The Army of the Mississippi
Richmond, Va., April 5, 1862
General A. Sidney Johnston, Corinth, Miss.:
Your dispatch of yesterday received. I hope you will be able to close with the enemy before his two columns unite. I anticipate victory.
- President Jefferson Davis
It was a late hour when the telegraph key began to tap out its urgent message in the clerk’s office of the Tishomingo Hotel. Sometime after 10:00 PM on Tuesday April 2, a message was received from Bethel Station in Tennessee. Major General Cheatham of Polk’s Corps had wired the news that Union Major General Lew Wallace was on the march with his entire division towards the growing Union encampment at Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River. General Orders, no. 6 given by the hand of Major General Braxton Bragg had established a forward military presence at Bethel Station some twenty-five miles north of Corinth on the Mobile & Ohio Railroad. Its purpose was to observe and report the movements of various Union commands approaching Corinth from the north and east. As part of this effort, Colonel Nathan Bedford Forrest's cavalry was advanced along the Duck River in middle Tennessee watching the movements of Union Major General Don Carlos Buell. Buell had been held up at Columbia due to the high water of the Duck River and the fact that the bridge spanning it had been burned. Repairing the bridge by the 30th of March, Buell’s Army of the Ohio began marching out of Columbia and, like Wallace, headed for Pittsburg Landing. Once their intent was confirmed, Forrest informed Cheatham at Bethel Station the unwelcome news. Shortly afterward Cheatham drafted his message and wired the news down the track to Corinth.
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With message in hand, a courier left straight away from the Tishomingo Hotel headed for the stately residence of Oak Home, the temporary headquarters of Major General Leonidas Polk. The chain of command had dictated the courier’s route as the urgent message came from General Cheatham who commanded a division in Polk’s Corps. Upon arriving at Oak Home, the courier found General Polk already in bed. A position from which he refused to retreat and directed that the message be carried straight to General Beauregard. Trekking through the streets of Corinth, the courier eventually arrived at Beauregard’s Headquarters. Beauregard reading the telegram grasped the high drama of what was unfolding on this particular evening. The general immediately addressed the message to General A. S. Johnston with the endorsement, “Now is the time to advance upon Pittsburg Landing." Below his endorsement he scrawled, "Colonel Jordan had better carry this in person to General Johnston and explain the military situation.--G. T. B." Once again the courier scrambled away on his mission this time arriving at the office of Colonel Thomas Jordan, the Adjutant General of the Confederate Army, who took the telegram in hand and set out for Rose Cottage, Johnston’s headquarters roughly a quarter of a mile distant.
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The Burden of Command
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As Colonel Jordan arrived at Johnston’s headquarters, he found the general surrounded by several staff officers. Jordan entered the room and immediately presented the General with the telegram. Reading it Johnston was silent. Then he rose from his seat and said he would cross the street to see Major General Bragg. Bragg held the office of Chief of Staff and occupied the Hamilton Mask house the next block over from Rose Cottage. Jordan inquired whether he should accompany Johnston to which the General replied “Certainly.” Entering the house, Bragg had already retired for the evening and consequently met them in his night shirt. As his two visitors made known their reason for invading his bed chamber, Bragg rose to his feet and studied the telegram. Under the glare of oil lamps and candlelight Bragg read the message and informed General Johnston that he whole-heartedly agreed with Beauregard, the time was now. The commanding general strongly objected and a debate ensued between Bragg and Johnston with Colonel Jordan filling in the details allaying Johnston’s concerns one by one as the general raised them. As Adjutant General of the Confederate Army, Colonel Jordan was intimately familiar with General Beauregard’s plans for the upcoming battle. Later Jordan wrote, “As General Beauregard had discussed with me repeatedly within a week the details of such an offensive operation in all its features, and the necessity for it before the Federal army was itself ready to take the offensive, I was able to answer satisfactorily the objections raised by General Johnston.” Johnston finally agreed whereby Colonel Jordan, “turned to a table in General Bragg's chamber, and wrote a circular order to the three corps commanders, Major-Generals Polk, Bragg, and Hardee, directing that each should hold his corps under arms by 6 A. M., on the 3d of April, ready to March..." Nothing was left to chance. Jordan’s order was complete right down to the ammunition for the artillery and the number of tents each company should be provided with. General Beauregard had planned the battle to come and Bragg had assembled the men into a cohesive fighting force. The corps commanders had organized their commands and brought them to this place of rendezvous as the individual corps now became an army. The regimental colonels, the majors, the company captains, lieutenants, sergeants, all the way down to the lowliest private had all played their part. However this army would only move on the word of its commanding General. Sometime around midnight on April 2nd in the home of Hamilton Mask, General Albert Sidney Johnston gave that order.
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Tenting Tonight on the Old Camp Ground
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Certainly unknown to my second great grandfather, at this late hour of the night he would have been unaware of the momentous decisions being made some two miles down the road in the center of Corinth. The life of the Civil War soldier was one filled with early rising to reveille and generally ended around 10:00 PM often at the point of exhaustion due to long marching or constant drill. Before a general mandating of “lights out” and the advent of Taps, regimental bands as well as string bands formed among the soldiers themselves would often play late into the night. Soldiers would lay in their shelter tents and listen to various and at times melancholy tunes which serenaded them to sleep. Tunes like ‘Lorena’, ‘Just Before the Battle Mother’ and 'Tenting Tonight on the Old Campground' were three that were especially favored by both armies. Many soldiers recounted how they would hear the brass bands as they blanketed the fields on any given night with musical compositions that drew their thoughts towards home, loved ones, and the life they left behind. For a man of any age military service can be an agonizing experience of separation. For a farm boy of only eighteen it would have been especially trying. At that young age, even though one may look the part of a man, his sensibilities are still tender enough where he misses the protection of his father and especially the kind nature and love of his mother. John Henry and Albert had been in the army now since December. In just under four months they had travelled the South by rail, marched its roads, drilled in its fields and slept in its woods. Now they lay in tents alongside rifle pits and trenches that were evolving into full scale earthworks for defense of their beloved home, Mississippi. Slowly at first they experienced the tedium that all soldiers experience commonly referred to as “hurry up and wait”. Now however the waiting seemed to be giving way to something more palpable as each day was filled with increasing drill, increasing discipline, and the increasing rumors of war.
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The 3rd of April
While the common soldier slept through the early morning hours of April 3, Generals, staff officers, and senior non-commissioned officers were being roused from their slumber with urgent messages to report to command areas of their respective companies, regiments, brigades, and divisions. The military anatomy of command was in full swing. By 2:00 in the morning civilians in Corinth, not being privy to military strategy could still sense something had changed. Movement was afoot throughout the area, the darkness being broken by candle lanterns as couriers hurried through the streets, and oil lanterns one by one began coming to life illuminating the rooms within the private homes in which the generals held their headquarters. Officers of the Quarter Master’s Corps were awakened with urgent request to dispense the materials of war; “one hundred rounds of ammunition; three days' cooked provisions per man in their haversacks, with two more to be transported in wagons” read the directives being passed down the chain of command.
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This is the only known photo of Confederate troops on campaign. Taken in Frederick, Maryland during either Lee's 1862 or Early's 1864 invasion, the image must bear strong resemblance to The Army of the Mississippi as it massed in the streets of Corinth prior to marching off to Shiloh on April 3, 1862.
As a result of the meeting between Johnston and Bragg, the Army of the Mississippi had decided to go to war. By 1:40 A.M. a circular order directed by Johnston and written by Colonel Jordan had been issued to each of the corps commanders, Hardee, Bragg, and Polk, directing them to have their commands drawn up, provisioned, and in marching order on the streets of Corinth by 6:00 A. M., April 3 with a general movement to begin by mid-day. Beauregard had determined to move the army out of Corinth by multiple routes to the small community of Monterey just over the state line in Tennessee. All commands would merge there, aligning into their proper order of battle, and move on to the junction of the Corinth and Bark roads just southwest of the Union Army encamped on the plains surrounding Pittsburg Landing. There, on April 5, at sunrise Johnston would launch a devastating attack with the entire army where he intended to turn the enemy’s right flank back onto itself and drive them into the Tennessee River. Johnston did not want just a victory over the invader, he had launched a bid, to not only defeat, but completely destroy Major General Ulysses S. Grant’s Army of the Tennessee.
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A Sleeping Giant Awakens
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In the early morning darkness long before reveille, individual soldiers would have begun to call themselves to duty spurred on by the growing stir outside their tents. As word began to trickle down, those furthest down the chain of command would began to get a sense of what was going on based on bits and pieces of information circulating among the camps. If it was real, word of the impending move meant there was much for John Henry and Albert to do in order to ready themselves for the march. Then lanterns would be seen approaching down the company streets as sergeants and corporals moved among the tents rousing mess cooks earlier than normal. In just a few hours some 44,500 men had to be dressed, provisioned, equipped, and fed standing in marching order ready to move. Company cooks were to prepare a hurried breakfast. Uniformity among meals was lacking in both armies. Whatever was for breakfast at the company level was largely dependent on what the commissary issued the day before. If a hog was butchered the previous day then the company streets would have been filled with the smell of bacon which most likely would have been served with a single piece of bread. Or salt pork or a bit of beef might be offered. If the company cooks were resourceful enough they might hand out boiled eggs. Still, the breakfast had the sole purpose of sustaining the men during the coming day’s march and any food, regardless of what it was or how meager, would have been appreciated.
As the lanterns became more focused and neared the individual tents, junior officers would be heard telling senior NCOs to pass the word that at reveille the men were to fall in “under arms”. Such an exercise was a departure from the normal procedure of falling in on the company green at ‘Morning Assembly’ and then being ordered to “Take, Arms!” which was protocol. However on this morning things were very different and there was an added since of urgency to all that was transpiring. The men were to be in marching order with rifle on shoulder, pass by the mess wagon, take breakfast in hand, and then fall in along the road to await the order to move.
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No doubt the somewhat scattered existence within John Henry and Albert’s tent the last two weeks had to all be put in order. Before the candles were put away a quick note might be scribbled to loved ones back home. What few personal items a soldier had would be divided between the haversack for easy access and those less frequented placed within blankets neatly folded and rolled. Fresh socks, hopefully dry from the previous day’s laundry, would have been slipped on ready to be pressed into service for the long road march ahead. Exiting the tent, the eastern sky slowly giving light, revealed more of the scene. A quick survey of the landscape told the boys that whatever was afoot, this was no false alarm. Teamsters were driving horses to artillery parks while wagon masters were placing their vehicles in column in their brigade areas all pointed to the center of Corinth where supply depots held provisions soon to be distributed. Mounted men came and went as brigade staffs summoned regimental commanders to receive their orders.
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Taking it all in, they quickly turned back to their immediate task of personal readiness. Once their uniform tunic, be it frock coat or shell jacket, was on and buttoned its full length, now the boys would begin putting on their accoutrements. First came the strap that held the cartridge box, slung over the left shoulder with the box resting on the right hip. To hold this in place a waist belt was brought around the back and buckled in front. The waist belt served a dual purpose of bearing bayonet scabbard, worn on the left thigh, and the cap pouch on the front to the right of the buckle. A third use was holding the cartridge box securely to the body so it wouldn’t fly about in disorder should the soldier be obliged to run. Next came the haversack holding rations for the day, plate, utensils, and some personal items. The haversack with the canteen were slung off the right shoulder and usually “tied high” above the left hip about the saddle of the back. This arrangement was also designed to reduce movement on the march. Lastly the boys would have assisted each other in putting on their knapsacks which road high on the back anchored over the shoulder and under the arms by small leather straps. Additionally a strap midpoint on the knapsack was brought under the arms and buckled forward in the center of the chest. Private William G. Pirtle of the 7th Kentucky with Cheatham’s Division at Bethel Station, also destined to fight at Shiloh, gave a good account of the marching order of the average Confederate soldier:
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“Fryday evening the 4th of April 1862, was called into line with knap sacks, full of clothing straped to our backs or rather shoulders, haver sack with three days rations hung to our waist with fourty rounds of cartridges and a bayonet scarboard attached with bayonet in it, two blankets rolled the long way thrown over one shoulder and brought together under the other arm and tyed, musket at right shoulder shift arms, canteen hung on one shoulder by a strap, and in addition to this some have a pair of shoes or boots dangling around them. If you are good at imagination you can draw an idea how a full fledged and well equiped soldier looked on the march.”
According to a study focusing on the armies at Gettysburg, the average Confederate soldier carried between 30 to 80 pounds on his back. As a percentage of body weight with the average soldier weighing around 145 pounds, this meant that a soldier carried 35% of his body weight on his back. This fact combined with the grueling toil of a twenty-five mile road march at a quick pace in ankle deep mud elicits sympathy for the common man pressed into an uncommon circumstance. The life of a Civil War soldier was difficult under the best of circumstances yet for four years the men on both sides endured to see the war through to the end; a strong testimony to their commitment to something larger than themselves.
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As a last item, walking up the company street away from their tents, soldiers would have seen a corporal or a trusted private standing by “stacked arms” arranged in a line of other rifles ordered in the same manner. Normally taken in formation, on an occasion such as this, the corporal would simply hand them out as the rifle’s owner passed by. Within the Confederacy there was disparity in arms early on in the war. Some regiments had converted flintlocks dating to the Mexican War, some had actual flintlocks, still many others had the .577 caliber model 1853 British Enfield, while others like the 3rd Mississippi Battalion had the leading standard in the United States at the time, the Springfield .58 caliber muzzle loading rifle. With rifle in one hand and breakfast in the other, reveille at last was sounded immediately followed by the long roll of the drum. It was 5:00 A.M. Weighted down with all the tools and implements of war, it would be 120 hours, forty-five miles, and two full days of combat before these men would lose their burden under near complete exhaustion and the limits of human endurance.
