This Hallowed Ground - Bruce Catton [73]
Grant was at breakfast. He cocked an ear, quit his breakfast, got his staff and horses down to a steamboat, and took off for Pittsburg Landing with all speed. One of Buell’s brigadiers had just come up, and at the headquarters house he listened uneasily to the rising noise off beyond the horizon. He had gone up to Old Smith’s bedroom, to call on that disabled warrior, and Smith chaffed him, laughing at him for imagining that a real battle was in progress. This, he said, was just an affair of the pickets; green soldiers who had never fought before must not worry so, down here they were used to operations on a large scale. But the racket did not die down; it became an unbroken muffled roar, it sounded louder moment by moment and seemed to be getting nearer. At last Old Smith admitted that it might be a little more than skirmish-line stuff; part of the main army might be engaged.6
Part of the army was indeed engaged — all of it that was within range of Confederate weapons. Grant had had two divisions in front, and these offered a furious resistance, slowing down the Rebel assault and here and there driving it back with heavy loss, while the troops in the rear were hurried forward. In many of the Federal front-line regiments the men had heard the outpost firing and had assumed that the pickets were simply discharging their muskets to see if the previous day’s rain had dampened the powder charges — that was a common affair in this undrilled army. But they sent men forward to investigate, and the men came scampering back, reporting that “the Johnnies are there thicker than Spanish needles in a fence corner,” and in no time the fighting became general.7
Some units broke apart at the first shock, losing all cohesion and running for the rear, every man for himself. The colonel of the 71st Ohio took one look at the oncoming battle line, put spurs to his horse, and galloped back for the river landing and safety. The lieutenant colonel tried to rally the crumbling regiment as an Alabama regiment came shouldering its way through the saplings; he was killed, and the 71st ceased to exist as a fighting force. Sherman rode up to the 53rd Ohio, told its colonel to hold his ground and he would be supported, and rode off to another part of the field. His face gray as ashes, the colonel lay down behind a log; then, springing to his feet, yelled, “Fall back and save yourselves,” and headed for the rear. Most of the men followed him. Officers rallied a handful and got help from an enlisted man, Private A. C. Voris of the 17th Illinois, who had fought at Fort Donelson and knew about battle. Voris came over and went along the line, showing nervous recruits how to load, aim, and fire, telling them: “Why, it’s just like shooting squirrels, only these squirrels have guns, that’s all.” The fragment finally fell in with an Illinois regiment and fought the rest of the day.8
The Confederate attack was being driven home with fury, and the Union line could not hold long. Regiments that were not entirely routed fell back doggedly, firing from behind trees and logs, rallying briefly around the batteries; they were driven from their camps, and the jubilant Rebels ran on through the tented streets, some of them pausing to pick up loot and souvenirs. The first resistance had been spirited, despite the runaways; one Union brigadier reported that he lost more men in the first five minutes of the fighting than he lost all the rest of the day.9
Green troops, one officer said after the war, had this characteristic; they usually would either run away at once or not at all. Both armies were leaking men to the rear at a prodigious rate, but the men who did not run were fighting like veterans. The division that had been posted in front