After a horrible week of cold and wet the sun set clear and calm on Saturday, the eve of battle. The woods were alive with forty thousand Confederates all ready for their supreme attack on the thirty-three thousand Federals on their immediate four-mile front. Grant's front ran, facing south, between Owl and Lick Creeks, two tributaries that joined the Tennessee on either side of Pittsburg Landing. Buell's advance division, under Nelson, was just across the Tennessee. But Grant was in no hurry to get it over. His reassuring wire that night to Halleck said: "The main force of the enemy is at Corinth. I have scarcely the faintest idea of an attack (general one) being made upon us." But the skirmishing farther south on Friday had warned Grant, as well as Sherman and the vigilant Prentiss, that Johnston might be trying a reconnaissance in force--the very thing that Beauregard wished the Confederates to do.
Long before the beautiful dawn of Sunday, the fateful sixth of April, Prentiss had thrown out from the center a battalion which presently met and drove in the vanguard of the first Confederate line of assault. The Confederate center soon came up, overwhelmed this advanced battalion, and burst like a storm on the whole of Prentiss's division. Then, above the swelling roar of multitudinous musketry, rose the thunder of the first big guns.
"Note the hour, please, gentlemen," said Johnston; and a member of his staff wrote down: "5:14 A.M."Johnston's admirable plan was, first, to drive Grant's left clear of Lick Creek, then drive it clear of Pittsburg Landing, where the two Federal ironclads were guarding the ferry. This, combined with a determined general assault on the rest of Grant's line, would huddle the retreating Federals into the cramped angle between Owl Creek and the Tennessee and force them to surrender.
But there were three great obstacles to this: Sherman on the right, the "Hornet's Nest" in the center, and the gunboats at the Landing. Worse still for the Confederates, Buell was now too close at hand. Three days earlier Johnston had wired from Corinth to the Government at Richmond: "Hope engagement before Buell can form junction." But the troubles of the march had lost him one whole priceless day.
The Confederate attack was splendidly gallant and at first pushed home regardless of loss. The ground was confusing to both sides:
a bewilderment of ups and downs, of underbrush, woods, fields, and clumps of trees, criss-cross paths, small creeks, ravines, and swamps, without a single commanding height or any outstanding features except the two big creeks, the river, and the Pittsburg Landing.
At the first signs of a big battle Grant hurried to the field, first sending a note to Buell, whom he was to have met at Savannah, then touching at Crump's Landing on the way, to see Lew Wallace and make sure whether this, and not the Pittsburg Landing, was the point of attack. Arrived on the field of Shiloh, calm and determined as ever, he was reassured by finding how well Sherman was holding his raw troops in hand at the extremely important point of Shiloh itself, next to Owl Creek.
But elsewhere the prospect was not encouraging, though the men got under arms very fast and most of them fought very well. The eager gray lines kept pressing on like the rising tide of an angry sea, dashing in fury against all obstructing fronts and swirling round the disconnecting flanks. The blue lines, for the most part, resisted till the swift gray tide threatened to cut them off. Half of Prentiss's remaining men were in fact cut off that afternoon and forced to surrender with their chief, whose conduct, like their own, was worthy of all praise. Back and still back the blue lines went before the encroaching gray, each losing heavily by sheer hard fighting at the front and streams of stragglers running towards the rear.
Sherman, like others, gave ground, but still held his men together, except for the stragglers he could not control. In the center C.F. Smith's division, with Hurlbut's in support, and all that was left of Prentiss's, defended themselves so desperately that their enemies called their position the Hornet's Nest. Here the fight swayed back and forth for hours, with ghastly losses on both sides. C.F. Smith himself was on his deathbed at Savannah.
But he heard the roar of battle. His excellent successor, W.H.L.
Wallace, was killed; and battalions, brigades, and even divisions, soon became inextricably mixed together. There was now the same confusion on the Confederate side, where Johnston was wounded by a bullet from the Hornet's Nest. It was not in itself a mortal wound. But, knowing how vital this point was, he went on encouraging his men till, falling from the saddle, he was carried back to die.