As the bright morning sun rose above the trees it revealed a cloudless sky that some present likened to another “Sun of Austerlitz”, referencing that great Napoleonic victory over the combined Russian and Austrian army in 1805.  Private Thomas Duncan, a cavalry escort to General Bragg, recorded the scene:  “This was the grandest, most solemn and tragic scene I had ever witnessed. The sun was just coming up over the hilltop, its bright rays touching the half-green forest with a golden beauty that could not but charm the eye and thrill the heart…It was one of those rare mornings that, in a deep woods, casts a charm of mingled silence and wild music…there were bird songs and the tongueless voices of whispering waters—timid, blended melodies of uncounted centuries that here had sounded their glad chorus to all the mornings of the springtime...”  Just three days earlier, on the opposite side of the field, General William Tecumseh Sherman in a letter home to his wife felt equally moved to record his impressions:  “The weather is now springlike, apples and peaches in blossom and trees beginning to leave [sic], bluebirds singing and spring weather upon the hillsides.  This part of the Tennessee differs somewhat from that up at Bellefonte. There the Alleghany Mountains still characterized the Country whereas here the hills are lower and rounded covered with oak, hickory, and dogwood, not unlike the Hills down Hocking [Ohio].”  Both Duncan and Sherman had been captured by the beauty and tranquility of the countryside surrounding Shiloh Church.  It is a place predominately populated with hardwood trees.  Various species of oak, hickory, and cherry are most prevalent.  Occasionally you’ll see a Virginia pine here and there.  Along the creek bottoms you can often find a holly tree tucked away close to the water.  The split rail fences that delineated the several little farmsteads in the area were intermittently shielded with briar patches that would yield up blackberries in the coming months.  Dogwoods that poked out from under the larger trees along the edge of the wood line bloomed early being some of the first flowering trees to add their contrasting color to greening landscape.  The deep beauty of the area, the sounds of nature, and the blessing of better weather created a pastoral setting that would be long remembered by those who would fight over this same ground in the coming hours.  As the day dawned this morning, all the sights and sounds of an early Tennessee springtime promised April 6, 1862 would be a fine day. 

 

Albert Sidney Johnston

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Fifty-nine year old Albert Sydney Johnston was considered by many at the time, including President Jefferson Davis, to be the finest soldier in either army. He was a professional soldier who graduated from West Point in 1826.  His first field service was in the Black Hawk War of 1832.  Four years later, Johnston, a Kentucky native, moved to Texas in 1836 and considered Texas his home.  He rose to the rank of Brigadier General in the revolutionary Texas Army in 1837.  Returning in 1846 to the regular United States Army, he saw action during the Mexican War as colonel of the 1st Texas Volunteers fighting in two major battles, Monterrey and Buena Vista.  Personally opposed to secession, he nevertheless cast his lot with the Confederacy when he learned that his adopted home state of Texas had seceded.  

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Before the outbreak of the war Johnston was stationed in California with his wife Eliza and their six children.  This is where he met a young Lieutenant Hardcastle and formed a professional relationship that evolved into an enduring friendship during their harrowing experience on their return East to join the Confederacy.  Shortly after resigning his commission in the United States Army, it was learned that a plan was afoot to arrest Johnston and other like officers on the charge of treason.  This turn of events necessitated their flight from Los Angeles on the 16th of June.  The two men, along with Johnston’s manservant Randolph, and six other companions, braved the intense summer heat of the Southwest desert arriving at Mesilla, in the Confederate Arizona Territory in August of 1861.  Their friendship was born out of adversity as their little party dodged Apache Indians, evaded capture by Federal patrols, and at one point riding 70 miles under the blazing sun without water for their animals and only what remained in the bottom of a few canteens for the entire party.  The journey from Los Angeles to Mesilla was 800 miles where most of the party disbanded.  From thence Johnston traveled to El Paso for the earliest stage to San Antonio, another 700 miles distant.  From there he travelled by stage to New Orleans and then on to Richmond where on September 10 he was appointed by President Jefferson Davis as one of five men holding the rank of “general”, the highest in the Confederate Army and given the sweeping command of the entire Western Theater.

 

As a boy growing up in Mississippi I was intimately familiar with Shiloh National Military Park. That was sacred ground to me and my best friends Ricky and Joey. On more than one occasion we’d “skip school” and make a road trip to Shiloh. Our pilgrimage would always eventually make its way to the Peach Orchard where Johnston spoke his last words. As a Southerner, I always lamented the loss of Johnston so early in the war and at such a critical time in the battle. Based on what I knew as a child, I looked up to him. As stated, he was revered by many as the professional soldier. I wonder if John Henry and Albert ever saw the great man? Talked to him? Did he know of them? Perhaps nod and smile at my ancestors as he passed by on his horse? It’s certainly possible and especially so knowing the favor held for their battalion's commander by Johnston. Regardless of why, that man of history once so cherished and mourned by the South, on April 5, 1862, directly affected the life of John Henry and Albert Coker as Hardcastle, complying with Johnston’s personal request, moved his battalion forward onto the low rise of ground in Wood’s field.  They had taken the place of the 8th Arkansas on the skirmish line where they lay in watchful wait to see what the coming day would bring.

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Just at the dawning of the day, Aide-de-Camp Major Edward W. Munford was still asleep when he was awakened by General Johnston.  In the shallow light of the early morning hour Johnston was seeking him out.  The general was already having breakfast with other staff officers over a small fire dining on coffee and cold biscuits.  He informed Munford that he better get something to eat as he intended to move upon the enemy in a few minutes.  The major remembered, “Just as I was draining my tin cup of coffee, bang, bang-bang went some muskets near the right wing of Hardee's line, and in a moment more boom went a cannon. Colonel Preston of Johnston’s staff exclaimed, “There, the first gun of the battle!”  Munford goes on to say, “General Johnston turned to him and me, to whom he had before given blank books to note the incidents of the battle, and said, ‘Note the hour, if you please, gentlemen’.  It was precisely fourteen minutes after five o'clock. We mounted, galloped to the front, found the enemy in retreat, and our line just starting in pursuit.”  Yet another staff officer, Major Dudley M. Haydon, remembered Johnston calling for his horse to be brought up at five o’clock after which the general mounted and rode off “in fine spirits” making his way to where the firing was heaviest.  Varying accounts exists of the exact moment the Battle of Shiloh began due to locations of the one recording the event, what one considered as the actual start of the battle, and even the time pieces used by the individual recording the time.  Still, somewhere around five o’clock in the morning the pastoral silence and bucolic scenery of the surrounding countryside was shattered by the crash of first contact by the opposing sides. 

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Shiloh - The First Day

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At 4:55 A.M. three shots rang out, the first exchange between Brewer’s Alabama cavalry and a patrol of the 25th Missouri Infantry commanded by Major James Powell. Powell had been sent out on an unauthorized patrol by his brigade commander, Colonel Everett Peabody.  Peabody had been uneasy since the previous evening and, despite orders to the contrary, had taken it on himself to send out a reconnoitering party beyond the camps just in case.  Peabody’s instinctive decision was right as now his men had uncovered an enemy patrol.  As Major Powell’s men engaged, the cavalry quickly fell back as ordered as the 3rd Mississippi took up the work. Visibility in the twilight was difficult as each side was best marked by the muzzle flashes as firing intensified. Hardcastle was ordered to hold his position as Wood began to move the entire brigade forward.  John Henry and Albert were seeing battle for the first time. It helps me to see them in my mind’s eye by reading the words of those present.  Their commander, Major Hardcastle stated; “At the first alarm my men were in line and all ready. I was on a rise of ground, men kneeling. The enemy opened a heavy fire on us at a distance of about 200 yards, but most of the shots past over us. We returned fire immediately and kept it up. Captain Clare, aide to General Wood, came and encouraged us. We fought the enemy an hour or more without giving an inch.” In all the excitement the work of the soldier eventually left its mark. Someone’s shot from Hardcastle’s Battalion struck home and 2nd Lieutenant Frederick Klinger of the 25th Missouri fell to the ground. He was the first Union casualty of the Battle of Shiloh.  What may have been the first Confederate casualty of the battle was captured by the pen of courier Thomas Duncan.  As Duncan road forward with a message from Bragg to his Chief of Artillery Colonel Gilmer, he passed along Hardcastle’s skirmish line.  “Here I saw, for the first time, a soldier killed…The soldier whose killing I witnessed was a Confederate—a very young man. The bullet came from a point several degrees to the right of his front and cut his throat.  Seeing this boy killed impressed me anew with the horrors of war. I thought of his mother, probably praying for him in her distant home, and yet within a few hours his body would be cast into an isolated and unmarked grave.”  These two men, one from Missouri, one from Mississippi, were now part of an eternal brotherhood whose ranks were swelling by the minute as casualties began to mount.  On the Union side, more men began to fall in rapid succession.  Colonel Francis Quinn of the 12th Michigan remembered, “About daylight the dead and wounded began to be brought in. The firing grew closer and closer till it became manifest a heavy force of the enemy was upon us.” I can’t help but wonder if any of these Union soldiers were struck down by John Henry or Albert.   Any veteran of combat will tell you it will change you unlike any other experience in life. Being only 18 years old, I imagine John Henry and Albert were losing more and more of their youth with each shot.

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The Missourians occupied a position in Fraley’s Field.  A place from which they had vigorously attacked Hardcastle’s position apparently under the impression they were fighting cavalry that had dismounted.  The 3rd Mississippi Battalion had been designated as “Sharp Shooters”, specialized units to be officially codified into law by the Confederate government two weeks after the battle.  However on this day, along James Wood’s cotton field, kneeling behind the fence outlining the extent of the farmer’s property; Hardcastle’s men were already fulfilling that role.  Squeezing off shot after shot from their Springfield rifles, the human toll of the 25th Missouri began to rise.