This Hallowed Ground - Bruce Catton [76]
Dusk was coming on. Part of Grant’s army was cowering by the (riverbank, another part had been shot, and part had been captured. Most of the rest had been completely scrambled, regiments and companies all intermingled so that nobody knew where anybody was. Quite characteristic was the experience of an Ohio officer who, trying to lead a lost detachment back into action, met a major on Sherman’s staff and asked where his brigade was. The major confessed that he had no idea; he himself was so completely lost that a moment before he had found himself trying to report to a Confederate brigadier well inside the Confederate lines. The Ohioan never heard the rest of the story because just then a charge of Rebel canister came by, the major’s horse ran away, and the Ohio officer saw no more of him.14
As a general said afterward, both armies by late afternoon had ceased to bear much resemblance to organized armies; they were “mere fighting swarms,” with nothing but the flags to give them unity — the flags and the terrible determination that seemed to live in the hearts of these northern and southern boys who had never fought before but who, pitched into one of the war’s most dreadful battles, were showing an uncommon capacity for fighting.
By dusk the pressure eased. The Confederates had gained much ground, but by now they were in no better shape than the Federals, and the last attack that might just possibly have broken Grant’s final line and killed his army could not be mounted. (Many of the untrained Confederate soldiers had gone off, boy-like, to gawk at the big haul of prisoners taken when Prentiss surrendered.) Also, help was at hand at last.
Lew Wallace could have saved the day, but somehow he had got lost or had been directed wrongly, and he had not been able to get up from Crump’s Landing in time to help. But Buell’s advance guard was on the scene at last, and when the steamboats brought his men over the river and the men tramped up through the backwash of wounded men, fugitives, and displaced persons the real danger was over. Buell’s men looked scornfully at the disorganization they saw all about them and came tramping up the slope to the high ground full of cocky energy, flags flying, all their bands playing. Grant’s men raised a wild, half-hysterical cheer at the sight of them; one wrote that men wept for joy and said that the woods fairly quivered with the sound of the yelling, and an Iowa soldier confessed: “Never did strains of music sound so sweet as did the patriotic airs played by the brass bands marching at the head of each regiment.”15
Some of the beaten men who had been hiding by the river called out to Buell’s men not to come ashore — the day was lost, the Rebels were winning everywhere, they would be butchered — and Buell himself became convinced that his arrival had come just in time to prevent a great disaster. But by the time his troops began to form along the line marked out by Grant’s artillery the crisis was over. The new line was stabilized, the exhausted Confederates just could not fight any more until they had had a night’s sleep, and Lew Wallace’s division was coming in at last to provide a solid stiffener. Buell’s troops simply provided the clincher.
It rained hard that night; there were more wounded men than the overtaxed surgeons and stretcher-bearers could begin to care for, Officers were busy all night long trying to reassemble scattered commands, and gunboats Tyler and Lexington had found a place where they could fire their big guns — much heavier than anything the army had — down the length of the Confederate battle line; they kept it up at intervals all night long, and only a completely exhausted man could hope to get any sleep. By morning Grant was ready to take the offensive, and shortly after daybreak he sent the men forward, Buell’s troops on the left, the men of his own army on the right, in a huge counterattack.
Grant had a strong advantage