'It Might Go On for a Very Long Time'

If you have never read Ulysses Grant’s Personal Memoirs (1885), try this passage from the start of Chap. XXV and decide if you went to continue reading. It’s the second and final day of the Battle of Shiloh – April 7, 1862. Grant is surveying the battlefield accompanied by Colonel James Birdseye McPherson and Grant’s chief commissary, Maj. John P. Hawkins. The trio is unexpectedly attacked by Confederate artillery and muskets from across a field: 

“In the sudden start we made, Major Hawkins lost his hat. He did not stop to pick it up. When we arrived at a perfectly safe position we halted to take an account of damages. McPherson's horse was panting as if ready to drop. On examination it was found that a ball had struck him forward of the flank just back of the saddle, and had gone entirely through. In a few minutes the poor beast dropped dead; he had given no sign of injury until we came to a stop. A ball had struck the metal scabbard of my sword, just below the hilt, and broken it nearly off; before the battle was over it had broken off entirely. There were three of us: one had lost a horse, killed; one a hat and one a sword-scabbard. All were thankful that it was no worse.”

 

Like Grant, McPherson was an Ohioan, born in Clyde, the future boyhood home of Sherwood Anderson and the model for his fictional Winesburg. Also like Grant, he was a West Point graduate. Two years later he was killed during the Battle of Atlanta. Hawkins, born in Indiana, was also a West Pointer, a career Army officer later promoted to brigadier-general. He retired from service in 1894, nine years after Grant’s death.

 

As always, Grant recounts the potentially fatal attack casually, coolly, even with a hint of humor. I’m reminded of one of Shakespeare’s history plays. In so brief an excerpt you can see Grant’s gift for fluid narrative and the detailed clarity of his prose. As Ronald C. White writes in his 2016 biography of Grant:

 

“A news of the Battle of Shiloh traveled east, the American people were stunned. The staggering number of casualties for the two-day battle was 23,746. Union casualties, 13,047, with 1,754 dead, was more than Bull Run, Wilson’s Creek, Fort Henry, and Fort Donelson put together. Up to that time, Shiloh was the largest battle in American history. It revealed to both North and South that this civil war was now total war—and it might go on for a very long time.”

 

Still five months away was the Battle of Antietam, in which 23,000 Americans were killed, wounded or went missing after twelve hours of combat on September 17. It remains the bloodiest day in American history.