mere hillocks in comparison with Stalin’s mountains, are nevertheless measures of a long, destructive war and of the vast, wholesale volumes of human suffering it caused. This column, however, will not focus on statistics, but on some tragedies, battlefield deaths that are notable in that some of the chief mourners were not far away, but on the same battlefield. We start at Shiloh.
Tennessee’s governor, Isham Harris, remained in his capital less than one year after the start of the war. When Nashville fell in February 1862, Harris was forced into exile and joined the staff of Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston, serving as a volunteer aide.
oseph Stalin, we all know, was responsible for mountains of statistics. As one reads about the Civil War, one encounters statistics that, though
What happened on the afternoon of April 6 is wellknown. Rallying his wavering troops, General Johnston led from the front. A bullet nicked his lower leg. At first, Johnston was barely aware that he had been struck. When Harris inquired, the commander said he was unhurt and dispatched the governor/aide-de-camp to deliver an order to a nearby regiment. Harris returned minutes later to see the mounted general begin to swoon. Fearing Johnston would fall from the saddle Harris moved to support him. “General, are you hurt,” Harris asked. “Yes, and I fear very seriously,” Johnston answered.1 The nick on his lower leg had opened an artery. Johnston was bleeding to death.
Harris and another aide helped Johnston to shelter in a nearby ravine, where the wounded leader soon lost consciousness and quietly died. Also present at this sad scene was Col. William Preston, the brother of Johnston’s late first wife.
Less well-known than the tragedy of Johnston’s death is the further personal losses suffered that day by Isham Harris. As the governor was leaving the ravine to convey the news of Johnston’s death to General Beauregard, a rider approached, Harris’s nephew, bearing dreadful news from the Confederate left, where Lt. Col. James Harris’s Arkansas regiment was engaged. “Uncle Isham,” said the rider, “Father has just been killed.”
More bad news would come later. Harris had another brother with a son fighting at Shiloh. “To compound the family’s loss,” wrote Harris’s biographer, “William R. Harris’s son John Clinton Harris was also killed in the battle.”2
If a person writing on the Civil War refers to “Lee,” without further specification, the reader knows the subject is Robert E. Lee. Similarly, a reference to “Forrest,” without a
