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In June, 1861, he was commissioned a Colonel, and in October of the same year was made a Brigadier General. In October of the following year he was promoted to the rank of Major General for his gallantry in the battles of Shiloh and Stone River. In 1865 he was elected a Representative from Kentucky to the Thirty-Ninth Congress.
The first really great battle of the war was that of Pittsburg Landing, or Shiloh, and I shall not only attempt to give a general account of the battle, but also describe it from the point of view of a man in the ranks.
He said, "That three times in a year, when we meet in Shiloh, our wives and our daughters accompany us: let then the Benjamites be allowed to steal away, and marry such women as they can catch, while we will neither incite them nor forbid them; and when their parents take it ill, and desire us to inflict punishment upon them, we will tell them, that they were themselves the cause of what had happened, by neglecting to guard their daughters, and that they ought not to be over angry at the Benjamites, since that anger was permitted to rise too high already."
I gave personal direction to the twenty-four pounder guns, whose well-directed fire first silenced the enemy's guns to the left, and afterward at the Shiloh meeting-house. Rousseau's brigade moved in splendid order steadily to the front, sweeping every thing before it, and at 4 p.m. we stood upon the ground of our original front line; and the enemy was in full retreat.
It has left a nervous shock in his make-up a memory in all his after life which takes precedence over all other things. The old man had the naming of the grandchildren, and he named them after the battles of the Civil war. Bull Run and Seven Days were the boys. Atlanta, Appomattox and Shiloh were the girls. His apology for Shiloh was: "You see I thout I'd name the last one Appomattox.
And then, sweet and soft through the waiting, hushed air, came the notes of Major Rand's cornet. He was playing for his comrades as he had played at Shiloh, at Chickamauga and many another place in the Southland. He played all their old favorites and then very, very softly the cornet wailed "We are tenting to-night on the old camp ground" and somewhere beside it little Jim Tumley began to sing.
Her heart was utterly melted. Her eyes, long parched, as a spent fountain in the burning desert, were suddenly filled with tears. She felt no longer the agony of the eyes that cannot weep. The blessed tears flowed quietly as the waters of Shiloh, bringing relief to her poor soul, famishing for one true word of affection.
Catharine's Sound, where, on the same day, he had communication with a vessel belonging to the blockading fleet; but, at the time, I was not aware of this fact, and trusted entirely to General Hazen and his division of infantry, the Second of the Fifteenth Corps, the same old division which I had commanded at Shiloh and Vicksburg, in which I felt a special pride and confidence.
While she was at Shiloh she prayed in the temple, and Eli saw her lips move, though he heard no voice. At first he spoke harshly to her, thinking she had been drinking wine, but she told him that she had not taken wine, but was praying. "I am a woman of sorrowful spirit," she said, "and have poured out my soul before the Lord."
The battle of Shiloh had been fought, as described, on the 6th and 7th of April; and when the movement of the 8th had revealed that our enemy was gone, in full retreat, leaving killed, wounded, and much property by the way, we all experienced a feeling of relief.
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