17 The Second Day

The trumpets were sounding the awakening call, and I rose from the damp earth, finding it good to feel myself a man again. The rays of the sun were flushing the heavens, and the river, yellow and sombre at night, glittered beneath the light now, in a vast sheet of silver. Beads of rain still sparkled on the trees.

I looked toward the Southern lines, but instead of the Southern camp fires, I saw only a great army in blue, the sun flashing over rifle barrels, polished bayonets, rows of cannon, and eager faces, the youth of the Northwest, and my own Kentucky, ready for a new battle. I was dazzled for a moment, and cried out:

“What is that?”

“That,” said the ever-ready Shaftoe, “is the Army of the Ohio, more than thirty thousand strong, which, luckily for us, now stands between our remains and the Southern forces. It will open the battle as soon as you drink your coffee. Hurry up, please; the Army of the Ohio is waiting.”

The regular was full of good humour, rejoicing at the presence of the new force which had already moved forward, occupying almost without resistance many of the positions lost the day before, and I began to share his high spirits and expectations.

A vast murmur arose as the untried army in front formed for battle. Up rose the sun, and the heavy metallic clash that told of moving arms began. A band, just landed from one of the boats and posted on the bank, was playing, its martial note swelling through the forest.

The men around me began to grow impatient. They had forgotten their toil and wounds, and asked to be led again to the charge. But there was a pause. Each army seemed to await the attack of the other. Perhaps they had suddenly remembered the slaughter of the day before. Higher went the sun. All the eastern heavens were suffused with red and gold. The day was advancing. The cannon boomed far to our right, the report echoing with wonderful distinctness through the forest, which had been strangely silent before, save for the murmur of two great armies. The sound repeating itself rolled away among the hills, a clear and threatening echo. A column of blue smoke arose.

The second battle had begun.

A shout, great in volume, went down our ranks, and all the drummers began to beat their drums. Fifty thousand men swung forward, and advancing over the field that had been lost the day before, threw themselves upon the enemy who waited calmly. Already the skirmishers, following the signal of the cannon shot, had opened fire from the shelter of trees, and stumps, and hillocks, creeping up, like Indians, each choosing the man for his bullet. But the crackle of their rifles was drowned by the heavy tread of the army and the roar of the batteries which had opened with all the great guns.

The precision of the advance, the regularity of the brigades, the flashing of steel, and the vivid colours in the brilliant morning sun filled me with admiration, and, being in the rear now, where I could see, I looked upon the coming battle as a great spectacle. I did not think how a single day’s fighting had hardened me and driven the mere personal element, the feeling for suffering, the anxiety for self, out of my mind, but all my attention was on the magnificent panorama of conflict spread out before my eyes, and its probable result.

The Southern army was motionless, standing in a solid mass that showed no sign of retreat or yielding. The firing increased, a blaze of light ran along the entire front of our lines, the flight of the bullets and shells rose to that steady whistle which was now such a familiar sound in my ears, but the South was still silent.

As I looked again with eager eyes, I suddenly saw the Southern cannoneers bend over their guns, and the front rank men raise their rifles to their shoulders. Then the Southern army was hidden for a moment by the flame, and the bullets sang many songs in our ears. Their shells, too, met the Northern shells, and the Southern squares by a movement that was almost involuntary swung forward to meet us. The smoke in a few moments enveloped the hills, the forests, and the armies, only the flash of the firing and the steel of the bayonets showing through it. I advanced, almost shoulder to shoulder with the man on my right and the man on my left, feeling that the army was a mighty whole, of which I was one of the minute parts.

But our army stopped suddenly and quivered as if it had received a great blow. I was incredulous for a moment. I had not believed a check possible. Yet it was a fact. The squares not only stopped; they reeled back. Then they recovered the yard or two they had lost, but stopped there again, staggering.

The army groaned, not so much in pain as in anger. It had struck a rock when it was expected to move steadily on, and the feeling was not good. It was now our troops who were marching into the mouths of guns, and the feeling was unpleasant. Sharpshooters swarmed on our flanks and stung us with an unceasing fire that annoyed as much as the cannon and was almost as deadly. Every tree, hillock, and stone became a fortress against us. The enemy, whom we had expected to find worn out and weak from his work and losses of the day before, suddenly developed wonderful strength and energy, and it became apparent to us that all the ground we would take we must buy at its full price.

The triumphant shout—the long rebel yell, shrill and piercing, swelling even above the tumult of the combat—rose again in the Southern lines, and thus the new battle swung to and fro, the North confident of winning with its fresh troops, the South refusing to yield.

Grant, as on the day before, crossed the field from side to side, again and again, watching the battle lines and the shifting fortunes of the conflict, hurrying fresh troops to weak places and massing the artillery. He saw us forced back by the furious and repeated attacks of the South, and determining to break the centre of their army, he directed three batteries to open on that point. These great guns began their work from slight elevations, and in a moment a concentric fire, tremendous in volume, was poured upon the Southern centre. The men were swept away in rows and groups, others took their places, but the fire of the three batteries, coming from three separate points, and all beating upon the same spot, increased in volume, smashing companies and regiments, a stream of metal that scooped out the Southern centre as a plough throws up the earth. The Southern general rushed new men to the threatened centre, but they in turn were annihilated by the batteries. Nothing could stand against the fire of those great guns delivered with such swiftness and accuracy. They swept a path clean of living men and the Southern force was cut apart; the wings were there, but the centre was gone, the backbone broken, and cohesion lost. Then Grant lifted up our army again and hurled it at the enemy. The South yielded to the shock—only a little—but it was forced back.

I shouted with the others when I felt that we were going forward again, and the hot tide rose anew in my veins. I was half blinded by the smoke which the breath of the guns blew in clouds, but the sense of feeling told me that the army was advancing.

Fortune, wanton in her fickleness, returned to the side of the heavier battalions, and our advance, begun when the Southern centre was broken, continued. Yet the Southern men still fought with undimmed courage, knowing that they were losers at last, but determined to lose like heroes. The fighting was often hand to hand again, companies and regiments mingling in the woods, but always now our line advanced and the Southern line was borne back.

►   ▲