Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Volume 6: Volume 6

11. A Boy at Shiloh

He continued with Buell’s army in its operations around Corinth and on its subsequent march across northern Alabama. In August 1862, his health failed, and he was sent north on sick leave.About the time of his leaving for home, he was assigned, by order of the War Department , to the command of the forces at Cumberland Gap, but was too ill to accept .When he was partially convalescent,he was ordered to Washington to serve as a member of the court-martial for the trial of Major General Fitz-John Porter . In January 1863, on the dissolution of the court, General Garfield was ordered to report to General Rosecrans at Murfreesboro,Tennessee.He was at once appointed chief of staff of the Army of the Cumberland, in which capacity he served through all the campaigns of that army till October 1863.He was appointed a major general of volunteers “for distinguished and gallant services in the Battle of Chickamauga,” and ranked as such from September 19, 1863. On December 5, 1863, he resigned his commission, and on the seventh took his seat as representative of the Nineteenth Congressional District of Ohio, in the Thirtyeighth Congress. 11 A Boy at Shiloh John A. Cockerill, Musician, Twenty-fourth Ohio Volunteer Infantry shiloh church, Sunday morning, April 6, 1862. Here is a date and a locality indelibly burned into my memory. At sixteen years of age, I found myself an enlisted, fourth-class musician in the Twenty-fourth Ohio Regiment, in which my elder brother was a first lieutenant, and afterward captain and colonel .I had campaigned in WesternVirginia and had seen some of the terrors and horrors of war at Philippi and Rich Mountain, and some of its actualities in a winter campaign in the Cheat Mountain district. During the winter of 1861, my command was sent to Louisville, Kentucky, where [Major General Don Carlos] Buell was organizing his splendidArmy of the Ohio for active operations against Bowling Green and Nashville. My regiment was assigned to [Brigadier General William] Nelson’s command, and the early spring found us on the left flank of the army, on the north side of the Green River. With unexpected suddenness, Nelson’s division was one day in March sent hurriedly back to the Ohio River, A Boy at Shiloh • 123 04.101-196_Cozz 12/2/03, 8:47 AM 123 124 • part 4: the war in 1862 where it was placed on transports and headed for the Cumberland River to participate in [Brigadier General Ulysses S.] Grant’s movement against Fort Donelson. Before reaching that point, intelligence was received of the capture of that stronghold, and our flotilla proceeded to Paducah, Kentucky. At that point,[Brigadier General William T.] Sherman was organizing his recruits from Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, for the forward movement up the Tennessee River. I had been taken ill on board the steamer en route, and my father [Colonel Joseph R. Cockerill], who at that time commanded the Seventieth Ohio Regiment , stationed at Paducah, found me and took me in his personal charge. Two days later, my regiment sailed up the Cumberland River, and was with the brigade first to enter Nashville. When I reached the convalescent stage, I asked permission to rejoin my command, but General Sherman said that the armies of Grant and Buell would form a coalition somewhere up the Tennessee River, and I might as well remain where I was,for the reason that my father could give me better care in my feeble state than I could have with my own command. Thus it happened that I was with the army of General Sherman when it felt its way up the turbid Tennessee River as far as Pittsburg Landing, and so it happened that I was at Shiloh Church on the morning of that terrible onslaught by General [Albert S.] Johnston’s army upon Sherman’s division, which held the advance of Grant’s army operating against Corinth. John A. Cockerill (Blue and Gray) 04.101-196_Cozz 12/2/03, 8:47 AM 124 I have often wondered what sort of soldier in blue I must have appeared at that time. I can remember myself as a tall, pale, hatchet-faced boy, who could never find in the quartermaster’s department a blouse or a pair of trousers small enough for him, nor an overcoat cast on his lines. The regulation blue trousers...