Chapter XVIII: The Blunders of Shiloh (1)

By John Trotwood Moore

The more one studies Shiloh, the more contradictory it becomes. It will ever remain an incongruous battle. On the Union side it was a battle of unpreparedness—though not of dishonorable surprise—and on both sides a battle of blunders. And never in any battle of any war that I have ever read did Chance—old-fashioned, historic, blind Chance—play a more conspicuous part.

Some of the big chances, standing out in the light of to-day like gray ghosts above the battlefield, are:

First—The chance that cut Buell off one day too late for the Union cause.

Second—The chance that put him there one day too soon for the Confederates.

Third—The chance which Grant took—and which he says in his autobiography he would not have taken with the riper knowledge gained later in the war—of not entrenching.

Fourth—The chance of mud and rain, which delayed Johnston one day in bringing on the fight.

Fifth—The chance of one fateful bullet amid ten thousand harmless ones, striking an artery not hit once in ten thousand times in battle, and striking from the boards the only head on either side which had absolutely a clear conception of the entire battle to be, planned by himself with consummate skill and executed, till stricken to death, like a thunderbolt of Jove in the brain of Mars. He alone, I repeat, of all the host of generals, Federals and Confederates, who swarmed booted and bedecked around the contending hosts of that day, had definite plans, knew what was to be done, and held the doing of it in the hollow of his hand, and his name was Albert Sidney Johnston.

Sixth—The great chance Beauregard had for ending the fight on the first day, instead of calling off the troops until the fatal to-morrow.

Seventh—The chance—ay, the blunder—of Grant in recalling Lew Wallace from a position which a most gracious and generous fate had given him. A chance which gave to Wallace the opportunity for his own fame and the fame of Grant’s army—the chance of falling upon the flank and rear of the eager, neglectful, front-fighting Confederates, of breaking their hearts as Johnston’s death could never have done. This was a greater chance than Jackson had at Fredericksburg when he utterly defeated the Yankee army; it was as great as the chance Blücher had at Waterloo; greater than Bonaparte’s at Austerlitz.

In thinking of Stonewall Jackson and Johnston, did God in His wisdom know it was best that the Confederacy should not be, as we all now know it, and take these two men from life that it might not come to pass?

And there we are at it again: For God’s decision is man’s destiny.

Now, are not these chances enough? Or is it Law, Cause and Effect, Adjustment, Nature—God?

To know—to see clearly—to understand that one paragraph, who would not be willing to go hence to-night? For if it is God and immortality, there would be no fears, doubts, pitiless days of self communion, ending in that pale despair which strikes into the soul of every man whose soul is his own and who thinks. And if it is all Chance (a thought repellant and unbelievable to one who thinks), or even the Great Unchance of fixed, immutable, but unloving and uncaring Law—as many believe—then why suffer to this palsied, dust-turning end?

From the lips of babes, from the humble and the ignorant, what wisdom! Here is some of it:

On a morning after a cyclone where I once lived, amid the death of nearly threescore people, and the wreck of homes, a friend met an old negro, whose wife and children had been killed, and his home blown away. There was the usual compassion and condolence and trust from the learned man, who had lost nothing. But the old negro said: “Marster, the man that you calls God—yo’ God—it ’pears to me that he do about as much harm as he do good!”

I have wondered since—often and often—if our God—the God our little minds have been able to grasp—to whom some people falsely attribute revenge and cruelty and murder—if he is not as the old negro said; and I have prayed that I might live to know the God Which Is, and that he would permit me to understand the things which do stagger me now!

Were these things really chances? Take each one of them and sift it to its very beginning—follow up the broad stream of each till you find the first drop of its water trickling over the blind bluff of the thing unknown which staggers and stops you, and even to that last tiny drop you will stand and find no answer to the question, and before that drop you will stop again, look up at the stars and ask the same question: “Is it Chance, is it Law, or is it God?”

Let us take the first one: Why was Buell a day late? A thousand little things—a march from Nashville to Savannah, planned with ample time, yet delayed. What delays? Hundreds of them—follow up any one of them and it will end in the drop.

Let me give you one which came under my personal recollection: Some ten years ago I stopped one night at a hotel in Chicago, known as the Kuhn House. After registering, the proprietor sought me out. He had been one of Buell’s chief engineers, and upon seeing where I was from—Columbia, Tennessee—he wanted to know if the old bridge across Duck River at that point was still standing. “It was there,” he said, “that we saved Grant’s army and made him President instead of prisoner. I was given two days”—I think that is the time he stated—“to repair the bridge, the flooring of which had been torn up and the structure half burned before we reached it. But we had heard rumors of a great battle pending near Savannah and though we had received messages from General Grant saying there was no need for undue haste, we were marching for all we were worth. I felt, somehow, that great things were at stake, and I doubled my force and worked day and night completing the repairs so that the artillery might pass over in just half the time given me; and that time saved, put us in Savannah twelve hours to our good. I have often wondered what would have happened had I taken my full time to repair that old bridge over Duck River at Columbia.”

Chance. Might-have-been! Tell me what they are and I will tell you what God is!

Grant and Buell threshed out their differences years ago before they both passed into the shadowland, and nothing is more interesting than the grave and dignified controversy between these two men. Grant, great as he was in war, was out of his element with a pen in his hand; and in the written battle, Buell, to my mind, has worsted him. Nor was it Buell’s fault that this controversy arose. It came about from the exaggerated desire of the friends of the Army of the Tennessee to shield Grant and Sherman from the blunders they so clearly made and which should have been acknowledged by them like men, instead of trying to belittle the part that Buell played. For Buell had enough to his own credit.

In his very able article in _The Century_, Buell demonstrates at least very clearly to his own mind:

First. That Grant and Sherman were neglectful in preparing for this battle.

Second. That Grant’s army was too badly scattered, and he, himself, too far away from the front when the battle opened.

Third. That Grant and Sherman were surprised.

Fourth. That they were whipped.

Fifth. and (Q. E. D.) that Buell saved them.

Here is Buell’s very succinct, graphic and convincing statement in the beginning of his paper and argued throughout with the greatest ability:

“An army comprising seventy regiments of infantry, twenty
batteries of artillery and a sufficiency of cavalry lay for two
weeks and more in isolated camps, with a river in its rear and
a hostile army, claimed to be superior in numbers, twenty miles
distant in its front, while the commander made his headquarters
and passed his nights nine miles away, on the opposite side
of the river. It had no line or order of battle, no defensive
works of any sort, no outposts, properly speaking, to give
warning or check the advance of an enemy, and no recognized
head during the absence of the regular commander. On a Saturday
the hostile force arrived and formed in order of battle,
without detection or hindrance, within a mile and a half of the
unguarded army, advanced upon it the next morning, penetrated
its disconnected lines, assaulted its camps in front and
flank, drove its disjointed members successively from position
to position, capturing some and routing others, in spite of
much heroic individual resistance, and steadily drew near the
landing and depot of its supplies in the pocket between the
river and an impassable creek. At the moment, near the close of
the day, when the remnant of the retrograding army was driven
to refuge in the midst of its magazines, with the triumphant
enemy at half-gunshot distance, the advance division of a
reinforcing army arrived on the opposite bank of the river,
crossed and took position under fire at the point of attack;
the attacking force was checked and the battle ceased for the
day. The next morning at dawn the reinforcing army and a fresh
division belonging to the defeated force advanced against the
assailants, followed or accompanied by such of the broken
columns of the previous day as had not lost all cohesion, and,
after ten hours of conflict, drove the enemy from the captured
camps and the field.”

It will be seen from the statement in his article that one of the strongest points he made as to the unpreparedness of Grant’s army is the repeated fateful turning of the flanks of the different divisions throughout the day, in one of which Prentiss was captured. He says:

“The outflanking so common in the Union report at Shiloh is not
a mere excuse of the inferior commanders. It is the practical
consequence of the absence of a common head and the judicious
use of reserves to counteract partial reverses and preserve the
front of battle.”

As he appeared at the time of Shiloh]

From this alone he argues all the misfortunes of the different divisions acting independently and without a common head. Their flanks turned again and again as each fell back with no warning from the others. And this is his graphic statement of the critical ending of the first day’s fight:

“Before the incumbrance of their success was entirely put out
of their day, the Confederates pressed forward to complete
a seemingly assured victory, but it was too late. John K.
Jackson’s brigade and the Ninth and Tenth Mississippi of
Chalmer’s brigade crossed Dill’s ravine, and their artillery
on the south side swept the bluff at the landing, the missiles
falling into the river far beyond. Hulbert had hurriedly gotten
into line in rear of the siege guns, as they are called in the
official report, posted a half-mile from the river, but for
five hundred yards from the landing there was not a soldier
or any organized means of defense. Just as the danger was
perceived Colonel Webster, Grant’s Chief of Artillery, rapidly
approached Colonel Fry and myself. The order of getting the
battery which was standing in park into action was expressed
simultaneously by the three of us, and was promptly executed
by Colonel Webster’s immediate exertion. General Grant came
up a few minutes later, and a member of his escort was killed
in that position. Chalmer’s skirmishers approached within one
hundred yards of the battery. The number in view was not large,
but the gunners were already abandoning their pieces, when
Ammen’s brigade, accompanied by Nelson, came into action. The
attack was repelled and the engagement ended for the day.... We
know from the Confederate report that the attack was undertaken
by Chalmer’s and Jackson’s brigade, as above stated; that the
reserve artillery could effect nothing against the attacks
from under the shelter of Dill’s ravine; that the fire of the
gunboats was equally harmless on account of the elevation which
it was necessary to give the guns in order to clear the top of
the bluff, and that the final assault, owing to the show of
resistance, was delayed. Jackson’s brigade made its advance
without cartridges, and when they came to the crest of the hill
and found the artillery supported by infantry, they shrank
from the assault by bayonet alone. Jackson went in search of
co-operation and support, and in the meantime the attack was
superseded by the order of the Confederate commander calling
off his troops for the day.”

His description of how things looked when he landed at Pittsburg Landing, of the demoralized condition of Grant’s army, is graphic in the extreme:

“On the shore I encountered a scene which has often been
described. The face of the bluff was crowded with stragglers
from the battle. The number that at different times has been
estimated at five thousand in the morning to fifteen thousand
in the evening. The number at nightfall would never have fallen
short of fifteen thousand, including those who had passed
down the river, and the less callous, but still broken and
demoralized, fragments about the camps on the plateau near the
landing. At the top of the bluff all was confusion. Men mounted
and on foot and wagons with their teams and excited drivers,
all struggling their way closest to the river, were mixed up in
apparently inextricable confusion with a battery of artillery
which was standing in park without men or horses to man or move
it.”

There lives near me in honor and good name, General Gates P. Thruston, one of the greatest scholars of the South, and perhaps the greatest living ethnologists of this country. He was with Buell, and corroborates his chief, and he refers me to General Lew Wallace’s oration, delivered at Shiloh, April 6th, 1903, in which General Wallace uses the following language:

“Did any of you, my friends, ever hear of an army fighting a
battle without a commander? No? Well, that was the case with
the Army of the Tennessee at the beginning of the first day
here. The five divisions on the field had each its chief, to
be sure; but none of the five chiefs was in general command.
Instead of one supreme governing will, nowhere so essential as
in battle, there were five officers, each independent of the
others. Between them things were done by request, not orders.
No one of them was responsible for what the others did. I am
sure you will see the enormity of the disadvantage. You will
even wonder that there was any resistance made.

“I may not pass this point without an explanation. To do so
would be grossest injustice. General Grant, as everybody knows,
was in command of the Army of the Tennessee at the time. By
order of General Halleck, his headquarters were at Savannah,
ten miles below Pittsburg Landing. Hearing the guns, he made
all haste to the scene of action, arriving there four hours
after the attack began. It was then too late for him to change
the day. The battle had passed beyond his control.

“A strange circumstance that, certainly; but what will you say
to this I offer you next? The Confederate army left Corinth
for Pittsburg Landing on Thursday, in the afternoon. It moved
in three corps—Hardee’s, Bragg’s, Polk’s—with Breckinridge’s
three brigades in reserve. The intention was to attack the
Army of the Tennessee Saturday morning, but it was not until
late Saturday afternoon that the entire army reached its
destination and was deployed. Here, now, is the marvel. How was
it possible to move the three great army corps into as many
lines of battle, each behind the other, within two miles of
Shiloh Church, without making their presence known? Were there
any Union pickets out? How far out could they have been? Had
they no eyes, no ears? It would seem not. For at five o’clock
Sunday morning, when Hardee moved to the attack—I give you all
permission to wonder while you listen—neither General Grant at
Savannah nor one of his division commanders on the field knew
of the peril, or even suspected it.”

Of the other great chance or blunder of Shiloh—Grant’s recall of Lew Wallace—let us now speak. Early in my study of this battle I stumbled on this so unexpectedly that it filled me with surprise. It was beyond doubt the greatest opportunity of Shiloh, as I mentioned in a previous paper. The story of it by Lew Wallace himself, is the most interesting paper ever written about that battlefield. For many years the distinguished author of “Ben-Hur” was made the scapegoat of Shiloh. He bore it like the man he was, but history will now vindicate him and nothing has given me greater pleasure than to contribute my share toward his vindication in this series of papers. At the time I arrived at the conclusion I did concerning General Wallace’s brilliant movement during the first day’s fight, I did not know that he had ever explained it himself, but seeing the position I took, and the conclusions I deduced, a friend has sent me the account General Wallace wrote of it himself and turned it over to General James Grant Wilson to be published by General Wilson after the death of the author. This was done last January by the Appletons,[1] and it is useless to add that the author of “Ben-Hur” has told in no usual way the graphic story of that blunder of his superior which made Wallace a scapegoat instead of a hero of that much misunderstood fight. I quote only part of it, but this part bristles with interest, and is enough:

“On the 6th, the memorable Sunday, a sentinel woke me from
sleep on the steamboat serving me for headquarters. He reported
cannonading up the river. When I reached the hurricane deck
dawn was breaking. The air was humid and heavy, but still.
The guns were quite audible. Five minutes—ten—and then the
irregular pounding, sometimes distinct, sometimes muffled, kept
scurrying down the yellow flood of the river. Directly the camp
on the bluff became astir.

“My staff officers reported to me. One of them (Lieutenant
Ware) I sent to Colonel Smith with directions to form his
brigade and conduct it to ‘Stoney Lonesome.’ Another (Major
James R. Ross) was dispatched at speed to Colonel Thayer with
orders to have everything ready to move; continuing his ride,
he bore an order to Colonel Wood of the Third Brigade to break
camp, send baggage and property to the landing (Crump’s) and
bring his regiments to the rendezvous at ‘Stoney Lonesome.’
The purpose of these orders was to have the division ready for
movement when General Grant, who was at Savannah for the night,
should pass in his dispatch boat going up the river.

“About 8:30 o’clock General Grant drew alongside, and a
conversation, substantially (almost literally) the following,
took place:

“‘Have you heard the firing?’ he asked.

“‘Yes, I have been listening to it since daybreak.’

“‘What do you think of it?’

“‘It is undoubtedly a general engagement.’

“‘What have you in your front?’

“‘There is nothing reported.’

“He then said, after thought: ‘Very well. Hold yourself in
readiness for orders.’

“‘But, General, I ordered the concentration about daylight. I
am ready now.’

“Again he reflected. He seemed uncertain. It afterwards came
out that he believed the real attack would be on me. Presently
he repeated: ‘Hold yourself in readiness to move in any
direction.’ The pilot bell rang, the lashings were removed and
his steamer put off up-stream hard as it could go.

“There was general disappointment among my officers. I was
disappointed; but without remark I left the boat. My last order
at the Landing was to have a horse saddled and bridled and
hitched to a tree on the bluff, that a messenger coming down
the river with an order for me might bring it without delay.
Thereupon I rode out to ‘Stoney Lonesome,’ where Smith and
Thayer were waiting, arms stacked. The Third Brigade had not
yet arrived.

“The men were clustered together in groups. They were doing
little talking. Their faces were turned to the south,
listening. Occasionally musketry could be heard accompanying
the artillery. Smith and Thayer and their staff officers
collected around me, and were surprised when I told them the
order General Grant had left me.

“Ten o’clock, and still the air laden with noises of the
struggle going on—still no order; 10:30—yet no order. Smith got
into his saddle and rode away, saying: ‘I guess Grant sees he
can get along without us.’

“Eleven o’clock. The firing was no longer continuous, but at
intervals and in outbursts. Thayer suggested that an order
might have been started and the messenger intercepted. I
thought not; for if the situation on the field called for us,
the possibility of an accident to a courier by land would
necessitate sending him by boat. So I ordered a staff officer,
Major Ross, to ride to the landing and see if anything had come
down by the river. About half a mile down the road he met an
officer on the horse I had left, who asked him where General
Wallace was. Ross told him; then he asked, in turn, if he
had orders for General Wallace. The officer said he had, and
gave the Major a paper, which the Major read. In a short time
Captain Baxter, a Q. U. of General Grant’s, introduced himself
to me and placed the paper in my hand, saying: ‘Here is an
order.’

“Our watches showed 11:30 o’clock. The officers of my staff
and of Thayer’s closed around me while I read. The paper was a
half sheet of foolscap, dented with boot heels and soiled with
tobacco juice, and it was folded, not enveloped. The writing
was in pencil. Strangest of all, no signature was attached. I
passed the paper to Thayer to read, and, turning to Baxter,
asked: ‘How is the fighting going, Captain?’

“Baxter replied: ‘Very well. We are repulsing them all along
the line.’

“The paper was returned to me, and I read it a second time,
and, noticing its deficiencies, inquired:

“‘Who is this from, Captain?’

“‘General Grant.’

“‘Why is it not signed?’

“He then explained: ‘I received the order verbally. Not being
used to carrying orders, I picked the paper from the floor of
the cabin as I came down and wrote what you see. I was afraid I
might make a mistake.’

“General Grant, speaking of the order, has several times said
that he sent it to me not later than 10 o’clock; that it
directed me to march to Pittsburg Landing by the lower or river
road; that he gave it verbally to a staff officer, and did not
know what it was when delivered to me. Of course, he could
not know, but I do; and others, some dead, some living, who
read it, have given their accounts of it, so that I can speak
with confidence. Here it is—as I received it, mark you—almost
verbatim:

“‘You will leave a sufficient force at Crump’s Landing to guard
the public property there; with the rest of your division march
and form junction with the right of the army, your line at
right angles with river, and be governed by circumstances.’

“Observe, if you please, that the words by the lower or river
road to Pittsburg Landing are omitted, leaving nothing but a
naked direction for me to march and form junction with the
right of the army.

“Do I deny General Grant’s version of the order? I believe he
ordered me to Pittsburg Landing by the river road because he
says he did, and because at 10 o’clock, when the whole army
was slowly and sullenly retiring to the river, it was the
order logically right and first to present itself. Moreover,
by inserting in the body of the order actually brought to me
the words ‘to Pittsburg Landing by the lower or river road,’ we
have sense in the other direction to ‘form my line of battle
at right angles with the river,’ otherwise without sense. At
the right of the army, out three miles from the Landing, how
was the angle to be ascertained? Why, then, did I not lead
my column to Pittsburg Landing? And I answer, because the
order Captain Baxter delivered to me contained no mention of
Pittsburg Landing or of any road. Satisfied that I comprehended
it, I passed the paper to Colonel Thayer; others about us at
the moment read it. I gave it finally to Captain Kneffler, my
Adjutant-General, who probably stuck it under his sword belt.
It was lost during the day. On account of its informality, he
attached no importance to it, and, as I shared the opinion, I
never blamed him.

“My first thought was, where is the right of the army? Captain
Baxter’s good news settled the point. If not where it was
in the morning, then Sherman must have advanced. In short,
Sherman’s camp was now my goal, and I knew it was just beyond
the bridge at the junction of Owl and Snake Creeks, on the road
from Pittsburg Landing to Purdy. To get to it by the shortest
route and in the quickest time from the corner of the V my
brigades were in, I must take the right-hand road. General
Grant has said in a footnote of his ‘Memoirs’ that, in the
absence of an express direction, if I had been an older soldier
I would have marched to Pittsburg Landing, and thence, as from
a base, out to Sherman. I think not. He forgot the news I had
from Baxter as to the condition of the battle; besides which,
by taking the right line of the road fork, the distance of the
march would be reduced nearly, if not quite, three miles; in
addition to which, again, the column would be on the very road
Myers had bridged and corduroyed for me. So I sent word to
Myers to lead out for the Owl Creek bridge next to Sherman’s
camp.

“I asked myself, to be sure, if we are beating the enemy, and
he is on the run, why the want of me? And why the order to form
my line at right angles with the river? I could not answer,
but rested implicitly on the order. Grant was on the ground—he
knew—that was enough. The idea of defeat never entered my mind;
and starting, as I was, with intelligence of a victory already
won by our army, what ground is there for the imputation that I
had the achievement of some special glory in purpose?

“The road we were pursuing had been well repaired. The cavalry
had done its work substantially, and we bowled along. By the
firing we could tell we were nearing the battle. We took no
note of time. Somewhere about half after one o’clock—I remember
the head of the column was reported in the vicinity of the
Owl Creek bridge—a cavalry officer, quite young and capless,
covered with mud, slashed across the forehead, rode up from the
rear and asked:

“‘Are you General Wallace?’

“Without pulling rein, I replied.

“‘General Grant,’ he said, ‘has sent me to tell you to hurry
up.’

“Up? To the right of the army, of course; so I returned: ‘Give
General Grant my compliments, and tell him I will be up in a
few minutes.’

“The courier rode off the way he came—a circumstance which,
if I had had the slightest suspicion that my movement was in
error, would have prompted calling him back for question.

“So, in absolute unconsciousness of mistake, I pushed on.
Several times officers came to me and remarked upon the firing
so far down on our left. And it was curious. Had we been
repulsing the enemy, he should have been in the south, not so
nearly in the southeast. But I settled the point, at least
to my own satisfaction. ‘The fighting has ceased on front of
Sherman; but they are keeping it up away over on our left.’
From the position my column was then in, the left of our army
should have been well down toward the river in an almost
easterly direction—certainly far enough in that direction to
dispose of the only mistake General Grant attributes to me in
the footnote corrective of the text in his ‘Memoirs.’

“Finally the revelation overtook me. A second messenger came
up from the rear. It was Captain Rowley, well known as of
General Grant’s staff. He it was who reported to his chief that
he found me marching to Purdy and several miles farther from
the battlefield than when I started. From ‘Stoney Lonesome,’
Purdy lies west; whereas the road upon which he overtook me
runs almost due south, and Shiloh Church, marking the left of
Sherman’s camp, could not have been to exceed two miles from
where Rowley and I held the conversation, which I will give
very nearly in exact words. The fact is, he was himself out of
his reckoning, if not lost.

“‘I’ve had a devil of a time to find you,’ he said, in high
excitement.

“‘I am sorry to have put you to trouble,’ I returned, checking
my horse. ‘What is it?’

“‘The General has sent me to hurry you up.’

“‘That’s the second message of the kind in ten minutes. I don’t
understand it.’

“‘Where are you going, anyhow?’

“‘To join Sherman.’

“‘Sherman!’

“‘Yes.’

“‘Come to one side with me.’ We went a little out of the road.

“‘Great God!’ he said, ‘don’t you know that Sherman has been
driven from his camp? And that the whole army is now within
half a mile of the landing, and it’s a question if we are not
all to be driven into the river?’

“To my exclamations Captain Rowley went into details. There
are kinds of fear; but nothing of that nature can shoot one’s
marrow so to the core as the dread of making a mistake in a
situation such as Rowley then flung me. Yet I could see with
astonishing distinctness that I had led my division into the
rear of the rebel army, or rather that the whole victorious
army was between me and Grant.

“My first impulse was to go on. A vigorous assault upon the
enemy’s rear might turn defeat into victory. Two years later,
at City Point, General Grant told me that if he had known at
Shiloh what he then knew he would have ordered me where I
started to go. To which I add, if I had known the moment Rowley
was talking to me that General Nelson was on the right bank of
the Tennessee, with a possibility of crossing his division to
the left bank at Pittsburg Landing before night, I would have
continued my march at all hazards. As it was, I did not even
know that General Buell was within fifty miles of Savannah.
Why, in the morning at Crump’s Landing, General Grant did not
tell me that a considerable part of the Army of the Ohio was
within supporting distance of the Army of the Tennessee has
been a mystery to me from that day to this. It must have been
that he did not yet believe there was seriousness in the rebel
demonstration at Pittsburg Landing.

“Captain Rowley, it is to be observed, did not estimate that
there was a mistake in my movement to the right of the army. I
told him it was plain that I was in the rear of the rebel army,
and asked categorically: ‘What does General Grant want me to
do? Do you bring me an order from him?’

“‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘General Grant wants you to go to Pittsburg
Landing, and he wants you there like hell.’

“‘Very well, I shall obey him,’ I said. ‘But it will be
necessary for me to back out of this and find a cross road to
take the column into the river road. You have just come through
the swamps; stay, now, and pilot me.’

“He declined, and presently left me; then, thinking to find
a crossing into the river road before the head of the column
would lap the foot, I sent Captain Kneffler, who was still
with Major Myers at the Owl Creek bridge, intelligence of
the altered situation and a desire that he would remain with
Myers and help take care of the rear. Thereupon I ordered a
counter-march by brigades. The tactics of the movement have
been criticised, and I now think justly. I should have resorted
to a right-about of column.

“Note, now, please—when we thus changed direction, from the
south facing north, it was to march completely around the
left flank of the Confederate army. Note, also—when the
counter-march was ordered, not only was my cavalry holding the
bridges at Owl Creek, scarcely a half-mile from the bluff on
which the right of Sherman’s division rested in the morning,
but Thayer’s advance guard had been some time turned into
the Hamburg-Purdy road, and could not have been to exceed
three-quarters of a mile from the bridge. And, marvelous to
say, not a sign of the enemy had been seen! The inference is
that the rear of the Confederates was unguarded. Indeed, it has
been told me by reputable officers of their side that at the
time of my approach there were fully as many of their soldiers
looting and drinking in the captured camps as there were of
ours burrowing under the bluffs down at the landing. Who shall
tell the result had I been permitted to go on in my march? Many
a time, seeing as we see in dreams, I have beheld Thayer’s
deployed regiments moving through those tented streets, a wave
crested with bayonets, and heard the demoralized hordes rushing
panic-stricken upon their engaged lines. And now, in moments
when personal ambition gets the better of me, I hold Rowley’s
coming my greatest quarrel with Fortune. Oh, if he had remained
lost in the woods an hour longer!”

[1] _Appleton’s Magazine_, January, 1906.

SOME BEAUTIFUL WOMEN OF THE SOUTH

Daughter of the Governor of Mississippi

_Sweeney, Jackson_]

Wife of the Governor of Kentucky

_G. B. Waggener, Philadelphia_]

Dallas

_Voorhees & DeVoe, Dallas_]

Warsaw, Virginia]

AUNT HETTY ON THE “WET AND THE DRY”

By Louise Clarke Pyrnelle

[The editors feel that they will not be treating their readers
fairly unless they call especial attention to this picture
of Alabama negro life and the unusual cleverness of the
dialect.—Editors Taylor-Trotwood.]

The town of Luckville had been from its very beginning “wet;” that is, there had always been a saloon or “doggery,” at which whisky could be bought by the pint, quart or gallon.

But the discovery of phosphate beds in the river near town had brought in a number of new residents, many of them “temperance folks.” So at the next election the town voted “dry,” and no liquor could be bought there except from the drug store by a doctor’s prescription.

This law remained in force for three years, and now, on the verge of another election, the opposing factions were busily and earnestly at work for their respective sides. It was at this time and under these conditions that Aunt Hetty began loudly to proclaim her opinions on the “wet and the dry.”

“Humph! De whi’ fo’ks is all de time er-gittin’ up some kin’ er ructions er nuther ’long uv deyse’fs! Dat’s des whut mek me say whut I does—dat de whi’ fo’ks is de cuttin’upist an’ de gwineonist fo’ks dat de good Lawd evah made! Dey’s er-votin’, er dey’s er-fightin’, er dey’s er-co’tin’ up teh de cote-house, er dey’s er-doin’ sump’n er-nudder dat-a-way de whole indurin’ resistunce uv dey time! Now dey’s ’scussin’ uv de ’wet an’ de dry’! Humph!

“Hit’s all one teh me! I knows I ain’t er-gwine teh hab no bar-room mahse’f, an’ I ain’t er-gwine teh pestah nobuddy frum habin’ er bar-room ef dey wants one. Dat’s des perzac’ly whar I stan’s.

“I done seen de wuckin’s uv de bar-rooms, an’ ergin, on de yutheh han’, I done seen de wuckin’s uv de drug-sto’. I done study uv ’em bofe thu’ de ’newvehmunts uv dat ole niggah Pomp, whut nomuhnates hisse’f mah husbun’—do’ I ain’t nevah seen no mighty ’mount uv _husbun’_ ’bout him. He’s des er lazy, biggity, ornerary ole black niggah, whut got hisse’f tied up in de bon’s er macremony des feh teh git his vittles an’ his lodgmunts. But he done bin er-livin’ er-long uv me now er-gwine on a mighty heap uv yeahs, an’ I got so used teh see him er-hangin’ ’roun’ mah house tell hit ’pyears lak I cyarn’ do bedoutin’ him—lak sump’n’s er-missin’ ef he ain’t dar.

“But ’scusin’ all dat, he sho’ is de _on_temperatist man, white er black, dat evah wuz bawn! He des natch’ly _bleedged_ feh teh drink ef he knows dar’s enny kin’ uv liquidmunts er-roun’! W’en de whi’ fo’ks had de bar-rooms ole Pomp he got pow’ful pyeart! He tuck’n tuck my ax an’ went all er-bout er-splittin’ an’ er-cuttin’ up wood—but de Lawd knows he ain’t nevah cut an’ split none feh _me_! An’ den he digged in de blossom patches feh de whi’ fo’ks. An’ let er-lone all er dat, mah hens got teh doin’ mighty cur’s—dey’d cackle lak dey wuz er-layin’ pow’ful, but I nevah could fin’ de fust rudemunts uv er aig. I mought er done a onjustice to de po’ ole niggah, but I ’spicioned him ’caze I hearn tell uv him er-sellin’ aigs, an’ hit don’t ’pyeah natch’l feh er man teh sell aigs w’en he ain’ got no hens uv his own feh teh lay ’em. Dem two ingrejunces—hens an’ aigs—des ’pintedly b’long to one er-nuther. Ef you got hens you’ll git aigs, an’ ef you ain’t you won’t. Dat is, not natch’ly! Uv co’se dey _is_ shawt cuts you kin take feh to git ’em, an’ I ’spicioned mah ole man uv takin’ dem vehy cuts—an’ mah aigs wid ’em.

“Well, dem an’ his wuckin’s fotch him in a little sal’ry, an’ evah night he’d go teh de bar-room. Ef he had fo’ bits he’d buy er fo’-bit bottle; ef he had two bits he’d buy er two-bit bottle; so, ’cordin’ teh his bits wuz de size uv his bottle. Den he’d stan’ er-roun’ an’ tell his ’speriunces an’ notate his tales, an’ sing his chunes, an’ de gen’l’mun would treat him to beeh an’ segahs. An’ des es long es dat bar-room stay open, ole Pomp, he’d stay dar. An’ evah night hit wuz de same thing! Evah _re_gitimate cent Pomp could scrape up stopped slap dar in dat bar-room!

“So I wusht teh de Lawd de whi’ fo’ks ’d shet up dem bar-rooms, an’ bless de Libbin’ Goodness, dey tuck’n done dat vehy thing!

“Den dey made de law dat nobuddy could git er drink ’ceptin’ ef dey wuz sick an’ had de doctah’s subscription feh teh git it by. W’en dat ole Pomp got er clear ondehstan’in’ uv dat ’ar law he des hump hisse’f! De niggah wuck so hahd an’ step er-roun’ so pyeart, an’ look so ’ligious-minded dat I got mighty holped up erbout him. But, _umph-umph_, honey, dat ole niggah, he sho’ sly! W’en Sat’d’y night come he ties er hank’cheh ’roun’ his ole jaws an’ gits him er stick an’ limps up teh de drug sto’. W’en de doctah notice him he say, ‘O-o-oh, Lawdy-Lawdy,’ lak he mos’ daid. An’ de doctah ax him, ‘Whut’s de mattah wid you, Uncle Pomp?’ An’ dat weekid ole Christyun niggah, whut’s es strong es er natch’l bawn oxen, he ’lowed, ‘O-o-oh, Lawdy, doctah, I feels pow’ful bad, thank Gawd!’ ‘Whut seem teh huht you now?’ sez de doctah, an’ ole Pomp ’spon’s back teh him, ‘Well, suh, I don’t perzac’ly know des whut it is. I got er miz’ry in de off side, an’ I’se afeerd I’se busted de rim outeh mah stomach. I knows I got a achin’ in de pit uv mah back, an’ mah livah’s all gummed up! An’ dis laig—o-o-_oh_—hit seem lak hit ain’t hung right er sump’n—hit ain’t _plum_, somehow. So I thought I’d ax you ef you’d be so onscruperlous, suh, as teh gib me er subscription teh git a drap uv whisky teh rub on intun’ly, suh, on dese stiff ole j’ints uv mine, ef you please, suh.’

“So dat ole backslidin’ niggah, he wuck on de doctah’s symphonies tell de doctah gib him de subscription, an’ he gib de doctah fo’ bits. An’ on top uv dat he hatter gib er dollar an’ er quawteh fo’ de vehy same kin’ an’ same remount uv whisky dat he git frum de bar-room feh fo’ bits befo’! Lawzy, chillun, hit wuz des lak I bin er-tellin’ you! An’ evah week hit wuz de same prefawmunts tell hit set me teh studyin’. An’ I done ’pintedly come to dis ’clusion, dat ef er man is _got_ teh hab whisky—des natch’ly boun’ an’ ’bleedged feh teh hab it, hit don’t mek much diff’unce whedder it come frum de bar-room er frum de drug sto’. An’ ef dey calls de bar-room de ‘wet’ an’ de drug sto’ de ‘dry,’ den de mos’ diff’unce is ’twixt an’ ’tween er dollah an’ six bits—countin’ de subscription—an’ fo’ bits. So I tells you dis, honey, w’en it comes to bar-rooms an’ drug sto’s hit’s des nip an’ tuck—mos’ly tuck.”

BY LILLIAN WESTER

You have been mine, O Love!
One fair, sweet day;
Last night you left the courts of men
And passed my way.

I did not ask, O Love!
In wish nor prayer,
For one so strong, so wholly good,
To think me fair.

I did but hope, O Love!
From humble sphere,
To sing one song so true that you
Might pause to hear;

Might pause, and find, O Love!
_That_ path more sweet,
When Chance should bring you once again
Where strayed my feet.

But then you came, O Love!—
’Twas night with me—
You smiled and drove the shadows far,
And I could see.

You took my hands, O Love!
And with your eyes
You looked my soul away from me
To where yours lies.

I weep, my Life, my Love!
But then the tears
Are for the days before you came,
Not coming years.

You came, my King, my Love!
And in your eyes
I lost the fear of days, and found
A Paradise!

OLD HICKORY

BORN AT WAXHAW SETTLEMENT, MARCH 15, 1767

DIED AT THE HERMITAGE, JUNE 8, 1845

By Robert L. Taylor

The most noted character in American history, one whom the coming ages will number among the truly great, was born at a point so obscure that its exact location is still in dispute. On the remote frontier of the Carolina colony, whose boundary lines were uncertain; far up on the forest-clad banks of the Catawba, whose slopes were just beginning to feel the pioneer’s axe; on the fifteenth day of March, 1767, Andrew Jackson was presented to humanity.

The story of his mother partakes of the tragic, the heroic and the pathetic. The daughter of a fairly prosperous linen weaver of Carrickfergus, she linked her destiny with young Andrew Jackson, a Scotch-Irishman, and, after a few years at home, they left the shores of the Emerald Isle, seeking fortune in the new colonies. Scarcely had they fixed their abode in the Waxhaw Settlement and begun to make a home, when death claimed the young husband, and the bereaved widow was left almost destitute, with two young sons, Hugh and Robert, her sole dependence. Within a few days Andrew was born, and necessity forced her to send her eldest son, Hugh, to live with a relative, while she and the two younger made their home with another.

Here in the primeval forests young Andrew began to imbibe that love of liberty which fitted him later so to bless humanity. His education was obtained in the old field school, but, impatient of its restraints and loving best the rifle and the chase, he spent the earlier years in developing the sinews of a vigorous manhood.

When yet a mere lad the sweep of the Revolution reached the Waxhaw Settlement, and Mrs. Jackson willingly gave her two older boys to the service of the colonies, but clung to her youngest born until the insult of a British officer gave intensity to an inclination that was destined to cost England so dear.

Peace found young Andrew bereft of mother, brothers and worldly inheritance, but with a vigorous constitution, a chivalrous sense of moral duty and a deep, abiding love for his country, he set out resolutely upon an unexampled career, the chief characteristic of which in earlier years was reckless daring, in which he was unconsciously laying the foundations for that intrepid adherence to right principle that later set him apart and above his fellows. Of uncommon mental endowment, he easily acquired such education as was then obtainable and adopted the profession of law, and when but twenty-one years of age he fell in with the adventurous spirit of the times on the frontier and made his way with the pioneers into the Southwest Territory. After lingering in the Watauga settlements a time, he followed the trail still farther into the wilderness until he reached the beautiful basin of the Cumberland, where he took up his final abode.

There, from the first, he took his place easily and naturally as a leader of men and began to work out that great destiny which will link his name indissolubly with liberty and free government as long as men love to be free, the symbol of the soundest and strongest fundamental principle in government ever conceived by man.

Measured by the moral standards now obtaining, many of his acts and habits in those earlier years cannot be justified, although there is little to indicate that they were held to be reprehensible then. His chief characteristic was towering and intolerant mastery of men, his greatest foible was his love for a race-horse, and he left nothing further to be done in following both bents, and yet he was actuated in everything by the highest conception of honor and principle, and imparted dignity and the virtue of his own indomitable character to every transaction in which he engaged.

The annals of men do not afford, and fiction has never conceived, an instance of more sublime devotion to womanhood than Andrew Jackson held for his wife. He loved her with an intensity of tenderness that was the exact antithesis of that fierce and stormy love of adventure and aptitude for arms that possessed him; and if nothing else were known of him but this, it would enshrine his name forever. She could not have been less than a charming, loving woman to have deserved the devotion of such a man and held it to the end, and she sleeps now by his side under a slab inscribed with a tribute by his hand that for entreating tenderness of sweet affection is scarcely paralleled:

“Here lie the remains of Mrs. Rachel Jackson, wife of President
Jackson, who died the 22d of December, 1828, aged 61. Her
face was fair, her person pleasing, her temper amiable, her
heart kind; she delighted in relieving the wants of her
fellow-creatures and cultivated that divine pleasure by the
most liberal and unpretending methods; to the poor she was a
benefactor, to the wretched a comforter, to the prosperous an
ornament; her piety went hand in hand with her benevolence, and
she thanked her Creator for being permitted to do good. A being
so gentle and so virtuous, slander might wound, but could not
dishonor. Even death, when he tore her from the arms of her
husband, could but transport her to the bosom of her God.”

Jackson’s character as a warrior and a statesman are so conspicuous as to dwarf by comparison his record as a lawyer. It is said that he filed seventy lawsuits for clients in the first month of his practice, and that out of one hundred and ninety-two cases before the court in 1790 he was counsel in forty-two. Three years later his cases numbered seventy-two out of one hundred and fifty-five, and the next year he increased this to two hundred and twenty-eight out of three hundred and ninety-seven. It was no inconspicuous lawyer who could make such record as this. But for his other resplendent traits, his reputation as a jurist might rest more securely, but it doubtless suffered much by his own indisposition to build his fame upon it.

He was only eight years in Tennessee before being made Major-General of militia, which in those times meant active service in the field. His career as a soldier needs scant recapitulation here to establish the statement that it was characterized by a most unselfish patriotism. He hesitated at nothing when his country’s interests were in jeopardy, creating opportunities and anticipating the power to meet them, daring even to invade a friendly territory, to disobey superior orders, to take fate and destiny in his own hands at any peril to himself.

It was this same unchanging, unconquerable spirit of invincible daring that characterized his administration of the government and nerved him to defy and conquer the money power that was then dominating the country through the United States Bank and gave him power to meet and quell the turbulent and dangerous doctrine of the right of a state to nullify a proper act of Congress.

The most conspicuous service rendered to mankind by Andrew Jackson was the creation and enforcement of the political cult that is expressed in his name. “Andy Jackson Democracy” has no mere partisan significance, but it denotes a principle and power in popular government that is to save to America forever the right of the people to rule themselves—the invincible strength of a central government based upon the supreme power of the separate states acting in harmony.

What was the secret of Jackson’s power? Whence came the attraction that drew men to him as the magnet draws the needle? It is not difficult to find the secret of his popularity with the pioneers. He appealed to them through his devotion to the “sport of kings,” for no man loved a fast horse or would risk more upon its prowess than he, and he led the sport in which the people most delighted. And then he stood first in all the feats of daring to which frontiersmen were addicted—a perfect shot, swift of foot, a mighty wrestler, capping it all off with a spirit of chivalrous gallantry and a gentlemanly bearing that rendered him superb. But what drew the sage of Monticello to him? What gave him such mastery in statecraft and charmed men to his standard? It was his inherent, unswerving love of human liberty, his tense loyalty and stern faith in the institutions of his country, his immaculate conception of right and duty, and the superb fearlessness that possessed him, that made the man _convincing_.

It is said that Jackson has more biographers than any other national character. His career was so replete with incidents inviting interpretation that writers are drawn to it like flies about the sugar-bowl. Of no other man can historians resort to panegyric in substitute of statement and be justified by public criticism. There are perhaps more anecdotes told of him than any other public man, and never one that does not denote courage and power and strength. Indicative of his intuitive powers of quick decision is the story that when the subject of a site for a new treasury building to replace that burned by the British was broached one day, he was walking on Pennsylvania Avenue. With instant emphasis, he struck his stick upon the ground and said: “Put it here!” And there it stands to-day.

No man has lived who had a simpler human way of loving his friends and hating those who hurt him than Andrew Jackson. His fiercest wrath, however, was reserved for those who dared traduce his wife. In his Florida campaign, when supplies failed the army, he set the example of eating nuts and roots and berries. One of his friends at the other end of a long table at a barbecue became involved in a difficulty, which Jackson no sooner perceived than he cried, “I’m coming!” and, mounting the table, strode its full length to the rescue. He was singularly tender to little folks. How touching is the picture of this grim warrior, the seasoned duelist, the fierce hater, tenderly wrapping a sugar-rag for a ragged papoose found in a Creek village after a battle, and nursing it until he could send it to a friendly woman in Montgomery! Such was his hold upon the affections of his people that a certain traveler, reaching a Tennessee town the day after he was elected President, found the populace engaged in applying tar and feathers to two reckless burghers who had dared to vote against the General! And there is still a happy valley somewhere in remote Arcadia, we are told, where the old men hobble to the polls quadrennially in November and cast a loyal vote for “Andy Jackson.”