
—and signed it:
Your most obedient servant, A. S. Johnston.

He had the choice of weapons, by the code, but as there were
no dueling pistols available and as Huston had no experience with rapiers, with
which Johnston himself was an expert, he agreed to use Huston's horse pistols.
They were hair-trigger weapons: Huston had a reputation for being able to light
matches with them at fifty feet. So Johnston watched Huston's trigger finger
and every time Huston was about to line up the sights, Johnston would fire
without taking aim, causing Huston's finger to twitch and the shot to go
astray. After five wild shots Huston was boiling mad;

it had passed beyond a mere question of Honor now —his skill
as a marksman was being ridiculed. Years later my father, who was one of the
seconds, said it would have been highly comical if it hadn’t been deadly
serious. Huston finally managed to steady himself, angry as he was, and put the
sixth shot into Johnston's hip.

After a slow and painful five weeks spent recovering from
the wound, during which time Texas won her independence, Johnston served as
Secretary of War in the cabinet. About this time he married a young cousin of
his first wife—mainly, my father said, to have someone to mother his children.
His share in the Mexican War was limited by politics, but he fought at the
Battle of Monterey under Zachary Taylor, whom he much admired. My father was
there too and told me afterwards that Johnston fought in the garb of a typical
Texan, wearing a red flannel shirt and blue jean pants, a checkered coat and a
wide-awake hat; but I was never able to imagine him dressed that way, no matter
how hard I tried.

After the war he retired to China Grove plantation in
Brazoria County, enjoying life with his family, until in late '49 he was
recalled into the U. S. Army by old General Taylor, who had been elected
President. Six years later, Jefferson Davis, Secretary of War under Franklin
Pierce, gave him command of the newly organized 2d Cavalry, and he spent the
next two years fighting Indians on the frontier. Robert E. Lee was his
lieutenant colonel, William Hardee and George Thomas his majors. In the late
'50s he led his troops against the Mormons out in Utah, and when he returned
east in i860, brevetted brigadier, he was appointed to command on the Pacific
Coast, with headquarters at Fort Alcatraz near San Francisco. When Texas
seceded he crossed the desert with thirty pro-Southerners and became the
ranking field general on the active Confederate list. After him came Lee, Joe
Johnston (no kin) and Beauregard.

That was his life, and it was a simple one. He knew
disappointments, including the death of the one he loved most in the world, had
a conspicuous share in a successful revolution, and knew the humdrum life of a
country farmer. Then, at a time when he had every right to think he was through
with war and the call of glory, he found himself at storm center of the
greatest event of his country's history. At first there had been praise. Then
had come vilification. And now, standing beside the road and watching his
troops start out on their march against the army that had pushed him back three
hundred miles while the clamor of the South rang in his ears, accusing him of
incompetence and even treason, there was satisfaction for himself and
justification in the eyes of the people.

The weather was clear, not a cloud in the sky when the march
began. Regiment by regiment the army lurched into column, rifles dressed at
right shoulder shift and the men stepping out smartly, lifting their knees as
if on parade. Then the rain began. At first it didn’t bother them, not even the
abrupt, thunderous showers of Mississippi in April; but soon the wheels of the
wagons and the artillery had churned the road into shin-deep mud, and after the
first dozen laughs at men who slipped and sprawled, it began to wear thin.
There were halts and unaccountable delays, times when they had to trot to keep
up, and times—more frequent—when they stood endlessly in the rain, waiting for
the man ahead to stumble into motion. The new muskets grew heavy; haversack
straps began to cut their shoulders, and there was less laughter and more
cursing as the time wore past. Friday, when I approached the column from the
rear, the road was littered with discarded equipment, extra boots, sabers and
bowie knives, overcoats. Bibles and playing-cards. At one point, four miles
out, there was a steel vest thrown into a fence comer, already flecked with
rust but gleaming like old silver in the rain.

All that day as I moved along the column I came upon
regiments halted beside the road, the troops leaning on their rifles while the
commanding general's address was read to them by their colonels. General Johnston
had written it Wednesday night in Corinth while we were composing the battle
order.

Soldiers
of the Army of the Mississippi: I have put you in motion to offer battle to the
invaders of your country. With the resolution and discipline and valor becoming
men fighting, as you are, for all worth living or dying for, you can hut march
to a decisive victory over the agrarian mercenaries sent to subjugate you and
to despoil you of your liberties, your property, and your honor. Remember the
precious stake involved; remember the dependence of your mothers, your wives,
your sisters, and your children, on the result; remember the fair, broad,
abounding land, and the happy homes that "would be desolated by your
defeat.

The eyes
and hopes of eight millions of people rest upon you; you are expected to show
yourselves worthy of your lineage, worthy of the women of the South, whose
noble devotion in this war has never been exceeded in any time. With such
incentives to brave deeds, and with the trust that God is with us, your
generals will lead you confidently to the combat — assured of success.

A. S.
Johnston, General commanding.

I heard it delivered in all styles, ranging from the
oratorical, with flourishes, to the matter-of-fact, depending on the colonel.
Many of them had been public men, and these made the most of the occasion,
adding remarks of their own and pausing between sentences and phrases for the
applause of their men, particularly-after "women of the South" which
was good for a yell every time. But generally speaking the result was the same:
the troops cheered politely, lifting their hats, then fell back into ranks to
continue the march.

Bragg had almost as many men as the other three commanders
put together. Marching all day Friday, he made just six miles, so he had to
send word for Hardee to wait for him beyond the crossroads where their columns
would converge. It must have galled him to have to send that message, for when
I carried a dispatch to him that night at his roadside camp he was hopping mad.
He was not yet fifty, a tall gangling man made ferocious-looking by thick bushy
eyebrows which grew in a continuous line across the bottom of his forehead. He
was a West Pointer, a hero of the Mexican War, and his troops were acknowledged
to be the best-drilled in our army.

They got that way because of the strictness of his
discipline. I heard once that one of his soldiers attempted to assassinate him
not long after the Mexican War by exploding a twelve-pound shell under his cot,
and I believe it, for there were men in his corps on the present campaign who
would go that far in their hatred of him; or at least they said they would.
Anyhow, he left the army about that time and came to Louisiana and became a
sugar planter in Terre Bonne parish and I heard he made a good one. I never
knew him down there, but I used to hear my father speak of him. Indeed, his
name was known everywhere because of what old Rough-and-Ready Taylor was
supposed to have said to him at Buena Vista: "A little more grape, Captain
Bragg," though later I heard my father tell that what General Taylor
really said was "Captain, give 'em hell." When Louisiana went out of
the Union he was put in command of her volunteer forces, and later President
Davis appointed him brigadier general and sent him to Pensacola to be in charge
of Confederate troops down there. He had a reputation for firmness in
everything. If his men didn’t love him, at least they respected him as a
soldier, and I believe Bragg preferred it that way.

Hardee waited, as Bragg had requested, and it was late
Saturday evening before all the troops were in position to attack. No wonder
Beauregard wanted to go back and start all over again: in his mind, surprise
was everything, and he had good cause to believe that the enemy knew we were
there. When the rain let up the men began to worry about the dampness of the
powder in their rifles; but instead of drawing the charges and reloading, they
tested them by snapping the triggers as they marched. All Saturday evening
there was an intermittent banging of muskets up and down the column, as rackety
as a sizeable picket clash.