Shiloh, 1862 (32 page)

James Chalmers, a 31-year-old University of South Carolina–educated lawyer and former district attorney for Holly Springs, Mississippi, was short, slight, belligerent, and later in the war one of Bedford Forrest’s finest cavalry commanders. Today his 2,039-man infantry brigade had been entrusted with the key to Sidney Johnston’s battle plan for the undoing of the Union army. Unfortunately Beauregard, charged with feeding reinforcements into the fight, was all the way over on the Confederate left, several miles from where Chalmers’s effort was being undertaken. And Beauregard was still operating under that Napoleonic fixation of his—that reinforcements must be ordered to the sounds of the heaviest fighting, which, in his case, was the battle right in front him involving the dispute with the divisions of Sherman and Prentiss.

Chalmers was the first of the two brigades sent to affect the turning movement on the far Confederate right. He commanded four regiments of Mississippians plus the 52nd Tennessee, which, like its opposite the 71st Ohio, at the first sign of trouble that morning had “broke and fled in the most shameful confusion,” according to Chalmers, who sourly added that, “After repeated efforts to rally it, this regiment was ordered out of the lines, where it remained during the balance of the engagement.”
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With his right flank on Lick Creek and facing north, Chalmers ordered his brigade forward until they came to an orchard about 400 yards wide behind which was “a steep and perfectly abrupt hill” with deep underbrush and lined by a fence, “behind which the enemy was concealed.”

Chalmers called up his six-gun battery of Alabama artillery commanded by Capt. Charles P. Gage. He then gave the order for the brigade to advance against the enemy. “My line moved on across the orchard in most perfect order and splendid style,” Chalmers said later, “and to my great surprise not a shot was fired until we came within 40 yards of the fence.” The result was an instant bloodbath from buck and ball in which Chalmers’s men “suffered heavily in killed and wounded” but “after a hard fight drove the enemy from his concealment.”

At that point, Chalmers said in his official report, his men needed to replenish their ammunition, and half an hour was given over to this task. Resupply was one of the greatest impediments to the Confederate attack at Shiloh. Unlike the Yankees who, as they gave ground, actually backed closer to their ammo dumps, the Rebel brigades struggled to replenish their ammunition from wagons that often had the utmost difficulty keeping up as the assault rolled through the dense forests, ravines, creek beds, and swamps that characterized the terrain.

Stuart, still holding the far left of the Federal line, and still waiting for something to happen, said that between the loss of the 71st Ohio and fugitives who had fled from his 55th Illinois and 54th Ohio, he could count only 800 rifles in his ranks to defend against
Chalmers’s 1,200 remaining men and Jackson’s 2,600, coming up on his left. From about 10 a.m. on, the two sides skirmished, taking pot shots at each other, with the Confederates lobbing in some artillery shells. One of these Rebel pot shots hit Stuart in the shoulder, and although he stayed with the brigade he turned over immediate command of the 55th Illinois to Colonel Malmborg, with his quaint Scandinavian military ways. Then, at 11:30, Chalmers attacked, and the sight of hundreds of Confederate soldiers in battle line with flags flying caused members of the 55th Illinois to quaver once more.

Malmborg again ordered the regiment to form into a hollow square, a maneuver that brought the Rebel charge up short. The Confederates “had never seen a hollow square, or even heard of it,” and they were intensely suspicious, some crying out, “It’s a Yankee trick!” They were wary that the Yankees had masked batteries hidden somewhere, “or perhaps something more mysterious and dreadful.”

When the hollow square made no further moves, the Confederate line went forward again, but Malmborg ordered the square to withdraw a few hundred yards. The Confederates halted again and began discussing it with one another. They could not believe the weird formation they were seeing, as it scuttled backward bristling like an angry blue porcupine with its fixed bayonets sticking out on all sides—it seemed somehow deceitful, as if it must be trying to lure them into a trap. The Rebel officers prodded, cajoled, and cursed and the Confederate line advanced once more. And once more the hollow square withdrew.

At length, Malmborg discovered he had gone as far as he could go, finding himself at the brink of an enormous ravine at least a hundred feet deep. There he ordered the hollow square to disburse,
cross the ravine, and form in line of battle on an elevation in the rear, which proved to be a perfect defensive position, at least for the next two hours, but it was as bloody a two hours as any on a field where nearly all the fighting was horrific and pitiless.

Pvt. Robert Oliver, of the 55th Illinois, was lying behind a log firing when 2nd Lt. Theodore W. Hodges came up beside him “and knelt on one knee with the point of his sword on the ground, saying, ‘Oliver, as soon as you get your gun loaded take Ainsbury to the rear.’ Then he was hit with a canister shot in the head. He hung to the hilt of his sword until his hand came to the ground, bending the sword double, and when he let go it bounded six feet into the air. That was the last command he ever gave.”

A Rebel soldier remembered that his regiment “fought like Indians,” from behind trees, brush, rocks, and logs. It was here that the Rev. M. L. Weller, chaplain of the Ninth Mississippi, was slain giving succor to the wounded.

After the death of Lieutenant Hodges, Private Oliver located the wounded Ainsbury and turned him over to another soldier headed to the rear. Then he heard the voice of a friend, “who called out, ‘Robert, for God’s sake don’t leave me.’ I looked back and saw James D. Godwin of my regiment,” Oliver said. “He had everything off except his pants, and was as red as if he had been dipped into a barrel of blood. I said, ‘Never—put your arm around me and I will do the best I can for you.’ ” As he lugged Godwin back he felt more bullets slam into his friend, and when he finally found a surgeon, “upon cutting the shirt off, to my horror there were seven bullet holes in that boy, not yet seventeen years old,” Oliver said.

Capt. L. B. Crooker, also of the 55th Illinois, had been hit in the legs and collapsed beneath a large elm tree where he encountered
orderly sergeant Parker B. Bagley, who inquired, “Crooker, are you hurt, too?” Crooker asked for water and then, because their position seemed to attract many Rebel bullets, they began to crawl away. But Crooker collapsed again. Bagley took him by the arm and slung him over his shoulder when, Crooker said, “a burning sensation passed along my back, and we both fell together.” The bullet had hit him “crosswise, under the shoulder and passed on, killing poor Bagley. Lying beneath him I could feel his hot blood run down my side, and hear … his dying groan.”

With its superior numbers, Chalmers’s left flank began to wrap around the Federal right, and Stuart ordered a withdrawal across yet another ravine just behind them, to what he thought was a more defensible position. This was accomplished, but not without horrible bloodshed for, as Captain Crooker explained, “Almost instantly the ground [we had] left was occupied by swarms of exultant and yelling rebels, who now, without danger to themselves, poured a shower of bullets down upon and among the fugitives.” A Major Whitfield of the Ninth Mississippi said (after the war), “We were right on top of you. It was like shooting into a flock of sheep.”

Not only that, but a battery from Jackson’s brigade added to the carnage, firing canister and grapeshot point blank at the helpless Yankees, who were trying to scramble up the steep sides of the ravine. One Confederate compared it with shooting “fish in a barrel.” About 200 of Stuart’s men were killed or wounded while fleeing across the ravine, but the remaining 400—who had set up on a rise at the opposite lip of the ravine—gave an excellent account of themselves for yet another hour, bringing the Confederate assault on the far left to a standstill, but not without a price.

“Only the excitement of battle could sustain a man in the midst of such carnage,” wrote Lt. Elijah Lawrence. “As man after man was shot down or mutilated, a feeling of perfect horror came over me at times, and I berated the powers that placed us in such a position and left us alone to our fate. Can it be wondered at when forty-three out of sixty-four of my own company were killed or wounded in that short time?”

The bloodshed continued unabated until near 3 p.m. when Stuart’s men were down to their last bullets and the Confederates had worked their way to within 20 feet of Stuart’s line. Right about that time the Federal gunboat
Tyler
came alive and began diabolically lobbing its huge nine-inch shells into Chalmers’s positions. Nobody was hurt, but the shock of the explosions gave time for the remnants of Stuart’s brigade to escape through the woods toward Pittsburg Landing, which was the only place they had to go. They had held the line against a combined Confederate force five times their number and, by many accounts, saved the Union’s left flank.

For his part, when the shells from the gunboats began to land amid his positions, Chalmers “pressed rapidly” out of the area, and toward the Union center, “where the battle seemed to be raging fiercely.” That may have sounded good in his after action report, but why didn’t he pursue Stuart’s people right to Pittsburg Landing? Chalmers doesn’t tell us, nor does anyone else. It may have had to do with exposure to the gunboat firing, or because tactical policy in Johnston’s army always dictated marching “to the sound of the guns.” But one thing for sure was that even as late as 3 p.m. the way to Grant’s supply base and main line of communication had been wide and clear.

Even less clear is what General Jackson and his brigade had contributed to the enterprise. For much of the time Jackson seemed
inert. At the beginning Jackson put himself “in support” of Chalmers, but when the fighting was the heaviest, and the weight of his 2,200 men could have changed the balance, he was not in it. Initially, Jackson was ordered by Johnston, who had ridden over for a look-see, to charge the camps of the 55th Illinois in the orchard.
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But the camps proved to be very nearly deserted. After that, Jackson faced a force commanded by the Yankee general John McArthur, whose brigade wore Scottish tams and marched to bagpipe music. But most of the time when Chalmers was having his fight against Stuart, Jackson’s brigade did not seem to do more than exchange fire. Late in the battle, when Chalmers was hard pressed, he rode back to Jackson’s position and got two regiments as reinforcements, and though they helped turn the tide it was becoming very late in the day.

In short, what was later estimated to be no more than 600 Yankees and no artillery held off two Rebel brigades of 3,600 men and two artillery batteries of six guns each. It was one of the oddest, and most unequal, fights of the day, and if the men of Stuart’s brigade had not made their stand the landing might have fallen into Confederate hands. In other words, a checkmate.

After Stuart’s retreat Jackson, like Chalmers, marched his brigade left toward the Union center, to the rising
pop-pop-pop
and
boom
of the guns, where both ran straight into the 19th century’s version of a buzz saw. Later it would become known as the Hornet’s Nest.