Shiloh: Over the Field Where April Rain
Spring is a poignant time to think about war. In spite of the burgeoning of the trees and the exuberance of daffodils, we cannot avoid the images from the plains of Ukraine or from the rubble heaps of Gaza.
In America, April is the occasion of two important and grievous events in our history. The first came on April 19, 1775, when the Revolutionary War broke out at Lexington, Massachusetts. It was the beginning of a long, cruel, and momentous struggle for freedom and independence.
In April 1862, we were one year into another war, one that would decide whether the nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal would endure. One army had taken the field to destroy the union, the other to preserve it.
Like most wars, the conflict had gotten underway with pomp and pageantry, with giddy enthusiasm and dreams of glory. Most of those aligned on both sides thought the whole thing would be over in a few months. Young men rushed to enlist, donned uniforms, and hefted rifles. Eyes shone in eager faces.
Initially, both armies were made up almost entirely of raw recruits. During the first year, the Confederates were successful in the East, scoring two victories at Bull Run, not far from Washington, D.C., and outmaneuvering the U.S. Army in the Shenandoah Valley.
The southerners had a harder time of it in the West. In the spring of 1862, Union general Ulysses S. Grant engineered some crucial victories and was on the march toward Corinth, Mississippi, on the Tennessee River. He planned to join there with a second force led by Don Carlos Buell. Some of the Union soldiers found themselves camped near a tiny church called Shiloh — the name came from a Hebrew term meaning “place of peace.”
The details of how the engagement began, developed, and ended are less meaningful than the place that the Battle of Shiloh holds in our history. When the fight opened in the early morning of Sunday, April 6, most folks on both sides clung to a zealous and upbeat view. They could not quite imagine what was coming.
Likewise, few of the men at Shiloh thought that they had seen their last dawn or that they had only hours left on earth. The fighting intensified during the day, with heavy rifle fire, intense artillery bombardments, charges and countercharges. The Confederates pushed back the men in blue, overran their camp, captured the church made of logs.
The slaughter was severe. That night, an intense thunderstorm poured rain on the living and the dead. The fight resumed the next day. Now, with General Buell’s men joining Grant’s, the Union army regained the momentum. They swept across the same fields, drove back the enemy, recaptured the church. Almost exactly the same numbers were killed on each side, a total of 3,500 men. Sixteen thousand were wounded. In two days.
The nation was stunned. As Lincoln later pointed out, neither side had expected such a magnitude of killing. Now they had an idea of what they would have to endure. Visions of glory evaporated overnight. Americans learned the hard lesson that went back to Homer. War was — always and unavoidably — the deepest of human tragedies. The cost of this war would be paid in young lives. And it would be enormous.
Following the end of the conflict, Herman Melville, the author of Moby Dick, published a poem he called “Shiloh: A Requiem.” One line in that short poem, I think, captures something profound.
The author describes the scene that remained four years after the battle — swallows skimming over the quiet field. He then looks back on the aftermath of the first day’s fighting. He depicts Union and Confederate men, wounded in the melee, taking refuge inside the little church. Melville describes them, using the antiquated term “foemen,” for “enemies.” They lie together in their pain, groaning, dying. He ends with the lines:
Foemen at morn, but friends at eve—
Fame or country least their care:
(What like a bullet can undeceive!)
But now they lie low,
While over them the swallows skim,
And all is hushed at Shiloh.
What like a bullet can undeceive . . . We can turn the page of the newspaper, we can switch the channel. We must. We must cherish the springtime, cherish our lives and our loved ones. Always. But let us not be deceived. Let us not fall for what another war poet called “the old lie.” Fame or country. Not again. Not anymore.
Read the poem HERE.
Let us never forget the great losses amd great tragedies of wars. Thank you Jack, you bring the past to vibrant life. The sorrows skimming with the swallows even now.
XOX
Thanks, Jack. Very moving.