Thomas D. Duncan

“ The humiliation and griefs of that frightful era left far deeper scars than did all the sabers and swords and bullets from Bull Run to Appomattox. The flame of war had burned out the lives of thousands of our brave sons and consumed our homes and wasted our lands, but the embers of reconstruction seared their mark upon the very souls of our people.
We who know do not charge that horror to the great nation to which we are as loyal and true as any beneath the flag to-day, but to individuals who abused authority and misrepresented the spirit of the North toward the South. ”

“ It is almost inconceivable that a battle so great and so deadly was fought by men unacquainted with the harrowing art of war—raw troops thrown hastily together, a citizen soldiery that had never marched to battle except through the pages of books, white-handed Robin Hoods of the orchard and the meadow—indeed, “boys” in years as well as in that glorious comradeship of danger and death; and yet the “Old Guard” of Napoleon never “fixed bayonets” with firmer courage than that which made history on the field of Shiloh sixty years ago. ”

“ Fifty-seven years after his last ride with Forrest
from death at Shiloh. At one time a cannon ball passed so near me that the current of air created by its passage almost swept me from my horse. Many bullets and grapeshot fanned me and left their unwelcome whistle in my memory.
Amid all the dangers of battle ever walks the spirit of humor, and there is no day so terrible that it fails to hold some laughable incident. ”

“ My comrades, out of the ruined morning and the rebuilding toil of the noontide we have come at last to the evening and the twilight. Time has placed upon our heads his crown of silver and of snow. For us the long day of life is near spent, and the world can never chide us if, in the spirit of fraternity and forgiveness, we find ourselves dreaming backward toward the blood-billowed years of Shiloh and Chickamauga and all our other fields of mutual and glorious memories. ”

“ With a force but little more than half as large as his enemy, this strangely gifted fighter of the Confederacy shattered a trained army of 8,000 men, and chased the remnant back to its base, forcing it to a speed seldom equaled in the wildest panics of war. The panoplied and militant host of Sturgis consumed nine days in the march from Memphis to Brice’s Cross-Roads, but, with Forrest on its trail, what was left of that host covered the same distance on the return in two nights and one day. ”

“ In every army there are bad men, and of such we may expect fiendish conduct when the business of the best of men is to kill.
When we fought it out at Fort Pillow and were forced to scale the walls and found the negro troops defending the place with death-dealing weapons in their hands, I am sure that, in the flame of prejudice and passion, there were some unnecessary killings; but they were the exceptions and formed no part of any plan of the Confederate commander. Neither did they reflect the will and spirit of the mass of his soldiers. ”

“ Across the closed chasm, above the graves of all the soldier dead, the great men of the North and the great men of the South looked at each other in silence and understood when the oppressors were driven from the South. ”

“ Unafraid of all the military camps of the earth, this strange civil soldier, while fostering and guarding the greatest of all republics, has eschewed the damning principles of militarism, ever preferring to keep his sword sheathed in the peaceful scabbard of industry, drawing it only when Liberty is endangered. ”

“ All of us who are now living in the true spirit of liberty and union know that out of our great war of sixty years ago has come a greater peace than our nation could have ever known had we not cut away, with the sword, the great mistake of the fathers of our country. ”

“ Then, while threatening a crossing of the railroad between Collierville and LaGrange, Tenn., with a swiftness that was incredible, our main column pushed out toward Rossville and Memphis, as if to attack the latter. We crossed the Wolf River near Rossville, putting the guard to flight and reflooring the partially wrecked bridge with fence rails. We then dispersed the force between us and the railroad, and defeated the division which opposed us at the railroad, thus, with the loss of not more than thirty men, escaping the wrathful meshes of a force five times our number. ”

“ The noontide of his life found him busy with the wreckage of the morning, and then it was that there rose in his soul a far greater courage than that which had sustained him on the bloodiest battle field—the courage to meet and conquer adversity, the divine grace to cast away his bitterness and to love his former foes. ”

“ In closing his report of the battle, General Van Dorn said: “I cannot refrain from mentioning here the conspicuous gallantry of a noble Texan whose deeds at Corinth are the constant theme of both friends and foes. As long as courage, manliness, fortitude, patriotism, and honor exist, the name of Rodgers will be revered and honored among men. He fell in the front of battle and died beneath the colors of his regiment in the very center of the enemy’s stronghold. He sleeps, and Glory is his sentinel.” ”

“ Only a commander of genius and boldness could have coped with such a situation as confronted Forrest. The territory in which he operated was in the hands of the enemy, both lines of railroad controlled and guarded by the Union armies. On the east was the Tennessee River, deep and cold, and, ever hovering on its turbulent waters, a fleet of gunboats, such as had carried terror to Henry and Donelson and Shiloh. ”

“ The gentleness and sympathy of the masters of Dixie and the faithfulness and loyalty of the black slaves should be jealously written into an impartial history of that South that was, but is no more. They are the incontrovertible evidences of the greatness of our people who inherited the dark burden of human bondage from another age and who were innocent heirs to the sunny lands of cotton and cane, on which alone, of all our wide country, this shackled, tropical race could labor with profit to their owners. ”

“ After this fight of Day’s Gap, on Sand Mountain, followed that long and relentless pursuit of Streight and his men, which must forever stand as one of the most daring and spectacular exploits of military history. Forrest had picked 500 men for this great running fight with a foe 2,000 strong.
Our fight was, of course, with the rear guard, for our leader never permitted us to be drawn into a general engagement. ”

“ Since his first far-off shot of Lexington, the makers of war maps have been unable to chart his power from his visible numbers, for in his unconquerable spirit there is the might of unseen legions and the unmeasured force of just and democratic purpose, as an armed host, is bivouacked in his soul. ”

“ In the darkness and the silence our conversation turned to idle fancies. To the soldier actually engaged in war death seems ever near, and, with the mind so attuned, it is but a step from the natural to the supernatural. ”

“ It has been said that “comparisons are odious,” but it is a living truth that values exist only in comparison; and the military student cannot fail to retrace the immortal campaigns of Alexander, Hannibal, Cæsar, Frederick, and Napoleon in the lightning-like, yet perfectly timed, movements of this untrained, unpolished genius of war, now known to history as Nathan Bedford Forrest.
The enemies of General Forrest were the first to recognize his great and dangerous ability as West Pointer after West Pointer toppled before his flying column. ”

“ The order to charge had been expected every moment since daylight; but owing to the sudden illness of General Herbert, commanding the Left Division of Price’s Corps, the initial attack had been delayed until about ten o’clock. During the interval of waiting the men were subjected to the most intense mental strain. As every trained and experienced soldier will testify, the suspense of waiting in the prelude of an onset is more trying than the actual conflict, wherein the heat of battle fevers the mind into a kind of fearless frenzy that causes it to lose the weights and measures of danger. ”

“ When I rode through the first camp, the kettles on the fires were steaming with boiling water, and meat and bread were cooking in the ovens; but the enemy had to go hungry that day. I saw the bodies of a few Union soldiers who had been killed in their tents and horses shot down at the hitching posts in the rear of the camps.
A large rubberized blanket was my part of the spoils that came with the early surprise, and this trophy afterwards proved very serviceable. In all my service of four years I never saw a battle field as rich in the legitimate spoils of war as was the field of Shiloh. ”

“ The intermittent firing had ceased, and the restful music of nature was broken only by the tramp of men and horses. Youth, young manhood, and the middle-aged were mixed in these advancing columns of the South’s best blood, and the unspoken thought upon every face was that many were marching to certain death. ”

“ Have we not seen this German-created monster, with body of steel and breath of fire, go forth to terrorize the world? Failing in its unnatural purpose, have we not seen it, like the awful ghost, turn upon its creator and hound a dynasty to its death? ”

“ When the Union commander brought up his brigade of negro troops which had been held in reserve, he told the blacks to form in line and allow the defeated white troops to pass to their rear, and that they would reform and support them; but about the time this arrangement was made, Barteau’s regiment, which had been sent around to fall upon the rear of the Union column, made its appearance, and our artillery began to rake the retreating white troops with grape and canister. The brigade of blacks took to their heels without firing a shot and scattered through the woods like wild deer. ”

“ The enemy’s artillery was firing at us incessantly; and as we turned the top of a slight ridge, Colonel Kelly’s horse was killed and fell just a few feet behind my position. As we cleared the hill and came into full view of the fort, we were met with a veritable hail of lead and iron. We were charging in a run, but men were falling at every step. We moved close up and lay down, and kept up a continuous fire until our batteries reduced the fort and caused it to surrender. ”

“ The soldiers of Johnston’s army were armed with a variety of guns which looked more like the gathered heirlooms of a museum than arms of battle—shotguns, squirrel rifles, antiquated muskets, and a few modern rifles.
The Union troops, for the most part, were neither so new to war nor so poorly armed as the Confederates, many of them having been in the fights of Henry and Donelson, and the entire army being equipped with the latest improved firearms. ”

“ One cannot imagine Lee or Grant or Stonewall Jackson or W. T. Sherman taking more than a month to cover twenty miles in pursuit of a smaller and defeated army. Napoleon or Hannibal, at Shiloh on the night of April 7, 1862, would have found the Confederate Army or the gates of Corinth before sunrise the next morning.
Heretofore in our fights in this theater of war the Union forces had enjoyed the co-operation of the gunboats, and now we were all elated over the prospect of meeting the enemy out of range of his floating batteries. ”

“ Especially do I stand again with expectant thirst at the cold spout spring that gushed from the hill—eternal wonder of nature that sings on to the centuries to mock the fleeting vanity of our short lives. ”

“ The Union commander was unable to bring all his men to the rescue; and if we could keep his front rank pressed and falling back, it would be sure to demoralize the rear formation.
General Forrest once said that he would rather have a “five-minutes bulge than a week of tactics,” and I think that much of his great success was due to the application of this theory.
I have more than once viewed the sickening wreck of battle, the devastation of cyclones, and the havoc of railroad accidents, and wondered how any human being could pass through such mills of destruction unharmed. ”

“ While these bloody conflicts were taking place on both flanks of the fort, Colonel Rodgers climbed upon the parapet and planted the flag of his regiment in triumph at its top. The men who had followed him leaped fearlessly down inside the fort, and, with others who had crawled through the embrasures, unexpectedly engaged the cannoneers in a hand-to-hand conflict. The fight was short and fierce, and thirteen out of twenty-six men of the First U. S. Infantry who manned the guns of the fort were slain, and a number of others, including the commander, Lieutenant Robinette, were wounded. ”

“ Joe Wheeler, he made a rapid advance on Murfreesboro, Tenn., where General Crittenden was guarding large stores of military supplies.
Reaching the outskirts of the town about daylight, we chased the pickets into the camp of a Michigan regiment. Pressing rapidly at every point, we soon had everything before us on the run, as our attack was a complete surprise. Our success was absolute, and this capture of a Union division with its commander and the military supplies being guarded was one of the most spectacular strokes of the Civil War. ”

“ We were fighting an enemy that had two to our one, and nothing but our confidence that, in some way, Forrest would lead us to victory, could have sustained us. His escort moved as one man with him, and, with revolvers drawn, we charged the line of infantry before they could reload. Every man in our line had from five to ten shots, and we made them count. They broke in confusion and got away pellmell, but not before we had riddled them unmercifully. I never saw in any battle of the war as many arms and legs amputated as were lost at the field hospital at Brice’s Cross-Roads. ”