Lost in the blaze, thunder, and frenzy of battle: With the Blythe’s at Shiloh

As Blythe’s Mississippi regiment went into action at Shiloh on Sunday morning, April 6, 1862, they encountered General Beauregard and staff but ran into a serious problem: the general’s coach lay astride the regiment’s path directly in front of Captain James DuBerry’s Co. C.

            “Captain DuBerry was a good fighter but he had supreme contempt for the finesse drill and this obstruction, stretching the full front of his company filled him with perplexity," remembered Captain Benjamin Sawyer of Co. I. “Had it been a four-gun battery confronting him, he would have been at no loss for action but that gaudy coach, with its caparisoned team, was more than his tactics ever provided for. Without knowing how to flank it, he marched his company squarely against it when the men halted and looked around in confusion.”

            “The regiment was aligning upon the colors and of course the sudden halt of Co. C confused the entire line,” Sawyer continued. “Move forward, Captain DuBerry!” thundered Colonel Blythe, mortified at the ignoble confusion under the very eyes of General Beauregard. But how was DuBerry to move forward with that formidable obstruction before him? At length, the captain turned to one of Beauregard’s aides and roared out “Take that damned old stage out of the way or I’ll tumble it down the hill!”

            Captain Sawyer’s account of Shiloh was originally published in Wilbur F. Hinman’s Camp and Field: Sketches of Army Life Written by Those Who Followed The Flag, ’61-’65 in 1892. Captain Sawyer’s company would later transfer to the 24th Alabama where he served as lieutenant colonel of that regiment. After the war, Sawyer moved to Georgia where he edited newspapers and invented the square-bottomed paper bag.

 

General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard proved an inspirational figure at Shiloh to many of the Southern troops who saw him that Sunday morning, but for Blythe's Mississippians, Beauregard's "gaudy coach" proved an embarrassing impediment to their march to the battlefield. Captain John Reardon of the 6th Arkansas recalled how delighted his Razorbacks became when Beauregard, with a heavy Creole accent, encouraged his men to "shoo at de feet."

            It was a beautiful Sabbath morning at Shiloh. The air was fresh and balmy as a morning in June. Genera Johnston’s plan of battle consisted of three lines in the following order: General Hardee’s corps, strengthened by Gladden’s brigade of Bragg’s corps, constituted the first line extending from Owl Creek on the left to Lick Creek on the right. This line fell perpendicular to and across the Corinth road, a distance of three miles. The second line, consisting of the remainder of Bragg’s corps, was drawn up parallel with and 200 yards to the rear of the first and was to conform its movements to the first. The third line (Polk’s corps) was similarly disposed, 500 yards to the rear of the second and was to conform its movements. Breckinridge’s corps was massed in the rear of the center of Polk’s and was to move forward in column, ready to be deployed when and wherever support should be needed.

            The woods in the immediate front of our brigade [General Bushrod Johnson] which we had to pass to reach the enemy was a tangle of swamps, bushes, and brambles, exceedingly difficult to penetrate. Now and then a small patch of cleared ground around a cabin relieved the toilsome scramble through the chapparal. At sunrise, we were ordered to move forward. We had not proceeded far before the roll of musketry in front told that the work of death had begun. Then came the peculiar sharp ringing report of the 12-pdr Parrotts and soon another and another, each greeted by a yell of defiance by our eager and thoroughly aroused men.

            Ascending a little slope, we encountered General Beauregard and his staff. The general had a magnificent coach a la Napoleon drawn out on a hillside. Captain [James R.M.] DuBerry was a good fighter but he had supreme contempt for the finesse drill and this obstruction, stretching the full front of his company filled him with perplexity. Had it been a four-gun battery confronting him, he would have been at no loss for action but that gaudy coach, with its caparisoned team flanked by the general and his staff in all the glory of gold lace and feathers, was more than his tactics ever provided for. Without knowing how to flank it, he marched his company squarely against it when the men halted and looked around in confusion.

            The regiment was aligning upon the colors and of course the sudden halt of Co. C confused the entire line. “Move forward, Captain DuBerry!” thundered Colonel Blythe, mortified at the ignoble confusion under the very eyes of General Beauregard. But how was DuBerry to move forward with that formidable obstruction before him? At length, the captain turned to one of Beauregard’s aides and roared out “Take that damned old stage out of the way or I’ll tumble it down the hill!”

Blythe's Mississippi regiment, an early component of General Leonidas Polk's Corps, was among the Columbus, Kentucky garrison in the early days of the war. Polk's troops fell back south after the fall of Forts Henry and Donelson and joined General Albert Sidney Johnston's army at Corinth in March 1862. The regiment, also known the 44th Mississippi, would see action at Shiloh, Munfordville, Stones River, Chickamauga, and through the Atlanta campaign.  

            The battle in front had become general. All along that fearful three-mile line the rattle of musketry and the roar of artillery was deafening the air. Soon the ambulances, toiling under their loads of wounded and dying, came groaning by and with them straggling soldiers telling horrible tales of bloody work “just over the hill.” One little hero, a mere child who ought in decency to have been with his mother, who belonged to Co. D of the 16th Mississippi came up and reported his regiment cut up and requested permission to fall in with us. He was given a place in line and throughout that bloody day the little fellow fought like a man.

            We had now reached a point opposite the Iowa camps directly in front of the enemy’s right center. Before us lay an almost impenetrable thicket of brambles and briers. Having cleared a “jungle,” we crossed at a double quick the little field beyond when, rising to the crest of s sharp hill, we were brought face to face with the battle.

            Never shall I forget the grandeur of that sight. The enemy’s camps lay before us, spreading far and wide, dotting the well-cleared slope. McClernand’s division was in our front. Dark masses of men clothed in blue were moving in soldierly precision before us, some wheeling into line, others deploying, and other recumbent on the ground awaiting with tiger-like stillness our approach to hurl death in our faces. The deafening roar of guns, the unearthly shriek of the shells, the rattle of musketry, the venomous ping of the bullet, all conspired to make it a scene the grandest ever mortal eye beheld.

            Then came the order thrilling every heart- “By the left of companies, forward into line, double quick, march!” No order was ever more handsomely executed. Each company filed into line as deliberately as if that long line of sullen blue that lay scarcely 300 yards in front was a line of friends instead of foes. Captain Jacob H. Sharp’s Co. A had scarcely attained position before the enemy opened fire; like a simoom’s breath, it hissed through our ranks. Our line moved forward until within a hundred paces of the line of blue then we were lost in the blaze, thunder, and frenzy of battle.

            The entire day was one of repeated and heard-earned triumphs. After each fierce shock, the Federal lines were formed, only to be broken and hurled back again. It was a fearful carnage and none but the heroes could have formed and reformed as the Federals did that day. A foeman less worthy would have been swept from the field by the first triumphant onslaught. By noon, we had driven McClernand from his tents and by 3 p.m. the entire Federal force was broken.

            But glorious as was that Sunday of battle, its honors were bought at a fearful price. Co. I carried into the battle 30 men- 6 were killed and 17 wounded. The balance of the regiment suffered in proportion. Our gallant Colonel Andrew K. Blythe was killed and Lieutenant Colonel David L. Herron mortally wounded. Captain Humphries and Captain DuBerry, brave old DuBerry, Lieutenant McEachim, Lieutenant Hall, and Lieutenant Allen with 80 men were killed, and 120 were wounded out of an effective force of 330 rank and file. A musket ball through the right knee tripped me up as the enemy’s line was broken. A captured gun, one of Burrow’s 14th Ohio Battery [see “Give it to ‘em boys, you’re cutting them all to hell” The 14th Ohio Battery at Shiloh] served as an excellent ambulance and thrown astride its grimy back, I rode out of that terrible fight as proudly as ever rode a Roman conqueror of old.

            That night our army lay upon the field. So complete did they consider the victory that but little thought was given to the morrow. The night was given to plundering and richly were those camps furnished. Such a lavish abundance of good things had never been spread before unrestrained hands.

            At length, the morning came not as the morning before, but dark, gloomy, and chilly. The sun of Austerlitz had set; it was the sun of Waterloo struggling through the gloomy mist of the morning. The clouds hung dark with threatening rain. The very air seemed weighted with gloomy forebodings. It was nearly 9 o’clock before the roll of musketry and the roar of artillery was heard. And when it did come, it had not that animated ring which characterized the struggle the day before.

            Our troops, demoralized by the night’s revel, were hastily thrown together in mixed commands. All day I lay upon my back, unable to move a single muscle without a painful effort and listened to that sham of a battle. At length, about 3 o’clock in the afternoon, the firing ceased. Then a courier came and ordered the provost guard to move off with the prisoners. Soon another came ordering all the wounded who could walk or be removed to leave as the army was about to retreat to Corinth.

To read more of the wartime services of Blythe's Mississippians, please check out the following posts:

"Old Blucher Thompson Charges the Round Forest at Stones River" 

"A Battlefield Promise Kept: A Mississippian Returns the Battle Flag of the 2nd Missouri"


Source:

“Battle Scenes at Shiloh,” Captain Benjamin F. Sawyer, Co. I, Blythe’s Mississippi Regiment, from Wilbur F. Hinman’s Camp and Field: Sketches of Army Life Written by Those Who Followed The Flag, ’61-’65. Cleveland: N.G. Hamilton Co., 1892, pgs. 57-60

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