Today we visited the Perryville Battlefield….the very spot where my great grandfather George Wilson was wounded on Oct 8, 1862. The bloodiest battle fought in Kentucky. Nearly 8000 men lost their lives in this one battle.
It’s hot here in Kentucky right now…just like it was 136 years ago on the battle’s eve. There had been a severe drought in the fall of 1862. Many of the creeks and rivers had dry beds and as the armies marched along hot dusty roads seeking each other out, empty canteens became a problem. There was water in a creek in Perryville and the armies came together, here, by chance…each in the search for water.
“Hour after hour we plodded on in the darkness. We were so enveloped by darkness and clouds of dust that we could scarcely discern our leader. It was a dewless night and there was not a breath of wind to scatter the dust that hung in heavy clouds about us and settled upon our clothing…completely covering us in a mantel of white”. 65th Ohio Vol. Wilbur Himmar.
“The boys got some water out of a dark pond one night and used it to make their coffee. What was their disgust in the morning to find a dead mule or two in the pond. I imagine the coffee had a rich flavor!” Soldier of the 50th Ohio Vol.
And so the desperate need for water brought two armies to the same small creek in an obscure little town …called Perryville.
I stood in the quiet of this place of fields and woods and tried to feel what that day must have been like for my great grandfather…a young farm boy…that had never been far from home. The thirst, the exhaustion of the long march, the roar of battle…and most of all the fear and then the pain. A member of the 52nd Ohio (great grandfather’s unit ) later wrote: “The crash of the artillery, the shriek of shells, the Rebel Yell, the Yankee cheer, make up the voices of the battlefield.”
“It was early in the morning of Oct 8, 1862…when Commander McCook deployed the 52nd Ohio in line of battle to the left of Springfield Road…uphill from the Peters House. Upon reaching the crest of the hill, McCook ordered the men to lie down. It was now 5 a.m. and the sun was coming up. From behind the trees on the dark hill above them, McCook’s men could see flashes of fire followed by loud crackling sounds from the Confederate muskets. The Confederate fire became heavier, the shots echoing back down the valley in the Federal’s rear. McCook later reported that a severe and galling fire was opened upon his men.”
An Infantry man in the Ohio 35th said “The mini balls dropped around us like the falling nuts on a frosty fall morning, under a heavy wind.”
Great grandfather Wilson was struck in the hand, sometime in the morning hours…then was wounded again in the shoulder later in the day. The total number of wounded was staggering…however, he was only one of three in his unit to be shot. He got maggots in the shoulder wound…probably that saved him from gangrene. My mother always related the story that at some point the unit commander himself, (that would have been Daniel Cowen) took off his own neck-a-chief and cleaned the maggots from the wound…out of pity for the suffering boy.
Two days later Dr. Polk, a citizen of Perryville, visited the battlefield. Going out the Springfield Road, the doctor later wrote, “The fencing was all leveled to the ground and here and there was a dead Rebel. Thence I proceeded to Mr. Peter’s house…Here were about 200 hundred wounded soldiers lying side by side on beds of straw (It’s likely this is where great grandfather was taken) notwithstanding they were wounded in every possible way…there was not heard among them a groan or a complaint. In the orchard close by a trench had been dug to bury the dead.”
Dr. Polk then proceeded to the Russell House and his narrative continues” The white house was dotted all over with musket and cannon balls. All around lay dead bodies of soldiers, Union and Rebel. The ground was strewed with soiled and torn clothes, muskets, blankets, and the various accouterments of the dead soldiers. Trees not more then one foot in diameter contained twenty to thirty musket balls and buckshot put into them during the battle. Farms all around were one unfenced common. I counted four hundred and ten dead men in a small spot of ground. I continued my visit easterly and everywhere the same evidence of the battle. I saw dead Rebels piled up in pens like hogs. I reached my home praying to God that I might never again be called upon to visit a battleground.”
Two soldiers of the 52nd Ohio ( great grandfather’s unit) passed over the battlefield this day and related the following: “Passing a building where the enemy had left their wounded, we were attracted by the cry of a Rebel drummer boy. He was in the delirium of death. Someone had leaned a broad plank against the side of the building where he lay to keep the drip from the eves of the house from falling on his face, for it was raining as it always did after a battle. I shall never forget that sweet childish voice; he said in his delirium, “Mother, dear Mother, why don’t you come and take me home?” That mother did not come. She lived far away, perhaps in some beautiful home in the sunny south. She never saw her boy again, for as we returned, his form was still, his childish voice was hushed in death and we thought may it not be that the angels did come to take him to the home above?”
A quote from a confederate soldier… “Seven of my mess dipped our hands in the same skillet. They were all stalwart men of brawny arm. That evening when the smoke of the battle field lifted, five of my comrades were dead, the 6th wounded.”
“The dead…lay just as they had fallen. Some with features calm and serene, others ghastly and distorted, some mangled and torn, others pierced by a single bullet.” Lt Marshall 22 Indiana Vol Infantry. U.S. Army.
These quotes are from the Perryville Battleground Museum and from “The Battle of Perryville” by Kenneth Hafendorfer. As I read them I wondered how many of these young men left home with dreams of the glory of battle and found instead that they had walked into an unspeakable hell?
I walked up Peter’s Hill (where great grandfather Wilson was wounded)…alone. Standing there, I suddenly realized that if the musket ball that hit Grandpa Wilson had struck him in the heart instead of the shoulder, that I would not be standing here…close to the place where he fought and fell…a few inches…just a few inches and not just he…but we of the family, who followed him, would have ‘died’ on this hill as well.
It was very still, except for the wind and the sounds of birds in the distance and maybe if you listen carefully…the very faint echoes of gunfire…History came alive for me today.