Talons of Eagles (11 page)

Sherman was forced to admit he had made a terrible mistake, and at ten o'clock that Sunday morning, he ordered his men to fall back, but make the Rebels pay in blood for every inch of ground.

Both sides would pay in blood.

All along the line, from eight positions, the Rebels charged the Union line with fixed bayonets, waving the Stars and Bars and screaming the Rebel Yell. Years after the war had ended, Union veterans said they could still hear that awful battle cry in their dreams.

General Prentiss' line was the first to break, sending hundreds and then thousands of men running toward the river. They clogged the trails and roads and prevented reinforcements from reaching the front.

Sherman's line began to buckle, but not break. He gave ground, his men fighting fiercely as they slowly withdrew.

With so many of the Federals pulling back in huge clumps of blue uniforms, Beauregard and Johnston now massed their troops into three attack lines . . . and then the whole shebang halted for breakfast.

When the battle resumed (both the Blue and the Gray on the front lines had paused for a bite to eat), there was no longer a clearly defined front and damn little organization. All up and down the chain of command, leaders lost touch with each other, and shattered platoons joined other equally shattered and leaderless platoons to form units of company size, often being led by officers from other divisions. For a time it was chaos.

Back at the Savannah Road, Stuart had received reinforcements and was massing for a charge across the road.

“We'd better get some help over here damn quick,” Jamie muttered.

Help came rushing up just seconds before Stuart was to begin his charge, and the Union officer held his men back, for he was now facing the massed troops of Generals Chalmers and Bowen.

“Colonel,” a general's aide said to Jamie. “You and your boys have fought gallantly this day. Now you rest and let us put these Federals to rout.”

Jamie could read between the lines of that statement but curbed his tongue and pulled his people back.

Stuart's brigade and several brigades from Ohio and Illinois were now facing the bulk of two divisions of Confederates, and they made ready to be slaughtered; for their orders were to hold at all costs, and the costs would be high.

But in terms of slaughter, it was give and take that day. At just about the same time Stuart was preparing a defense, Rebel General Cheatham urged his men forward, and they went screaming and charging toward a Union stronghold that was called the Hornet's Nest. Closer they came, then closer, and the Yankees held their fire. When the charging Rebels were less than a hundred yards away, the Union troops opened fire with rifle and cannon and it was carnage. The bodies dressed now in bloody Gray lay in heaps and piles. Some had been blown apart by grapeshot at nearly point-blank range.

Moments after that attack failed, Bragg ordered Colonel Gibson to lead a bayonet charge against the Hornet's Nest. Gibson led men from Louisiana and Arkansas into the battle. They were thrown back at a terrible cost of human life.

Again the Rebels charged, and managed to breech the lines, only to be thrown back once more. The battleground was now covered in Blue mixed with Gray.

Exhausted, Gibson was replaced by Colonel Allen. Allen's charge was beaten back, with Allen losing almost half of his men. Gibson rallied his troops and charged the Hornet's Nest for a third time, and for a third time, his battered brigade was thrown back. Gibson had no more men to give to the Cause on this Bloody Sunday.

While Gibson's brigade was being destroyed trying to take the Hornet's Nest, Johnston was preparing to personally lead a charge against Union troops just to the Rebel right of the Hornet's Nest. Jamie and his men had joined up with Jackson's men on the other side of the Savannah Road and were locked in combat. The Marauders had dismounted and were fighting as infantry.

Johnston led the charge into the peach orchard, now in full bloom. It was to be a successful charge, for the Union troops fled under the onslaught of Confederates; but it was to be Albert Sidney Johnston's last charge. A minié ball tore through his right leg and he bled to death, lying on the ground, amid pink peach petals that had been torn loose by cannon fire.

The command of the Rebel army in the West now was passed to Beauregard. But Beauregard was a mile and a half to the rear, at his own Command Post, so far back from the front lines he did not have the foggiest notion what was actually going on.

* * *

It was about three o'clock in the afternoon when General Johnston was killed. It took almost an hour for a runner to find Beauregard and lead him back to the fallen general. Standing over the body, Beauregard was momentarily distraught; then with a mighty sigh, clearly heard over the booming of battle, he personally covered the body with a gray cape, straightened up, and called for field reports to bring him up to date.

“If we don't start using artillery up the middle and start flanking the Yankees left and right,” said Jamie, who had ridden up shortly before Beauregard arrived, “we're going to be chewed up and had for supper.”

Beauregard's aides fidgeted as the general gave the guerrilla fighter a sharp look, for the general wasn't accustomed to anyone giving
him
orders. Then his soldier's mind realized that MacCallister was right. “Your commander on the right, Colonel?”

“They're all dead, General.”

“You are the ranking officer over there?”

“Yes, sir, I am.”

“Then you are in command.” He turned to an aide. “Make a note of that.” He turned to Jamie. “Return to your position and wait until the last echoes of cannon fire have ceased, Colonel,” Beauregard said to Jamie. “Then take your right flank and swing your men in.”

“Yes, sir.” Jamie mounted up and was gone.

“That is a very impudent and disrespectful man,” one of Beauregard's young aides sniffed.

“My God, I wish I had ten thousand more just like him.” Beauregard put a very abrupt end to any further criticism of Colonel MacCallister.

Jamie waited with the remnants of half a dozen different shattered and battered commands that he had gathered around him. Soon more than seventy cannons began to roar from the Confederate side, lashing out shell and shot. The cannonade lasted for about forty-five minutes, and it demoralized those Union troops it was directed upon, mainly those defending the Hornet's Nest. The Rebel gunners were pouring on the fire, sending more than one hundred and ninety shot and shell per minute into the Yankee lines.

The center of the Union line began buckling and finally gave way. On the Rebel left, Jamie and his men charged and put the Union forces into a wild retreat. On the Rebel right, Sherman and the other Union generals began a withdrawal.

Some say the Rebels were fighting so fiercely because of the death of their beloved general, Johnston, but that was not so. Beauregard had ordered that his death be kept secret, and only a handful of officers and men actually knew he was dead.

Jamie and his men smashed into the Union lines and secured their objective on the Rebel right. Jamie, following orders received during the devastating cannonade, stopped his advance and held, allowing his men some much needed rest.

The Union troops defending the Hornet's Nest began to scatter as the word came down the line that it was every man for himself, for they were very nearly surrounded by screaming, blood-thirsty Rebels. Most of the Union troops headed for the river—or where they hoped in all the smoke and confusion the river would be.

Several battered units of Confederate cavalry had linked up with Jamie, and Jamie sent Little Ben Pardee, limping badly but very much still in action, galloping on a fresh horse to find Beauregard and get permission to attack straight on toward Pittsburg Landing. But Little Ben could not find the commanding general, for the general, by this time, had moved all the way over to the Rebel left to join Morgan's cavalry, smashing against Sherman's forces.

Jamie obeyed orders and held his position.

In the center of the Union line, General Prentiss was forced to surrender more than twenty-five hundred of his men, all that he had left after more than a dozen bloody charges against his position. Troops from Iowa began to show the white flag. They were cut off, surrounded, out of ammunition, and their situation was hopeless.

General Grant kept looking toward the rear, where more than six thousand fresh troops, under the command of General Wallace, were expected to come marching in. It was five o'clock in the afternoon of this Bloody Sunday. Wallace would not show up until almost three hours later. He had received the wrong orders and then, when he got that straightened out, had taken the wrong road.

At the river, hundreds of Union soldiers, confused and leaderless, were swimming across to the other side, having thrown away or lost their rifles. Fresh Union troops, almost forty thousand strong, who had just arrived on the scene, could not understand what was happening.

Union cavalrymen tried to beat the frightened men back with the flat sides of their swords, but were soon overwhelmed by the hundreds of retreating soldiers.

Union chaplains prayed for the men to turn around and fight. That ended when one nearly exhausted Union veteran told a chaplain, “Get out of my way, you damned fool. I've been to hell and it's right across the river.”

The chaplain and the infantryman got into a fist fight on the east bank of the Tennessee River.

There is no written record as to who won the bare-knuckle altercation.

As for the soldiers, both Union and Confederate, they were completely exhausted as night fell. Most had not eaten in twenty-four hours, and they just simply could not go on. The fighting for that day was over.

* * *

It was a horrible night. Neither side had adequate medical teams or a way to transport the wounded, and both sides were fearful of snipers. The wounded, hundreds of them, lay on the cooling ground along a five-mile stretch. They cried, begged, moaned, screamed, and many mercifully died as a cold rain began falling. Yankee and Rebel wounded found each other and huddled together for warmth and some degree of solace during the night.

“Where you from, boy?”

“Iowa. You hard hit?”

“I reckon. My left leg's shot off at the knee. I done stopped the bleedin' by bindin' it up tight, but it hurts somethin' fierce.”

“I'm belly shot,” the Union soldier spoke around the awful pain in his stomach. “And it's bad. I don't think I'm gonna make it.”

“I know I ain't. I'm from Alabama.”

“Pleased, I'm sure.”

“Hell of fight, weren't it?”

“For a fact, Alabama. Say, what's that awful chomping sound coming from over there near the woods.”

“Them's hogs, Iowa. They're rootin' around, eatin' on the dead. Hog'll eat damn near anything.”

“You believe in God, Alabama?”

“Hell, yes! Don't you?”

“I guess. You believe in the Hell-Fires?”

“I seen that today.”

“Yeah. Me, too. Everything is fading, Alabama. I think I'm about to pass.”

“I'm right behind you, Iowa.”

They were found the next morning, arms wrapped around each other, the Bloody Blue and the Bloody Gray, brothers, finally, in death. They were too stiff to separate, so they were buried together. They had found something in common after all.

The next morning brought a sight that none of the combatants had ever before witnessed. Even Jamie, who had seen scores of Mexican soldiers piled up in death outside the Alamo, was shocked.

Surgeons had worked all night sawing off limbs, and outside of makeshift hospitals, severed arms and legs were piled head high. Both sides had to post guards to keep the hogs from nearby hurriedly abandoned farms away from the amputated limbs. The badly wounded were laid out in neat lines among the stiffening dead, the doctors knowing they could do nothing for them.

Bloody Sunday was about to move into Bloody Monday as the two sides rose as one and stared across the battle lines at each other.

Both sides were disorganized and scattered. But even in disorganization they were soldiers, and soldiers fought. They fixed bayonets and took ammunition from the dead and made ready to resume the fighting.

During the night, Nathan Bedford Forrest and Jamie had dressed in captured Union uniforms and, with a group of their men, slipped into the Federal camp. Both were stunned at what they saw. Both raced back to inform their generals of the news.

“Thousands of Yankees are massing over yonder,” Forrest told several Rebel generals.

“If we don't mount an attack right now,” Jamie said, “we're done.”

“Go tell Beauregard,” was the reply.

But Beauregard could not be found. The searchers went to Beauregard's tent, but General Bragg was sleeping there. No one thought to look in Sherman's abandoned headquarters. Had they done so, they would have found Beauregard, sound asleep in Sherman's bed.

On the other side of the battle lines, Grant spent the rainy night under a tree, wrapped in a greatcoat against the elements, a cigar clamped between his teeth. “We'll be victorious in the morning,” he told his aides, then went to sleep.

Forrest began cussing the missing Beauregard, loud and long, calling him some very uncomplimentary names, not giving a damn who heard him do it.

“I'll be on the right, near the river,” Jamie said.

“I'll be on the left,” Forrest said, shaking hands with the guerrilla colonel.

The first skirmish of the day came just at dawn, while the mist was still clinging close to the ground. The Federals beat them back.

Grant had over fifty thousand men, twenty-five thousand of them fresh troops. Beauregard could muster up no more than eighteen thousand troops. By mid-morning, the Union forces had retaken much of the ground lost on Bloody Sunday. By mid-afternoon, the Rebels had sustained huge losses and were falling back to the south, many of them to protect the road leading to Corinth, Mississippi.

“Tell Forrest and MacCallister to act as rear guard,” Beauregard ordered. “Tell them to round up as many stragglers as they can to assist them.” Beauregard slumped in the saddle. “Retreat,” he said softly, the words bitter on his tongue.

The Union troops, flush with victory, charged down the road leading to Corinth. They were met by some three thousand men with two dozen cannons, two thousand of the Rebels under the command of a Colonel Jordan, and the Rebels held at the road long enough to let their comrades retreat in a soldierly and orderly fashion. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon when the retreat started.

Jordan ordered Forrest and Jamie to pull out, and he held while they made their retreat.

The retreat did not lay as heavy on Jamie as it did with the others, for Jamie had been trained well in the guerrilla fighter's credo: he who fights and runs away lives to fight another day.

But he did understand and sympathize with the Rebels' feelings. The Federals were about to push, or attempt to push, deep into homeland. Jamie also had a hunch that the Union army had not seen the determination and fierce fighting that they would meet deeper in the South.

Grant ordered his troops not to pursue the retreating Confederates. . . for several reasons: It would soon be dark and the sky threatened rain. His own troops were exhausted. And Grant knew once he entered the domain of the deep South, the fighting was going to be brutal—his men were simply not up to that. Yet.

* * *

The entire town of Corinth was turned into a hospital once the retreating troops arrived. At least six thousand wounded were sprawled all over the town, in every building and on the boardwalks and even in the streets and alleys. The piles of amputated limbs seemed to be everywhere waiting to be gathered up and burned. Two out of every three amputees died of infection. At the height of a dysentery and typhoid epidemic the number of men officially listed as sick was more than sixteen thousand.

At Shiloh battlefield, stiffening and bloated bodies lay so close together that a man could walk for long distances without his boots ever touching the ground. The stench of hundreds of human bodies and nearly a thousand dead horses and mules was more than many in the burial detail could stomach.

The exact number of dead on either side could never be accurately tallied. But it was close to being equal. Each side lost approximately two thousand dead and approximately nine thousand wounded. Four thousand dead and eighteen thousand wounded, total.

On April 8, Island Number Ten, near New Madrid, Missouri, finally fell to Union hands after more than a month of fighting. That action opened the Mississippi River toward Memphis.

Grant, whom many held responsible for the near defeat at Shiloh, was relieved from duty as a field commander, and General Halleck took over—and more than lived up to his nickname of Ol' Cautious.

Halleck did not attempt to take the town of Corinth until his troops had been heavily reinforced, and that took almost a month. When he had just under a hundred and twenty thousand men and several hundred cannons, Halleck proceeded to overtake the Rebels . . . very, very slowly. It took him twenty-five days to march the approximately twenty-two miles to Corinth. When he arrived, the town was almost deserted. Jamie and his Marauders had been sent up into East Tennessee. Nathan Bedford Forrest had been sent away on special assignment.

Beauregard pulled his troops away from the town, and Halleck's two-day shelling and then the taking of Corinth was nothing to write home about.

But a very vital objective on the Memphis and Charleston railroad had been taken. Now the Union forces could turn their attentions to East Tennessee.

Bloody Shiloh had been a terrible blow to the South. Many Federal officers felt sure the South would surrender after Shiloh. Those who thought that vastly underestimated the fighting spirit of the Confederates.

It was said that the South never smiled again after Shiloh.

When Colonel Jamie MacCallister heard that, he said, “Who the hell says you have to smile when you fight?”