The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-08-15
AT SHILOH.

Hell of Battle-The Delirium Of Con-
 tiict-The First Overwhelming Rush
 of the Confederates-The Difference
 Between the Veteran and the Recruit
 "A Monstrous Mistake Softened by
 Time"
 I. P. M. in the New York Post
 I followed sherman from Shiloh to Vicksburg, from Vicksburg to Chatta- nooga, and from Chattanooga to Allan ta. I have some of the lead of the first fight in me yet, and there is an old wound in my thigh that every April re- minds me of the time of year that I re- ceived it. I left in the trenches, as I
 went along, some of the best friends l ever had Twice I was carried from the field to the hospital, when, if could have had my way, I would have died in the mud rather than suffer the
 ambulance. A man cannot very we'll be a soldier long without at some time
 being a hero without knowing it, and at other times, perhaps, being a coward
 without suspecting it. Three years of
 war taught me some lessons which
 time only could make plain to me, and looking now over the once bloody route,
 grown green and forgetful, it seems to
 me that we men of the ranks were sud- denly and thoroughly made acquainted
 with the unspeakable realities of war at
 Pittsburg Landing. The old phrase
 "the baptism of fire'' was fairly req lized there. It is true enough that Pe- tersburg was @ bloodier struggle and
 Gettysburg a more decisive event, but
 neither of those conflicts was an initia-
 tion. They were fought out by sea
 soned veterans who had learned their
 gory lessons by heart and had lost most
 of the protesting sensibilities of raw recruits.
 Pittsburg Landing, it now appears to me, had more of the dramatic and
 the desperate in it, and certainly car ried more of the nature of surprise,
 than any of the greater events which
 came later. There was so little prepa-
 ration for it. We were steeped in it in a twinkling, and could not comprehend it until long afterward. The lesson to
 most of us was the lesson of cruel
 and unexpected blow between the eyes
 that confuses the senses and smashes
 all the co-ordinating faculties, but from which we were expected to re- cover instantaneously, and, getting upon our feet, to assert ourselves as veterans. In a sense we did it, but you
 cannot flash war with all it's revolting
 and uncomfortable details suddenly
 upon the consciousness without stag
 gering the better nature for the time
 being, and the revelation that we got
 of war at Pittsburg Landing was a cloud We stepped in a moment from a pageant to a paroxysm.
 I have been over that battlefield
 since. There were the same woods, quite as lovely in their way as those of
 Arden, only perhaps little more luxu-
 riously unkempt with the indolent Tennessee slipping softly by on the western bank and the wild clematis r- oting over. everything. and an occa-
 sional thrust piping a bell note in the
 solitude, as if an eternal Sabbath had
 settled on 1t. Not a reminder of the two days when that forest was torn and ravished by the passions of men. The rabbits were running in the leafy
 alleys and the ood-pigeons were coo- ing their oboe notes in the resonant CO., verts. Nature utterly refused to wear
 upon her breast one souvenir of wars intrusion. I could not find the old Shi- lOl lnSCIlilS toulu oHly SuGSS by the line of bittersweet and rank plum bush where the trenches had been into which we hurriedly tumbled
 our dead. I tried with a rough may of
 my own to point out in the long belt of | forest just where Mcdowell and Mo- Clernand had faced the storm, and | where Lew Wallace came in on the right flank from Crumps Landing 1 But it was like looking for records in lush, vine grown, old burying ground
 where the recurrent inundation of 1 peaceful summers have covered all the memorials we tried to make perma-
 nent. The event, now that we stood in | that blossomy hush and tangle, seemed | to be incredibly far away and forgot | ten. And yet scarcely any event of the war, even when that war spread into tremendous proportions, sent such a double reflex wave of horror, disap- | pointment, rage and astonishment over | the whole northwest. The historic pages which are its memorial have, like | the field itself, grown softer with the | obliterating harvests of time.
 General Sherman himself becomes a pleasant retrospective reconteur as he looks over the ground. Beauregard ex- | plains and mitigates-even Pollard sees | things through a well-preserved mist of
 chivalry and sectionalism, and Adam Badeau measures with his pen only the | ultimate results. The agony, the acute | awakening of shock, the sharp realiza- tion of the utter brutality of war, even when it is the last resort of self-de- | fence, have faded out of the recollec- | tion of those who survived. It is a
 merciful thing, perhaps, that we can | forget, and it should be said that the
 real ghastliness of war is never written | about circumstantially. There at least | the sensibilities are saved by the lirni- tations of rhetoric. We throw the flag over the details. But face to face with
 them we either grow brutally insensi-
 ble or we store up a deep-seated pro-
 test against war.
 The battle of Shiloh or Pittsburg
 Landing, was in many respects the
 first desperate grapple of two American armies, as essentially unlike in fighting | characteristics as equally brave men | can possibly be. The collision was sud- den, and on one side unexpected. We | were self-confidept, little careless.
 and inclined to underrate our adversa- ". He was led by generals who made