Shiloh, 1862 (23 page)

E
VEN AS MORE
R
EBEL TROOPS ARRIVED IN
C
ORINTH
, Beauregard’s throat had not yet healed and continued to cause him trouble and pain, and he was often unable to provide anything but advice and consultation. Still, he insisted on being informed of any important intelligence. In the late hours of April 2, a Wednesday, the commander of a detachment at Bethel Station on the Mobile and Ohio line, about 25 miles north of Corinth, telegraphed headquarters that a mass of Union soldiers had been maneuvering for what appeared to be an attack toward Memphis. Since Bethel Springs was north and east of Pittsburg Landing, the Union troops undoubtedly belonged to the division of Lew Wallace, who was camped at Crump’s Landing about five miles north of Grant’s main body.

From his sickbed Beauregard scribbled a note on the bottom of the telegram saying, “Now is the moment to advance, and strike
the enemy at Pittsburg Landing.” He had Colonel Jordan personally deliver it to General Johnston. Johnston consulted Bragg, who, when aroused from sleep in his quarters across the street, studied the message and Beauregard’s recommendation and gave it his approval as well.

Still, Johnston wasn’t so sure. The soldiers needed more instruction, he said, and he wanted to wait for Van Dorn, who would add 10,000 battle-tested men to his army. None of Johnston’s soldiers had been in battle, as at least some of Grant’s had at the river forts. Many did not yet understand the drill commands, so critical in combat, or for that matter a sense of discipline and duty and, worse, total commitment to honor and to the cause. They were green, all right; some had been recruited barely a week earlier.

Bragg pointed out that every day they waited, they ran the risk that Buell’s army would arrive, or that Grant would himself recognize the danger he was in and begin to fortify. Johnston relented and told Jordan to see that each of the troops was issued a hundred rounds of ammunition and three days’ cooked rations. Green or not, they would prepare to march on Pittsburg Landing by 6 a.m.
¹

This was far easier ordered than done, for heavy rains had muddied the two narrow dirt roads between Corinth and the landing so as to make them almost impassable for troops, let alone artillery, ammunition trains and supply wagons, and the thousands of other vehicles and animals that would have to pass over them during the 20-mile march.

By 10 a.m. next morning, Thursday, April 3, Jordan was still working on the marching order. Johnston, however, decided to start the troops anyway, without waiting for the written order. Utter disarray quickly descended upon the endeavor, owing to the obstinacy of General Polk.

Polk had resigned his officer’s commission almost immediately after graduating from West Point, some 35 years previous, to go into the ministry, and apparently he had not absorbed a sufficient appreciation of real-world military problems beyond his student days—or, as one of his fellow officers put it, “He had been in the cloth too long.” Polk’s corps, it seems, was encamped in the narrow streets of Corinth, through which led the only roads to Pittsburg Landing, with its artillery, baggage, supplies, and thousands of troops clogging the way. By late afternoon it was discovered that Polk had idiotically refused to move without a written order, resulting in gridlock that reminded one officer of “the temple scene in
Orlando furioso
.”
²
Thus Polk prevented the departure of Hardee’s corps, scheduled to attack first, and Bragg’s, which was next. When it was finally sorted out the shadows were long lengthened and Hardee’s people, marching in the dark, would not reach their appointed destinations that night, further disordering the plans.

The expression “confusion reigned supreme” is rarely, if ever, more apt. Brigades, divisions—indeed, whole corps—detoured down wrong roads and paths or encamped in places where other brigades, divisions, and whole corps needed to pass. The plan had
been for the army to be on the march at 3 a.m. on April 4, so as to attack at sunrise on the fifth, but along with the marching order foul-up, a torrential all-night downpour drowned these hopes. Streams swelled their banks and covered bridges; roads washed out; men became “anxious to keep their powder dry.”

Units consistently became lost—even guides became lost. Entire trains of overloaded baggage wagons and artillery had to be manhandled to the sides of roads to let troops pass. Sergeants argued with teamsters mired in axle-deep mud, staff officers yelled at unit commanders, and the air became blue with frustrated profanity. Hardee somehow reached his line of departure on time and deployed in line of battle, but Bragg’s corps became entangled with Pope’s and Breckinridge’s, and the end result was a delay of 24 hours, which was probably fatal.

By midmorning, April 4, as Johnston prepared to leave his Corinth headquarters in Mrs. William Inge’s “Rose Cottage,” the hostess approached him, saying, “General, will you let me give you some cake and a couple of sandwiches?”—to which he replied with a bow, “No thank you, Mrs. Inge, we soldiers travel light.” Sixty years later she remembered, “I curtsied, but I did not say anything. Nobody ever contradicted General Johnston. But I quietly went out into the kitchen and wrapped up two sandwiches and put them in his coat pocket.”

Cavalry scouts were still reporting that the Yankees had not fortified, and there were no signs that Buell had arrived. After spending the night on the road, Johnston and Beauregard arrived on the field in front of Grant about seven next morning, April 5, expecting to launch the attack. But Bragg was short an entire division, which he could not find. After waiting most of the morning Johnston
looked at his watch and cried in disgust, “This is perfectly puerile! This is not war!” He rode to the rear, where he found Bragg’s lost division once more obstructed by Polk’s troops. By the time that was sorted out it was past two, and past four by the time Polk got in line, and Breckinridge was still bringing up the rear.

Both Johnston and Beauregard agreed that it was too late to launch the attack that day, and that evening Beauregard got cold feet about the whole plan. About 4 p.m., as Polk was placing his men into a line of battle behind Bragg, he was told that Beauregard wanted to see him immediately. When he reached Beauregard’s headquarters Polk found the second in command talking excitedly with Bragg, and soon Breckinridge rode up. “I am very much disappointed at the delay,” Beauregard “said with much feeling,” according to Polk, who replied, “So am I sir,” and began to explain what he saw as the reasons for his tardiness (namely Bragg). But that was not what Beauregard meant.

“He said he regretted the delay exceedingly,” Polk remembered, “as it would make it necessary to forgo the attack altogether; that our success depended on our surprising the enemy; that this was now impossible, and we must fall back to Corinth.” Polk was in shock. Here they were within a mile and a half of the enemy camps and Beauregard wanted to call it off?

There were reasons other than surprise that also caused the excitable little Creole to lose his nerve. Reports had come in that because of the delay many of the soldiers had consumed all their rations, and there was now every likelihood that Buell would soon be arriving. But most seriously was the matter of the firing they had heard sporadically that afternoon from Hardee’s positions at the front. “Now,” exclaimed Beauregard, “they will be entrenched to the eyes!”

At this point Johnston appeared and “asked what was the matter.”

When Beauregard repeated his gloomy assessment, the army commander replied, “This would never do.” He asked Polk what he thought, and the bishop general gave his opinion that his troops “were in as good condition as they ever had been; that they were eager for the battle; that to retire now would operate injuriously upon them, and I thought we ought to attack.”

At this a “warm” discussion broke out among the corps commanders, but Johnston’s “blood was up,” and he interrupted with a conclusion that ended the argument: “Gentlemen, we shall attack at daylight to-morrow.” He disagreed that the Yankees were on high alert, but in any case remarked to one of his staff officers as they walked away, “I would fight them if they were a million. They can present no greater front between those two creeks than we can, and the more men they crowd in there, the worse we can make it for them.”

That night the men slept on their arms and built no fires, even though the air was chilly. From time to time after midnight there was desultory firing from the front line. Practically none of these men had seen battle before, but they had at last arrived at the place where the elephant lived. Promptly at 4 a.m. the troops were quietly awakened all along the line, given some time for morning ablutions, such as they were, and a hasty breakfast of cold bacon and biscuits. Then the hundreds of companies were formed into hollow squares where the captain read a short address from the commanding general: “I have put you in motion to offer battle to the invaders of your country … you can but march to victory over the mercenaries sent to subjugate you and despoil you of your liberties, your property and your honor … 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 … and with the trust that God is with us, your generals will lead you confidently to the combat—assured of success.”

After that, the army was arrayed in two successive lines of battle, each about two miles long, one corps after the other, 800 yards apart, facing north—Hardee first, then Bragg—then Polk when he came up, with Breckinridge in the rear in reserve.

Johnston had originally envisioned an order of battle in which the three corps would attack abreast—Bragg on the right, Hardee in the center, and Polk on the left. This is what he telegraphed to Jefferson Davis on April 3. But as it turned out the three corps were strung out laterally for two miles or more, going into battle one behind the other. Just how this happened remains one of the many mysteries of Shiloh.

Johnston’s original idea seems like the more sensible formation, since it allowed each corps commander the flexibility to fight his own corps on a front of a mile or less, instead of being spread out in a long line that was certain to become entangled as the other corps moved into the fight. But either Johnston did not communicate this correctly or emphatically enough to Beauregard or Beauregard ignored it. After the war some, including Jefferson Davis, and Bragg in particular, accused Beauregard of deliberately changing Johnston’s plan without consulting the commanding general. It may be so, because apparently the first Johnston heard of the order for the three corps to attack
en echelon
was on April 4, the day the army went on the march. It has been suggested that Johnston simply gave in to Beauregard’s plan because it was too late to change it. Perhaps he felt that way at the time; we will never know.
In any case, Johnston was the commander, and in the end the decision to go into battle with such an awkward formation was his responsibility. In Bragg’s estimation, years later, Johnston’s original battle plan was “admirable,” but “the elaboration (Beauregard’s), simply execrable.”

The sky changed from gray to pink while some of the generals, including Beauregard, huddled around the campfire at Johnston’s headquarters. According to Bragg, Beauregard’s argument of the previous evening was suddenly renewed, “with Beauregard again expressing his dissent.”

At almost the same time from the distant forest toward Pittsburg Landing came a rising crackle of rifle fire and then the boom of a cannon.
³
At this, General Johnston closed the discussion. “Note the hour, please,” he said. “The battle has opened, gentlemen.” Mounting his big thoroughbred charger Fire-Eater, Johnston declared to the little assembly, “Tonight we will water our horses in the Tennessee River.”

He and Beauregard rode down Bragg’s front line offering encouragement to the division and brigade commanders. At some point word got back that the men wanted to see Beauregard, resplendent in his full Confederate gray and gold uniform, topped by the snappy red-trimmed French kepi he always wore. The Creole was reluctant at first, but he assented with the condition that there must be no cheering to alert the enemy.

Johnston approached Gen. Randall Gibson, of Bragg’s corps, commanding a Louisiana brigade. “I hope you may get through safely to-day,” he said, “but we
must win a victory
.” He placed his hand on Col. John Marmaduke’s shoulder and said, “My son, we must this day either conquer or perish.” To Thomas Hindman, commanding Hardee’s First Brigade and wearing a long brown duster, Johnston said, “You have
earned
your spurs as a major-general. Let this day’s work
win
them.”

Deep in the ranks of Hindman’s brigade, in a regiment called the Dixie Grays, at the very center of the front line attack, stood a 21-year-old Welsh bastard named Henry Morton Stanley who three years earlier had escaped a British workhouse and jumped a ship bound for New Orleans—and who, ten years later, would become the world-famous journalist and African explorer who “found” the missing missionary David Livingstone in the Belgian Congo by famously greeting him, “Doctor Livingstone, I presume?”