EYEWITNESS TO CARNAGE
With his army paused at Pittsburg Landing, Tenn., in early April 1862, waiting the arrival of Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell’s Army of the Ohio from the east, Ulysses S. Grant was confident he was on the verge of dealing a decisive blow to General Albert Sidney Johnston’s Confederate Army of the Mississippi, stationed about 20 miles away at Corinth, Miss. Union victories at Forts Henry and Donelson in February had given Grant control of the upper stretch of the Tennessee River, allowing the general to launch a forceful thrust into the Confederate heartland.
Johnston, however, stung Grant early in the morning April 6 with a strike on the Army of the Tennessee’s right flank, manned by Brig. Gen. William T. Sherman’s 5th Division and Brig. Gen. Benjamin M. Prentiss’ 6th Division. Several hours of desperate, chaotic fighting followed that initial attack, and although Johnston would be lost, mortally wounded, the Confederate onslaught continued unabated. By nightfall on the Battle of Shiloh’s first day, the Federals found themselves all but surrounded in front of Pittsburg Landing itself.
Grant famously turned the tables the following day, helped by the overnight arrival of Buell’s reinforcements, to secure an unlikely victory and another notch in a budding war record of success. For many Union soldiers, Shiloh was their first taste of true combat. Among those was Lieutenant Ephraim Cutler Dawes, 21-year-old adjutant of the 53rd Ohio Infantry, in Sherman’s division—camped near the Shiloh Church on the battle’s opening day. The 53rd, part of Colonel Jesse Hildebrand’s 3rd Brigade, had been in service for only two months.
Dawes, an 1861 graduate of Ohio’s Marietta College, would be part of the one of the war’s more remarkable fighting families. His older brother, Rufus, became lieutenant colonel of the 6th Wisconsin Infantry, serving first in Northern Virginia with an all-Western brigade that would become known as the legendary Iron Brigade for its exemplary record of heroism in battle. Both brothers survived the war, but in late May 1864, Ephraim’s field service ended when he was severely wounded at the Battle of Dallas, Ga., during Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign. Rufus would be mustered out of the Army of the Potomac that August.
The following is a condensed version of Ephraim’s postwar account of his experiences that first day at Shiloh, which he penned for the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States (MOLLUS). Grammar and punctuation of the original are retained.
On Friday, April 4th, there was
