The Guns of Shiloh: A Story of the Great Western Campaign

The Guns of Shiloh: A Story of the Great Western Campaign
Joseph Altsheler

Joseph A. Altsheler

The Guns of Shiloh: A Story of the Great Western Campaign

CHAPTER I. IN FLIGHT

Dick Mason, caught in the press of a beaten army, fell back slowly with his comrades toward a ford of Bull Run. The first great battle of the Civil War had been fought and lost. Lost, after it had been won! Young as he was Dick knew that fortune had been with the North until the very closing hour. He did not yet know how it had been done. He did not know how the Northern charges had broken in vain on the ranks of Stonewall Jackson’s men. He did not know how the fresh Southern troops from the Valley of Virginia had hurled themselves so fiercely on the Union flank. But he did know that his army had been defeated and was retreating on the capital.

Cannon still thundered to right and left, and now and then showers of bursting shell sprayed over the heads of the tired and gloomy soldiers. Dick, thoughtful and scholarly, was in the depths of a bitterness and despair reached by few of those around him. The Union, the Republic, had appealed to him as the most glorious of experiments. He could not bear to see it broken up for any cause whatever. It had been founded with too much blood and suffering and labor to be dissolved in a day on a Virginia battlefield.

But the army that had almost grasped victory was retreating, and the camp followers, the spectators who had come out to see an easy triumph, and some of the raw recruits were running. A youth near Dick cried that the rebels fifty thousand strong with a hundred guns were hot upon their heels. A short, powerful man, with a voice like the roar of thunder, bade him hush or he would feel a rifle barrel across his back. Dick had noticed this man, a sergeant named Whitley, who had shown singular courage and coolness throughout the battle, and he crowded closer to him for companionship. The man observed the action and looked at him with blue eyes that twinkled out of a face almost black with the sun.

“Don’t take it so hard, my boy,” he said. “This battle’s lost, but there are others that won’t be. Most of the men were raw, but they did some mighty good fightin’, while the regulars an’ the cavalry are coverin’ the retreat. Beauregard’s army is not goin’ to sweep us off the face of the earth.”

His words brought cheer to Dick, but it lasted only a moment. He was to see many dark days, but this perhaps was the darkest of his life. His heart beat painfully and his face was a brown mask of mingled dust, sweat, and burned gunpowder. The thunder of the Southern cannon behind them filled him with humiliation. Every bone in him ached after such fierce exertion, and his eyes were dim with the flare of cannon and rifles and the rolling clouds of dust. He was scarcely conscious that the thick and powerful sergeant had moved up by his side and had put a helping hand under his arm.

“Here we are at the ford!” cried Whitley. “Into it, my lad! Ah, how good the water feels!”

Dick, despite those warning guns behind him, would have remained a while in Bull Run, luxuriating in the stream, but the crowd of his comrades was pressing hard upon him, and he only had time to thrust his face into the water and to pour it over his neck, arms, and shoulders. But he was refreshed greatly. Some of the heat went out of his body, and his eyes and head ached less.

The retreat continued across the rolling hills. Dick saw everywhere arms and supplies thrown away by the fringe of a beaten army, the men in the rear who saw and who spread the reports of panic and terror. But the regiments were forming again into a cohesive force, and behind them the regulars and cavalry in firm array still challenged pursuit. Heavy firing was heard again under the horizon and word came that the Southern cavalry had captured guns and wagons, but the main division maintained its slow retreat toward Washington.

Now the cool shadows were coming. The sun, which had shown as red as blood over the field that day, was sinking behind the hills. Its fiery rays ceased to burn the faces of the men. A soft healing breeze stirred the leaves and grass. The river of Bull Run and the field of Manassas were gone from sight, and the echo of the last cannon shot died solemnly on the Southern horizon. An hour later the brigade stopped in the wood, and the exhausted men threw themselves upon the ground. They were so tired that their bodies were in pain as if pricked with needles. The chagrin and disgrace of defeat were forgotten for the time in the overpowering desire for rest.

Dick had enlisted as a common soldier. There was no burden of maintaining order upon him, and he threw himself upon the ground by the side of his new friend, Sergeant Whitley. His breath came at first in gasps, but presently he felt better and sat up.

It was now full night, thrice blessed to them all, with the heat and dust gone and no enemy near. The young recruits had recovered their courage. The terrible scenes of the battle were hid from their eyes, and the cannon no longer menaced on the horizon. The sweet, soothing wind blew gently over the hills among which they lay, and the leaves rustled peacefully.

Fires were lighted, wagons with supplies arrived, and the men began to cook food, while the surgeons moved here and there, binding up the wounds of the hurt. The pleasant odors of coffee and frying meat arose. Sergeant Whitley stood up and by the moonlight and the fires scanned the country about them with discerning eye. Dick looked at him with renewed interest. He was a man of middle years, but with all the strength and elasticity of youth. Despite his thick coat of tan he was naturally fair, and Dick noticed that his hands were the largest that he had ever seen on any human being. They seemed to the boy to have in them the power to strangle a bear. But the man was singularly mild and gentle in his manner.

“We’re about half way to Washington, I judge,” he said, “an’ I expect a lot of our camp followers and grass-green men are all the way there by now, tellin’ Abe Lincoln an’ everybody else that a hundred thousand rebels fell hard upon us on the plain of Manassas.”

He laughed deep down in his throat and Dick again drew courage and cheerfulness from one who had such a great store of both.

“How did it happen? Our defeat, I mean,” asked Dick. “I thought almost to the very last moment that we had the victory won.”

“Their reserves came an’ ours didn’t. But the boys did well. Lots worse than this will happen to us, an’ we’ll live to overcome it. I’ve been through a heap of hardships in my life, Dick, but I always remember that somebody else has been through worse. Let’s go down the hill. The boys have found a branch an’ are washin’ up.”

By “branch” he meant a brook, and Dick went with him gladly. They found a fine, clear stream, several feet broad and a foot deep, flowing swiftly between the slopes, and probably emptying miles further on into Bull Run. Already it was lined by hundreds of soldiers, mostly boys, who were bathing freely in its cool waters. Dick and the sergeant joined them and with the sparkle of the current fresh life and vigor flowed into their veins.

An officer took command, and when they had bathed their faces, necks, and arms abundantly they were allowed to take off their shoes and socks and put their bruised and aching feet in the stream.

“It seems to me, sergeant, that this is pretty near to Heaven,” said Dick as he sat on the bank and let the water swish around his ankles.

“It’s mighty good. There’s no denyin’ it, but we’ll move still a step nearer to Heaven, when we get our share of that beef an’ coffee, which I now smell most appetizin’. Hard work gives a fellow a ragin’ appetite, an’ I reckon fightin’ is the hardest of all work. When I was a lumberman in Wisconsin I thought nothin’ could beat that, but I admit now that a big battle is more exhaustin’.”

“You’ve worked in the timber then?”

“From the time I was twelve years old ‘til three or four years ago. If I do say it myself, there wasn’t a man in all Wisconsin, or Michigan either, who could swing an axe harder or longer than I could. I guess you’ve noticed these hands of mine.”

He held them up, and they impressed Dick more than ever. They were great masses of bone and muscle fit for a giant.

“Paws, the boys used to call ‘em,” resumed Whitley with a pleased laugh. “I inherited big hands. Father had em an’ mother had ‘em, too. So mine were wonders when I was a boy, an’ when you add to that years an’ years with the axe, an’ with liftin’ an’ rollin’ big logs I’ve got what I reckon is the strongest pair of hands in the United States. I can pull a horseshoe apart any time. Mighty useful they are, too, as I’m likely to show you often.”

The chance came very soon. A frightened horse, probably with the memory of the battle still lodged somewhere in his animal brain, broke his tether and came charging among the troops. Whitley made one leap, seized him by the bit in his mighty grasp and hurled him back on his haunches, where he held him until fear was gone from him.

“It was partly strength and partly sleight of hand, a trick that I learned in the cavalry,” he said to Dick as they put on their shoes. “I got tired of lumberin’ an’ I wandered out west, where I served three years on horseback in the regular army, fightin’ the Indians. Good fighters they are, too. Mighty hard to put your hand on ‘em. Now they’re there an’ now they ain’t. Now you see ‘em before you, an’ then they’re behind you aimin’ a tomahawk at your head. They taught us a big lot that I guess we can use in this war. Come on, Dick, I guess them banquet halls are spread, an’ I know we’re ready.”

Not much order was preserved in the beaten brigade, which had become separated from the rest of the retreating army, but the spirits of all were rising and that, so Sergeant Whitley told Dick, was better just now than technical discipline. The Northern army had gone to Bull Run with ample supplies, and now they lacked for nothing. They ate long and well, and drank great quantities of coffee. Then they put out the fires and resumed the march toward Washington.

They stopped again an hour or two after midnight and slept until morning. Dick lay on the bare ground under the boughs of a great oak tree. It was a quarter of an hour before sleep came, because his nervous system had received a tremendous wrench that day. He closed his eyes and the battle passed again before them. He remembered, too, a lightning glimpse of a face, that of his cousin, Harry Kenton, seen but an instant and then gone. He tried to decide whether it was fancy or reality, and, while he was trying, he fell asleep and slept as one dead.

Dick was awakened early in the morning by Sergeant Whitley, who was now watching over him like an elder brother. The sun already rode high and there was a great stir and movement, as the brigade was forming for its continued retreat on the capital. The boy’s body was at first stiff and sore, but the elasticity of youth returned fast, and after a brief breakfast he was fully restored.

Another hot day had dawned, but Dick reflected grimly that however hot it might be it could not be as hot as the day before had been. Scouts in the night had brought back reports that the Southern troops were on the northern side of Bull Run, but not in great force, and a second battle was no longer feared. The flight could be continued without interruption over the hot Virginia fields.

Much of Dick’s depression returned as they advanced under the blazing sun, but Whitley, who seemed insensible to either fatigue or gloom, soon cheered him up again.

“They talk about the Southerners comin’ on an’ takin’ Washington,” he said, “but don’t you believe it. They haven’t got the forces, an’ while they won the victory I guess they’re about as tired as we are. Our boys talk about a hundred thousand rebels jumpin’ on ‘em, an’ some felt as if they was a million, but they weren’t any more than we was, maybe not as many, an’ when they are all stove up themselves how can they attack Washington in its fortifications! Don’t be so troubled, boy. The Union ain’t smashed up yet. Just recollect whenever it’s dark that light’s bound to come later on. What do you say to that, Long Legs?”

He spoke to a very tall and very thin youth who marched about a half dozen feet away from them. The boy, who seemed to be about eighteen years of age, turned to them a face which was pale despite the Virginia sun. But it was the pallor of indoor life, not of fear, as the countenance was good and strong, long, narrow, the chin pointed, the nose large and bridged like that of an old Roman, the eyes full blue and slightly nearsighted. But there was a faint twinkle in those same nearsighted eyes as he replied in precise tones:

“According to all the experience of centuries and all the mathematical formulae that can be deduced therefrom night is bound to be followed by day. We have been whipped by the rebels, but it follows with arithmetical certainty that if we keep on fighting long enough we will whip them in time. Let x equal time and y equal opportunity. Then when x and y come together we shall have x plus y which will equal success. Does my logic seem cogent to you, Mr. Big Shoulders and Big Hands?”

Whitley stared at him in amazement and admiration.

“I haven’t heard so many big words in a long time,” he said, “an’ then, too, you bring ‘em out so nice an’ smooth, marchin’ in place as regular as a drilled troop.”

“I’ve been drilled too,” said the tall boy, smiling. “My name is George Warner, and I come from Vermont. I began teaching a district school when I was sixteen years old, and I would be teaching now, if it were not for the war. My specialty is mathematics. X equals the war, y equals me and x plus y equals me in the war.”

“Your name is Warner and you are from Vermont,” said Dick eagerly. “Why, there was a Warner who struck hard for independence at Bennington in the Revolution.”

“That’s my family,” replied the youth proudly. “Seth Warner delivered a mighty blow that helped to form this Union, and although I don’t know much except to teach school I’m going to put in a little one to help save it. X equalled the occasion, y equalled my willingness to meet it, and x plus y have brought me here.”

Dick told who he and Whitley were, and he felt at once that he and this long and mathematical Vermont lad were going to be friends. Whitley also continued to look upon Warner with much favor.

“I respect anybody who can talk in mathematics as you do,” he said. “Now with me I never know what x equals an’ I never know what y equals, so if I was to get x an’ y together they might land me about ten thousand miles from where I wanted to be. But a fellow can bend too much over books. That’s what’s the matter with them eyes of yours, which I notice always have to take two looks where I take only one.”

“You are undoubtedly right,” replied Warner. “My relatives told me that I needed some fresh air, and I am taking it, although the process is attended with certain risks from bullets, swords, bayonets, cannon balls, and shells. Still, I have made a very close mathematical calculation. At home there is the chance of disease as well as here. At home you may fall from a cliff, you may be drowned in a creek or river while bathing, a tree may fall on you, a horse may throw you and break your neck, or you may be caught in a winter storm and freeze to death. But even if none of these things happens to you, you will die some day anyhow. Now, my figures show me that the chance of death here in the war is only twenty-five per cent greater than it was at home, but physical activity and an open air continuously increase my life chances thirty-five per cent. So, I make a net life gain of ten per cent.”

Whitley put his hand upon Warner’s shoulder.

“Boy,” he said, “you’re wonderful. I can cheer up the lads by talkin’ of the good things to come, but you can prove by arithmetic, algebra an’ every other kind of mathematics that they’re bound to come. You’re goin’ to be worth a lot wherever you are.”

“Thanks for your encomiums. In any event we are gaining valuable experience. Back there on the field of Bull Run I was able to demonstrate by my own hearing and imagination that a hundred thousand rebels could fire a million bullets a minute; that every one of those million bullets filled with a mortal spite against me was seeking my own particular person.”

Whitley gazed at him again with admiration.