Shiloh, 1862 (36 page)

Harris rode off toward the front and “with some difficulty put the regiment in line of battle on the hill,” wrote Preston Johnston, but “after some delay the wavering of the line [was] still increasing.”
Johnston had no sooner ordered all brigades to prepare for the charge when General Breckinridge reappeared, “in a highly emotional state,” saying he “feared he could not get his brigade to make the charge.” A regiment was bad enough, but now an entire brigade.

“Then I will help you,” Johnston said, and the two of them rode to the front, soon joined again by Harris. Johnston rode down the line, speaking reassurances in his commanding voice. As he had feared, the cowardice of the 45th Tennessee had infected Statham’s other regiments; he sent Breckinridge to speak to one section, accompanied by Breckinridge’s 17-year-old son, whose “beautiful composure and serene fidelity” was remarked on by many eyewitnesses. Down the other way—where the 45th Tennessee was posted—Johnston sent Governor Harris, who “galloped to the right, and after a sharp harangue, dismounted and led them on foot, pistol in hand, up to their alignment, and [was] in the charge when it was made.”

Johnston, meantime, rode along past the reluctant ranks, extending his little looted tin cup that he held in his hand and clinking it on the upright bayonets of the men in line, saying to them, “These must do the work! Men, they are stubborn; we must use the bayonet!” When he reached the center, he turned and faced them on his big thoroughbred bay and cried, “I will lead you!”

His son and biographer Preston Johnston spoke to, or corresponded with, many eyewitnesses to the scene and reported that Johnston’s “voice was persuasive, encouraging and compelling (it was also inviting men to death—but they obeyed it). But most of all it was the light in his gray eye, and his splendid presence that wrought them.”

Statham’s men responded with a mighty Rebel yell, and then marched out toward the Hornet’s Nest. Certainly there was no
more star-studded brigade charge in the history of the Civil War—leading in the center Albert Sidney Johnston, the highest ranking field officer in the Confederate army; leading on the left the former Vice President of the United States John Cabell Breckinridge, and on the right the Confederate governor of Tennessee, Isham Harris, pistol in hand. As Preston Johnston told it: “A sheet of flame burst from the Federal stronghold, and blazed along the crest of the ridge. The line moved forward at a charge with rapid and restless step. There was a roar of cannon and musketry; a storm of lead and iron hail. The Confederate line withered, and the dead and dying strewed the dark valley. But there was not an instant’s pause. Right up the steep they went. The crest was gained.”

The Peach Orchard lay before them, now almost stripped of blossoms, and they went in at the double-quick, driving the Federal forces with the bayonet. Augustus Mecklin and his 15th Mississippi were among them. “Many of our boys fell in this fatal charge,” he said. “Never was there such firing.”

Among those who fell in the charge was Joel Allen Battle, Jr., a recent graduate of Miami College of Ohio and now adjutant of the 20th Tennessee, which was commanded by his father, a wealthy Nashville planter. All day the younger Battle had galloped the field carrying messages and orders, collecting stragglers, and urging men forward. His arm was in a sling from a wound received in the earlier Battle of Mill Springs, or Fishing Creek, in which General Zollicoffer was killed. It was a sad day for the Battle family. Not only was Joel Allen killed but his younger brother was also, and the elder Colonel Battle was captured. The 20th Tennessee, however, was one of the regiments in Statham’s brigade that stood its ground and did not have to be led to the fight by General Johnston. That fact was recorded
many years later by then Gen. G. P. Thruston, whose First Ohio had been opposite his old college friend’s regiment during the fray.

One of those lucky enough to elude the Confederate dragnet was 16-year-old Yankee John A. Cockerill, who shouldn’t have been there at all. Cockerill had enlisted a few months earlier as a musician fourth class in the 24th Ohio Volunteer Regiment of Buell’s army—and he was carefully placed in a company where his brother was a lieutenant and could look after him. But on the morning of April 6, 1862, John Cockerill found himself temporarily assigned to the 70th Ohio of Sherman’s division, in a regiment that was commanded by his own father, Joseph Cockerill. The transfer had been due to young Cockerill’s illness, but on that Sunday morning he had recuperated and was feeling fine and sitting down at the mess table for breakfast “when I heard ominous shots along our picket lines.” Everybody at the table scattered, Cockerill remembered, and “at the first alarm I dropped my knife and fork and ran to my father’s tent, to find him buckling on his sword.”

There, he retrieved his “beautiful Enfield rifle with its beautiful curly maple stock,” which his father had gotten for him, and loaded his cartridge box with ammo. By the time he had finished, “my father was mounted outside and the bullets were whistling through the camp and shell were bursting overhead.”

Uncertain of what to do, Cockerill “ran to the old log Shiloh Church,” from where he beheld “regiment after regiment, and brigade after brigade of Confederate troops” marching toward him. “The sun was just rising in their front and the glittering of their arms made a gorgeous spectacle for me.” It was here that he saw
Sherman and his staff pushing on toward the battle—“the splendid soldier, erect in his saddle, his eye bent forward, he looked like a veritable war eagle.” No sooner had Sherman passed than a Union artillery battery began to fire until a Confederate shell blew up in its midst, Cockerill said, killing the captain and a number of horses, and the second in command fled with what remained “and was not seen at any other time, I believe, during the two days’ engagement.”

It fast became obvious to Cockerill that remaining at the church would probably be injurious to his health, and so he hightailed it back to his regiment’s camp, where he found the tents shot to rags and a mass of wounded men being carried to the rear. Since, as a musician, Cockerill was technically a noncombatant, and responsible during battle for care of the wounded, he joined a carrying party that was moving a badly wounded officer to the rear. With that duty fulfilled, Cockerill became uncertain of what to do, and, finding himself comparatively alone, he started for Pittsburg Landing on the river.

He had gone perhaps a mile when he encountered the Highland brigade of General McArthur, wearing their Scottish tams, with their regimental bands playing and their flags flying. Young Cockerill found them “the handsomest body of troops I ever saw.”

“As I sauntered by, a chipper young lieutenant, sword in hand, stopped me and said: “Where do you belong?’ ”

He replied, “I belong to Ohio,” to which the lieutenant answered, “Well, Ohio is making a bad show of itself here to-day. Do you want to come and fight with us?”

Not knowing what else to do, Cockerill nodded his assent. The lieutenant took out a notebook and wrote down his name and regiment, “in case anything should happen to me,” which is how a
16-year-old Ohio boy found himself fighting with a brigade of Illinois Scotsmen on the far, far left flank of the Hornet’s Nest.

Cockerill stood there for a while bewildered at what he had done. He knew no one, and no one spoke to him. Then one of the bands struck up “Hail Columbia” and the brigade fell in, turned, and marched toward the boom and rattle of the fighting. The first task assigned to Cockerill’s regiment was support of an artillery battery, one of the most disagreeable jobs for infantry troops in battle. This was because the opposing artillery naturally opened “counterbattery” fire at the earliest opportunity, and owing to the imprecision of the artillery of the day a great many of the shells fell among the infantry troops supporting (guarding) the battery. Then, if things went as planned, the enemy would deliberately concentrate its attack so as to fall upon the artillery battery and silence it, which meant hot work for the infantry supports. Suffice it to say there were many groans of profanity whenever it was learned that supporting the artillery would be the fate of the troops that day.

For what seemed like hours Cockerill and his companions hugged ground around the roaring artillery battery on the far Federal left and said whatever passed for prayers. “Everything looked weird and unnatural,” he remembered years later, “the very leaves on the trees seemed greener than I have ever seen leaves, and larger. The wounded and butchered men who came up out of the blue smoke in front of us, and were dragged or sent hobbling to the rear, seemed like bleeding messengers come to tell of the fate awaiting us.”

General McArthur went by, his hand, like Sherman’s, wrapped in a handkerchief from a wound. Suddenly the Rebel charge broke upon them and the enemy line stopped to fire. “The bullets
shrieked over our heads and in our ranks,” Cockerill said, “soon the dry leaves were on fire, and the smoke added to the general obscurity. At this moment the young lieutenant [the one who took Cockerill’s name and regiment] who was gallantly waving his sword at the front, was struck by a bullet and fell instantly dead, almost at my feet. I shuddered at the thought—
dead and unknown
.”

By that time the fire “became so terrible that we were driven back into the ravine. I was crouched down loading my piece when a man who had been struck above me, fell on top of me and died by my side.” Cockerill kept firing until he ran out of cartridges, and then he saw the Rebel charge: “I saw the gray dirty uniforms of the enemy. I heard their fierce yells. I saw their flags flapping in the grimy atmosphere. That was a sight I have never forgotten. I can see the tiger ferocity in those faces yet; I can see them in my dreams.”

This proved too much and the blue line wavered, then broke. Everyone turned and ran for the rear. A private fleeing next to Cockerill suddenly “gave a scream of agony” and began dragging one of his legs. Cockerill stopped and the soldier leaned on his shoulder and begged for help. “I half carried and half dragged him for some distance, still holding to my Enfield rifle, with its beautiful curly stock,” Cockerill said, but something between duty and compassion forced upon him a hard choice.

Regretfully, he said, “Seeing that I must give up the role of Good Samaritan or drop my rifle, I threw it down.” All the while, “the bullets were whistling more fiercely than at any time during the engagement. My companion was growing weaker all the time.” Finally Cockerill sat him down beside a tree and watched him bleed to death. “I knew nothing of surgery or how to staunch the
flow of blood,” he said. Another soldier passed by, took a look, and remarked, “He’s a dead man.”

When the wounded soldier died Cockerill resumed his flight, walking down a road, when he encountered some cavalry engaged in stopping stragglers. One of them he recognized as a man from his father’s regiment. When the boy inquired about the regiment the trooper told him that “it had been entirely cut to pieces, and that he, personally, had witnessed the death of my father—he had seen him shot from his horse.”

Sixteen-year-old John Cockerill, musician fourth class, bearing this awful news, trudged toward Pittsburg Landing, not because he felt he would find anything better there but simply because he couldn’t think of any other place to go.

The charge of Statham’s brigade, led by the commanding general Sidney Johnston, marked the beginning of the collapse of the Hornet’s Nest. On the Federal left, Colonel Pugh and his Illinoisans, and the brigade of General McArthur—with all their artillery, including young John Cockerill—fell back nearly half a mile to a new line astride the Hamburg-Savannah road at the southern edge of Wicker Field. But the Rebels, led by Chalmers’s brigade, which had finally disposed of Stuart, were sidling around farther north and fast closing in on the Union left flank.

After getting Statham’s charge under way, General Johnston and Governor Harris had reunited in the rear as the Rebel line continued to press forward. Johnston was sitting alone on his horse when Harris found him. “I had never, in my life, seen him looking more bright, joyous and happy,” Harris recalled afterward. Occasional
bullets still whistled around them, fired by small bands of Yankee survivors who, by Preston Johnston’s account, “delivered volley after volley as they sullenly retired.”