Shiloh, 1862 (3 page)

Authors: Winston Groom

The bayonet, which in many Civil War rifles was attached to the barrel, was then considered an extraordinary weapon, supposed to put a singular type of fear and loathing into the hearts of the enemy for it carried with it the likely prospect of hand-to-hand combat, with all of its dreadful implications.

Among all the noises of the battlefield, the drum stands out as one of the most peculiar and alarming. Drummers, or drummer boys, were attached to each rifle company, and were principally employed to keep cadence while marching. But the drums were also used for signaling such things as “assembly” (the “long roll”), “attack,” “retreat,” “chow,” “officers’ call,” and similar messages in camp or on the battlefield.
²Drummer boys, some as young as ten years old but most in their teens, were often on the field during a
fight, and sometimes as an inevitable result were wounded or killed. The sound of the drum on the battlefield had been used for several hundred years to disturb and unnerve the enemy, similar to the hair-raising buzz of the rattlesnake’s tail.

“Colors,” consisting of national, state, divisional, and regimental flags, were a military tradition that inspired profound and intense feeling among the soldiers. From the beginning of their training the men were taught that these symbols were sacred and to be protected at all costs. The flags were made of the best silks, embroidered with delicate braids of real gold by the ladies of the various towns or counties where regiments were raised. To lose one’s colors in battle was to lose one’s pride and, as we soon shall see, many a soldier in the Civil War fell guarding them with his life.

Quite a few Civil War generals experienced the Mexican War and, in theory, idealized the military tactics set forth by the French military philosopher Antoine-Henri Jomini, which stressed maneuver rather than frontal attacks. But at Shiloh, as elsewhere, this proved to be mostly lip service, at least by the Confederate leaders who, because the terrain was so dense and uneven, quickly adopted the famous advice of Napoleon’s grand marshal Étienne Maurice Gérard at the Battle of Waterloo and “marched to the sound of the guns.”

1
Occasionally, there would be separate battalion-size units of 400 or 500 men, about half as large as regiments, usually connected to state or local militia.

2
The cavalry used the bugle for these signaling messages.

Maps