Just north of Bloody Pond, Mendenhall's battery fought the Confederates for 90 minutes, pouring case shot into the faces of the Southern attackers. The ebb and flow of the battle caused Mendenhall's gunners to fire both in enfilade and even in reverse as the line of battle swayed around them like rows of wheat. At last, Colonel Hazen, leading the charge on horseback, sent his brigade forward in support of the Union gunners, driving them three-quarters of a mile to the rear, through another line of Confederate artillerymen, one of whom was fatally stabbed by a bowie knife taken from a captured Rebel.

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Ambrose Bierce, who was in Hazen's 19th Brigade, watched as the Confederate attack faltered and then receded. The noise of the cannon fire from both sides was so loud that at one point it seemed somehow soundless–'the ear could take in no more,' said Bierce–and then the Rebel line fell apart in disarray. 'Lead had scored its old-time victory over steel,' wrote Bierce, 'the heroic had broken its great heart against the commonplace.' Ironically, Hazen became separated from his men during the final charge and was ever afterward haunted by accusations that he had abandoned his men under fire.

The fierceness of the Confederate onslaught caused the untested volunteers on the Regulars' right flank to flee, but training and discipline paid off for the Regulars. Both Major S.D. Carpenter of the 19th Infantry and the ubiquitous 'W' recorded that the Regular battalions on the Union right 'changed front forward, on left company' and took the Rebel attack in flank like a swinging gate, checking its impetus. Nelson and Crittenden, on the left, did likewise, trapping the Confederates in a deadly three-way fire. As the Federals pounded the reeling Rebels, Colonel William Gibson advanced to support Rousseau, whose men had expended all their ammunition. Providentially, Brig. Gen. Alexander McCook had called earlier that morning for more ammunition, and his resupply arrived just in time to replenish the soldiers' cartridge boxes.

Once their cartridges were replenished, the Regulars joined the push that swept the Rebels beyond the former camps of Grant's army. 'Rousseau's brigade moved in splendid order, steadily to the front, sweeping everything before it,' Sherman reported admiringly. Captain E.F. Townsend of the 16th Infantry heard the 19th Infantry cheering on his left as they recaptured two of the cannons taken earlier by the Confederates. As Buell, the commander of the Army of the Ohio, reported, 'By 4 p.m. the flag of the Union floated again upon the line from which it had been driven the previous day.'

Suddenly, the battle was over. The Confederates withdrew toward Corinth, their initial success lost in a flurry of bad luck, bad weather and sheer Union stubbornness. Burial details took up the horrific business of interring the dead, including men from the 55th Illinois who had been caught and butchered in a deep ravine and then burned by a quick-moving blaze ignited by gunfire. The always observant Ambrose Bierce visited the ravine and found the charred remains of his brother soldiers 'in postures of agony that told of the tormenting flame. Their clothing was half burnt away–their hair and beard entirely….Some were swollen to double girth; others shriveled to manikins. According to degree of exposure, their faces were bloated and black or yellow and shrunken. The contraction of muscles which had given them claws for hands had cursed each countenance with a hideous grin.'

Even for survivors of the battle, Shiloh exacted a heavy toll. 'The scenes of this field would have cured anybody of war,' said Sherman. And future President James A. Garfield, then a Union field officer, wrote to his wife: 'The horrible sights that I have witnessed on this field I can never describe. No blaze of glory, that flashes around the magnificent triumphs of war, can ever atone for the unwritten and unutterable horrors of the scene.' As if disgusted by the carnage, nature itself turned against the battlefield. Heavy rains soaked them all, the living and the dead, and as the great writer Herman Melville later observed, 'All [was] hushed at Shiloh.'

This article was written by James B. Ronan II and originally appeared in the May 1996 issue of America's Civil War magazine.

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