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

“Dick,” said Colonel Winchester suddenly, “as you came across Kentucky from Mill Spring, and passed so near Pendleton it must have been a great temptation to you to stop and see your mother.”

“It was. It was so great that I yielded to it. I was at our home about midnight for nearly an hour. I hope I did nothing wrong, colonel.”

“No, Dick, my boy. Some martinets might find fault with you, but I should blame you had you not stopped for those few moments. A noble woman, your mother, Dick. I hope that she is watched over well.”

Dick glanced at the colonel, but he could not see his face in the deepening twilight.

“My uncle, Colonel Kenton, has directed his people to give her help in case of need,” he replied, “but that means physical help against raiders and guerillas. Otherwise she has sufficient for her support.”

“That is well. War is terrible on women. And now, Dick, my lad, we’ll get our supper. This nipping air makes me hungry, and the Northern troops do not suffer for lack of food.”

The officers ate in one of the cabins, and when the supper was finished deep night had come over the river, but Dick, standing on the deck, heard the heavy throb of many engines, and he knew that a great army was still around him, driven on by the will of one man, deep into the country of the foe.

The decks, every foot of plank it seemed, were already covered with the sleeping boys, wrapped in their blankets and overcoats. He saw his friend, the young hunter from Nebraska, lying with his head on his arm, sound asleep, a smile on his face.

Dick watched until the first darkness thinned somewhat, and the stars came out. Then he retired to one of the cabins, which he shared with three or four others, and slept soundly until he was aroused for breakfast. He had not undressed, and, bathing his face, he went out at once on the deck. Many of the soldiers were up, there was a hum of talk, and all were looking curiously at the river up which they were steaming.

They were in the Tennessee, having passed in the night the little town of Paducah—now an important city—at its mouth. It was not so broad as the Ohio, but it was broad, nevertheless, and it had the aspect of great depth. But here, as on the Ohio, they seemed to be steaming through the wilderness. The banks were densely wooded, and the few houses that may have been near were hidden by the trees. No human beings appeared upon the banks.

Dick knew why the men did not come forth to see the ships. The southwestern part of the state, the old Jackson’s Purchase, and the region immediately adjacent, was almost solidly for the South. They would not find here that division of sentiment, with the majority inclined to the North, that prevailed in the higher regions of Kentucky. The country itself was different. It was low and the waters that came into the Tennessee flowed more sluggishly.

But Dick was sure that keen eyes were watching the fleet from the undergrowth, and he had no doubt that every vessel had long since been counted and that every detail of the fleet had been carried to the Southern garrisons in the fort.

The cold was as sharp as on the day before, and Dick, like the others, rejoiced in the hot and abundant breakfast. The boats, an hour or two later, stopped at a little landing, and many of the lads would gladly have gone ashore for a few moments, risking possible sharpshooters in the woods, but not one was allowed to leave the vessels. But Dick’s steamer lay so close to the one carrying the Pennsylvanians that he could talk across the few intervening feet of water with Warner and Whitley. He also took the opportunity to introduce his new friend Pennington, of Nebraska.

“Are you the son of John Pennington, who lived for a little while at Fort Omaha?” asked the sergeant.

“Right you are,” replied the young hunter, “I’m his third son.”

“Then you’re the third son of a brave man. I was in the regular army and often we helped the pioneers against the Indians. I remember being in one fight with him against the Sioux on the Platte, and in another against the Northern Cheyennes in the Jumping Sand Hills.”

“Hurrah!” cried Pennington. “I’m sorry I can’t jump over a section of the Tennessee River and shake hands with you.”

“We’ll have our chance later,” said the sergeant. At that moment the fleet started again, and the boats swung apart. Through Dick’s earnest solicitation young Pennington was taken out of the ranks and attached to the staff of Colonel Winchester as an orderly. He was well educated, already a fine campaigner, and beyond a doubt he would prove extremely useful.

They steamed the entire day without interruption. Now and then the river narrowed and they ran between high banks. The scenery became romantic and beautiful, but always wild. The river, deep at any time, was now swollen fifteen feet more by floods on its upper courses, and the water always lapped at the base of the forest.

Dick and Pennington, standing side by side, saw the second sun set over their voyage, and it was as wild and lonely as the first. There was a yellow river again, and hills covered with a bare forest. Heavy gray clouds trooped across the sky, and the sun was lost among them before it sank behind the hills in the west.

Dick and Pennington, wrapped in their blankets and overcoats, slept upon the deck that night, with scores of others strewed about them. They were awakened after eleven o’clock by a sputter of rifle shots. Dick sat up in a daze and heard a bullet hum by his ear. Then he heard a powerful voice shouting: “Down! Down, all of you! It’s only some skirmishers in the woods!” Then a cannon on one of the armor clads thundered, and a shell ripped its way through the underbrush on the west bank. Many exclamations were uttered by the half-awakened lads.

“What is it? Has an army attacked us?”

“Are we before the fort and under fire?”

“Take your foot off me, you big buffalo!”

It was Colonel Winchester who had commanded them to keep down, but Dick, a staff officer, knew that it did not apply to him. Instead he sprang erect and assisted the senior officers in compelling the others to lie flat upon the decks. He saw several flashes of fire in the undergrowth, but he had logic enough to know that it could only be a small Southern band. Three or four more shells raked the woods, and then there was no reply.

The boats steamed steadily on. Only one or two of the young soldiers had been hurt and they but lightly. All rolled themselves again in their blankets and coats and went back to sleep.

The second awakening was about half way between midnight and dawn. Something cold was continually dropping on Dick’s face and he awoke to find hundreds of sheeted and silent white forms lying motionless upon the deck. Snow was falling swiftly out of a dark sky, and the fleet was moving slowly. In the darkness and stillness the engines throbbed powerfully, and the night was lighted fitfully by the showers of sparks that gushed now and then from the smoke stacks.

Dick thought of rising and brushing the snow from his blankets, but he was so warm inside them that he yawned once or twice and went to sleep again. When he awoke it was morning again, the snow had ceased and the men were brushing it from themselves and the decks.

The young soldiers, as they ate breakfast, spoke of the rifle shots that had been fired at them the night before and, since little damage had been done, they appreciated the small spice of danger. The wildness and mystery of their situation appealed to them, too. They were like explorers, penetrating new regions.

“To most of us it’s something like the great plains,” said Pennington to Dick. “There you seldom know what you’re coming to; maybe a blizzard, maybe a buffalo herd, and maybe a band of Indians, and you take a pleasure in the uncertainty. But I suppose it’s not the same to you, this being your state.”

“I don’t know much about Western Kentucky,” said Dick, “my part lies to the center and east, but anyway, our work is to be done in Tennessee. Those two forts, which I’m sure we’re after, lie in that state.”

“And when do you think we’ll reach ‘em?”

“Tomorrow, I suppose.”

The day passed without any interruption to the advance of the fleet, although there was occasional firing, but not of a serious nature. Now and then small bands of Confederate skirmishers sent rifle shots from high points along the bank toward the fleet, but they did no damage and the ships steamed steadily on.

The third night out came, and again the young soldiers slept soundly, but the next morning, soon after breakfast, the whole fleet stopped in the middle of the river. A thrill of excitement ran through the army when the news filtered from ship to ship that they were now in Tennessee, and that Fort Henry, which they were to attack, was just ahead.

Nevertheless, they seemed to be yet in the wilderness. The Tennessee, in flood, spread its yellow waters through forest and undergrowth, and the chill gray sky still gave a uniform somber, gray tint to everything. Bugles blew in the boats, and every soldier began to put himself and his weapons in order. The command to make a landing had been given, and Commodore Foote was feeling about for a place.

Dick now realized the enormous advantage of supremacy upon the water. Had the Confederates possessed armored ships to meet them, the landing of a great army under fire would be impossible, but now they chose their own time and went about it unvexed.

A place was found at last, a rude wharf was constructed hastily, and the fleet disgorged the army, boat by boat. Vast quantities of stores and heavy cannon were also brought ashore. Despite the cold, Dick and his comrades perspired all the morning over their labors and were covered with mud when the camp was finally constructed at some distance back of the Tennessee, on the high ground beyond the overflow. The transports remained at anchor, but the fighting boats were to drop down the stream and attack the fort at noon the next day from the front, while the army assailed it at the same time from the rear.

The detachment of Pennsylvanians was by the side of Colonel Winchester’s Kentucky regiment, and Colonel Newcomb and his staff messed with Colonel Winchester and his officers. There was water everywhere, and before they ate they washed the mud off themselves as best they could.

“I suppose,” said Warner, “that seventy per cent of our work henceforth will be marching through the mud, and thirty per cent of it will be fighting the rebels in Fort Henry. I hear that we’re not to attack until tomorrow, so I mean to sleep on top of a cannon tonight, lest I sink out of sight in the mud while I’m asleep.”

“There’s some pleasure,” said Pennington, “in knowing that we won’t die of thirst. You could hardly call this a parched and burning desert.”

But as they worked all the remainder of the day on the construction of the camp, they did not care where they slept. When their work was over they simply dropped where they stood and slumbered soundly until morning.

The day opened with a mixture of rain, snow, and fiercely cold winds. Grant’s army moved out of its camp to make the attack, but it was hampered by the terrible weather and the vast swamp through which its course must lead. Colonel Winchester, who knew the country better than any other high officer, was sent ahead on horseback with a small detachment to examine the way. He naturally took Dick and Pennington, who were on his staff, and by request, Colonel Newcomb, Major Hertford, Warner and Sergeant Whitley went also. The whole party numbered about a hundred men.

Dick and the other lads rejoiced over their mission. It was better to ride ahead than to remain with an army that was pulling itself along slowly through the mud. The fort itself was only about three miles away, and as it stood upon low, marshy ground, the backwater from the flooded Tennessee had almost surrounded it.

Despite their horses, Winchester’s men found their own advance slow. They had to make many a twist and turn to avoid marshes and deep water before they came within the sight of the fort, and then Dick’s watch told him that it was nearly noon, the time for the concerted attacks of army and fleet. But it was certain now that the army could not get up until several hours later, and he wondered what would happen.

They saw the fort very clearly from their position on a low hill, and they saw that the main Confederate force was gathered on a height outside, connected with the fort, and as well as he could judge, the mass seemed to number three or four thousand men.

“What does that mean?” he asked Colonel Winchester.

“I surmise,” replied the colonel, “that Tilghman, the Confederate commander, is afraid his men may be caught in a trap. We know his troops are merely raw militia, and he has put them where they can retreat in case of defeat. He, himself, with his trained cannoneers, is inside the fort.”

“There can be no attack until tomorrow,” said Colonel Newcomb. “It will be impossible for General Grant’s army to get here in time.”

“You are certainly right about the army, but I’m not so sure that you’re right about the attack. Look what’s coming up the river.”

“The fleet!” exclaimed Newcomb in excitement. “As sure as I’m here it’s the fleet, advancing to make the attack alone. Foote is a daring and energetic man, and the failure of the army to co-operate will not keep him back.”

“Daring and energy, seventy per cent, at least,” Dick heard Warner murmur, but he paid no more attention to his comrades because all his interest was absorbed in the thrilling spectacle that was about to be unfolded before them.

The fleet, the armor clads, the floating batteries, and the mortar boats, were coming straight toward the fort. Colonel Winchester lent Dick his glasses for a moment, and the boy plainly saw the great, yawning mouths of the mortars. Then he passed the glasses back to the colonel, but he was able to see well what followed with the naked eye. The fleet came on, steady, but yet silent.

There was a sudden roar, a flash of fire and a shell was discharged from one of the seventeen great guns in the fort. But it passed over the boat at which it was aimed, and a fountain of water spurted up where it struck. The other guns replied rapidly, and the fleet, with a terrific roar, replied. It seemed to Dick that the whole earth shook with the confusion. Through the smoke and flame he saw the water gushing up in fountains, and he also saw earth and masonry flying from the fort.

“It’s a fine fight,” said Colonel Winchester, suppressed excitement showing in his tone. “By George, the fleet is coming closer. Not a boat has been sunk! What a tremendous roar those mortars make. Look! One of their shells has burst directly on the fort!”

The fleet, single handed, was certainly making a determined and powerful attack upon the fort, which standing upon low, marshy ground, was not much above the level of the boats, and offered a fair target to their great guns. Both fort and fleet were now enveloped in a great cloud of smoke, but it was repeatedly rent asunder by the flashing of the great guns, and, rapt by the spectacle from which he could not take his eyes, Dick saw that all the vessels of the fleet were still afloat and were crowding closer and closer.

The artillery kept up a steady crash now, punctuated by the hollow boom of the great mortars, which threw huge, curving shells. The smoke floated far up and down the river, and the Southern troops on the height adjoining the fort moved back and forth uneasily, uncertain what to do. Finally they broke and retreated into the forest.

But General Tilghman, the Confederate commander, and the heroic gunners inside the fort, only sixty in number, made the most heroic resistance. The armor clad boats were only six hundred yards away now, and were pouring upon them a perfect storm of fire.

Their intrenchments, placed too low, gave them no advantage over the vessels. Shells and solid shot rained upon them. Some of the guns were exploded and others dismounted by this terrible shower, but they did not yet give up. As fast as they could load and fire the little band sent back their own fire at the black hulks that showed through the smoke.

“The fleet will win,” Dick heard Colonel Winchester murmur. “Look how magnificently it is handled, and it converges closer and closer. A fortification located as this one is cannot stand forever a fire like that.”

But the fleet was not escaping unharmed. A shell burst the boiler of the Essex, killing and wounding twenty-nine men. Nevertheless, the fire of the boats increased rather than diminished, and Dick saw that Colonel Winchester’s words were bound to come true.

Inside the fort there was only depression. It had been raked through by shells and solid shot. Most of the devoted band were wounded and scarcely a gun could be worked. Tilghman, standing amid his dead and wounded, saw that hope was no longer left, and gave the signal.

Dick and his comrades uttered a great shout as they saw the white flag go up over Fort Henry, and then the cannonade ceased, like a mighty crash of thunder that had rolled suddenly across the sky.

CHAPTER X. BEFORE DONELSON

Dick was the first in Colonel Winchester’s troop to see the white flag floating over Fort Henry and he uttered a shout of joy.

“Look! look!” he cried, “the fleet has taken the fort!”

“So it has,” said Colonel Winchester, “and the army is not here. Now I wonder what General Grant will say when he learns that Foote has done the work before he could come.”

But Dick believed that General Grant would find no fault, that he would approve instead. The feeling was already spreading among the soldiers that this man, whose name was recently so new among them, cared only for results. He was not one to fight over precedence and to feel petty jealousies.

The smoke of battle was beginning to clear away. Officers were landing from the boats to receive the surrender of the fort, and Colonel Winchester and his troops galloped rapidly back toward the army, which they soon met, toiling through swamps and even through shallow overflow toward the Tennessee. The men had been hearing for more than an hour the steady booming of the cannon, and every face was eager.

Colonel Winchester rode straight toward a short, thickset figure on a stout bay horse near the head of one of the columns. This man, like all the others, was plastered with mud, but Colonel Winchester gave him a salute of deep respect.

“What does the cessation of firing mean, Colonel?” asked General Grant.

“It means that Fort Henry has surrendered to the fleet. The Southern force, which was drawn up outside, retreated southward, but the fort, its guns and immediate defenders, are ours.”

Dick saw the faintest smile of satisfaction pass over the face of the General, who said:

“Commodore Foote has done well. Ride back and tell him that the army is coming up as fast as the nature of the ground will allow.”

In a short time the army was in the fort which had been taken so gallantly by the navy, and Grant, his generals, and Commodore Foote, were in anxious consultation. Most of the troops were soon camped on the height, where the Southern force had stood, and there was great exultation, but Dick, who had now seen so much, knew that the high officers considered this only a beginning.

Across the narrow stretch of land on the parallel river, the Cumberland, stood the great fort of Donelson. Henry was a small affair compared with it. It was likely that men who had been stationed at Henry had retreated there, and other formidable forces were marching to the same place. The Confederate commander, Johnston, after the destruction of his eastern wing at Mill Spring by Thomas, was drawing in his forces and concentrating. The news of the loss of Fort Henry would cause him to hasten his operations. He was rapidly falling back from his position at Bowling Green in Kentucky. Buckner, with his division, was about to march from that place to join the garrison in Donelson, and Floyd, with another division, would soon be on the way to the same point. Floyd had been the United States Secretary of War before secession, and the Union men hated him. It was said that the great partisan leader, Forrest, with his cavalry, was also at the fort.

Much of this news was brought in by farmers, Union sympathizers, and Dick and his comrades, as they sat before the fires at the close of the short winter day, understood the situation almost as well as the generals.

“Donelson is ninety per cent and Henry only ten per cent,” said Warner. “So long as the Johnnies hold Donelson on the Cumberland, they can build another fort anywhere they please along the Tennessee, and stop our fleet. This general of ours has a good notion of the value of time and a swift blow, and, although I’m neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, I predict that he will attack Donelson at once by both land and water.”

“How can he attack it by water?” asked Pennington. “The distance between them is not great, but our ships can’t steam overland from the Tennessee to the Cumberland.”

“No, but they can steam back up the Tennessee into the Ohio, thence to the mouth of the Cumberland, and down the Cumberland to Donelson. It would require only four or five days, and it will take that long for the army to invade from the land side.”

Dick had his doubts about the ability of the army and the fleet to co-operate. Accustomed to the energy of the Southern commanders in the east he did not believe that Grant would be allowed to arrange things as he chose. But several days passed and they heard nothing from the Confederates, although Donelson was only about twenty miles away. Johnston himself, brilliant and sagacious, was not there, nor was his lieutenant, Beauregard, who had won such a great reputation by his victory at the first Bull Run.

Dick was just beginning to suspect a truth that later on was to be confirmed fully in his mind. Fortune had placed the great generals of the Confederacy, with the exception of Albert Sidney Johnston, in the east, but it had been the good luck of the North to open in the west with its best men.

Now he saw the energy of Grant, the short man of rather insignificant appearance. Boats were sent down the Tennessee to meet any reinforcements that might be coming, take them back to the Ohio, and thence into the Cumberland. Fresh supplies of ammunition and food were brought up, and it became obvious to Dick that the daring commander meant to attack Donelson, even should its garrison outnumber his own besieging force.

Along a long line from Western Tennessee to Eastern Kentucky there was a mighty stir. Johnston had perceived the energy and courage of his opponent. He had shared the deep disappointment of all the Southern leaders when Kentucky failed to secede, but instead furnished so many thousands of fine troops to the Union army.

Johnston, too, had noticed with alarm the tremendous outpouring of rugged men from the states beyond the Ohio and from the far northwest. The lumbermen who came down in scores of thousands from Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, were a stalwart crowd. War, save for the bullets and shell, offered to them no hardships to which they were not used. They had often worked for days at a time up to their waists in icy water. They had endured thirty degrees below zero without a murmur, they had breasted blizzard and cyclone, they could live on anything, and they could sleep either in forest or on prairie, under the open sky.

It was such men as these, including men of his own state, and men of the Tennessee mountains, whom Johnston, who had all the qualities of a great commander, had to face. The forces against him were greatly superior in number. The eastern end of his line had been crushed already at Mill Spring, the extreme western end had suffered a severe blow at Fort Henry, but Jefferson Davis and the Government at Richmond expected everything of him. And he manfully strove to do everything.

There was a mighty marching of men, some news of which came through to Dick and his comrades with Grant. Johnston with his main army, the very flower of the western South, fell back from Bowling Green, in Kentucky, toward Nashville, the capital of Tennessee. But Buckner, with his division, was sent from Bowling Green to help defend Donelson against the threatened attack by Grant, and he arrived there six days after the fall of Henry. On the way were the troops of Floyd, defeated in West Virginia, but afterwards sent westward. Floyd was at the head of them. Forrest, the great cavalry leader, was also there with his horsemen. The fort was crowded with defenders, but the slack Pillow did not yet send forward anybody to see what Grant was doing, although he was only twenty miles away.