They Met at Shiloh (6 page)

Given such a childhood, Robert felt at home amid his fellow European soldiers in the 25th Missouri. Swedes, Irish, Germans, Norwegians, and the smattering of other ethnicities made up the companies of the 25th and created a multiplicity of languages that could be heard round the camp fires. Robert’s own company had a highly Germanic flavor, as many of its members were fellow Turners from townships surrounding St. Louis. It was Turner militia companies, hastily formed by Major Nathanial Lyon, that confronted pro-secessionist companies composed largely of Irish expatriates for control of St. Louis in the early days of the conflict. Bloody confrontations ensued as agents of the federal government and the Confederacy wrestled for ownership of Missouri.

Of his pards and messmates, Hildebrande was a fellow Turner and had worked as a foreman for his father at the Maple Street warehouse. Gustavson was a burley Swede whose rough voice and booming laughter always announced his presence nearby. Then there was the hapless Huebner, a youth from St. Louis whose father escaped from Saxony. After the 25th was mustered into Federal service, these men became Robert’s constant companions, placed together by luck.

Early in the siege of Fort Donelson, his close childhood friend, Gunther Hauser, took a minié ball to the leg while in the rifle pits and had been sent to the hospital steamer, Princeton. Gunther’s regiment, belonging to W. H. L. Wallace’s division, weathered the bitter Tennessee winter by besieging Fort Donelson while the 13th Missouri cooled their heels on garrison duty before being reorganized and filled out with recruits as the 25th Missouri. Robert and his comrades were saved the embarrassment of being made prisoners when the old 13th Missouri surrendered to Major General Price’s Confederates along with the other regiments garrisoning Lexington, Missouri. Colonel Everette Peabody was made prisoner himself and soon exchanged. It was Peabody who had conducted several recruitment rallies in St. Louis and convinced Robert of the need to volunteer.

Anxious that he should soon join his friend, Robert was saddened to receive a final letter from Gunther describing the amputation and hope of eventual release and discharge, but nothing further. Robert learned from his mother months later that Gunther had succumbed to diarrhea before his release. The news caused him much grief. A devoted Lutheran, Gunther would chide Robert that his Methodism wasn’t good enough to get him into God’s good graces; he needed the original Protestant faith and message to truly please the Lord. This often caused Robert to worry about grace and works and about which philosophy was right. The elder Mitchell, though desirous of absorbing as much German culture as possible, could not be driven to abandon his Wesleyan upbringing.

The counting finished, Hammel conferred with Captain Schmitz. Robert shifted his weight from one leg to another, weary of inactivity. From the corner of his eye he caught sight of Huebner chewing on his tongue, a constant action the boy engaged in when either bored or busy. His forage cap sat high upon his forehead, and his brownish hair dangled lazily under the bill. Shifting his own traps about his sack coat slightly, Robert released a long sigh and waited for the next command.

*****

24th Ohio Volunteers

Savannah Road, PM April 5, 1862

“Rest!” echoed the command of Colonel Jones.

With relief, Philip staggered down the embankment and found a shady spot to relieve his shoulders from the weight of the knapsack. He unbuttoned his sack coat and shifted the haversack and canteen strap higher on his chest, exposing his sweat-soaked shirt to the open, cooling breeze. Plopping down heavily next to him, Sam Henderson let out a groan and allowed himself to slide comfortably down the embankment. In front of them, Theo Mueller eagerly stripped down of everything but his kersey blue trousers and undershirt with a look of ecstasy upon his face.

Company officers conferred in the middle of the road while the men of the 24th Ohio made for whatever shade and comfort could be found along the lane. Philip was content to leave his traps on so he would not have to bother with them when the call came to form up. Theo Mueller sat down, leaned his back against the other side of the embankment, and smiled at Philip.

“You be much cooler if you take that stuff off,” Theo told Philip.

“I be much fine, thank you,” Philip grinned.

“You two don’t know what you missing,” Theo persisted.

“We’re conserving our energy for the march by not putting our traps on and off at every stop,” Sam said after he wiped his brow.

“We catch up to Grant. Then we whip some Secesh, ja?” Theo blurted. “Secesh” was their term for the secessionists.

“We never catch up to Grant. Even if he does stay still at Pittsburg Landing, we’re going to be marching until we’re all old and gray, always marching and marching and marching,” Philip said and closed his eyes. “Our lot in this war is to fight it with our feet stomping on all of the Secesh lice.”

“How long we been on the move?” Sammy asked.

“Since sun up,” Theo replied.

“No, on this march from Nashville,” Sammy asked again, with a glare at Theo.

“Ten of the longest days of my life,” Philip moaned.

“Liked the roads better in Kentucky. Softer,” Sammy said as he wiggled his toes within his brogans.

“Roads not different! Same dusty, rock-filled, ill-cared-for southern roads,” Theo complained.

“No, there’s something different about these Tennessee roads, softer somehow. You notice how the dust is slightly different in color, a lighter brown than the dust in Kentucky. I think they are softer,” Sammy said.

“You gettin’ sun madness. Nothing different ‘bout these roads,” Theo said.

“Parson, you think these roads are different, right?”

Philip, jarred from his reverie, sputtered, “Huh? What roads?”

“Sammy thinks the roads in Tennessee is different than the roads in Kentucky. Tell him he’s got sunstroke.” Theo stretched his legs and released a satisfied sigh.

“Is that the only thing you two can argue about? I hadn’t noticed the difference. Maybe it’s softer. I don’t know, hadn’t given it no mind,” Philip replied, entwining his fingers into the straps of his knapsack.

“You believe what you want to, but I notice the difference all the same. My feet don’t hurt as much as they did in Kentucky,” Sammy retorted.

“Ground is softer in Tennessee. You better answer next sick call. You going to keel over with the stroke,” Theo said.

Not to be outdone, Sammy shot back with “Hush up, you Dutch skulker.”

“Backwoods hillbilly.”

“Hessian papist.”

“Protestant heathen.”

“Papal emissary of Beelzebub!”

That last one made Theo’s face turn red. He looked over to Philip. “What you got to say, Rev? You think that the Pope, the one descended from Saint Peter himself, the man who knew Christ, be of the devil as our bumpkin here says?” He sneered at Sammy.

Philip hated it when Theo or anyone referred to him as The Reverend. Turning to look at Theo, he shook his head and said, “No comment.”

Theo and Sammy’s argument turned to Luther’s Protestant revolution. He tuned them out. Reminded of his father’s chosen profession and the hard life that came with it, Philip tried to think about something else. He tried to resume his daydream of walking the other way from the town meeting that led to his volunteering. Now, all he could think about was his father. Charles had spent countless hours traveling from one church to the next, often dragging Philip and his younger brother along with him. Most of the church buildings were as old as the small communities that they served, with dark and cold wooden benches. Recollections of dank odors of mildew and rotting churches filled with the solemn parishioners reminded him why he had volunteered. The desire to escape his father and the expectation that he, too, would become a minister of God’s Word had brought him to the meeting that day in Waynesville, Ohio.

As a good, proper young itinerant minister, Philip learned the art of impression. He kept an impression of himself before the prying eyes of busy-bodies and stern gazes of adults to be separate from the cavorting gangs of youths and children that swarmed the church grounds after each service. Never far from his father’s reach, Philip did not experience much of the farmer or merchant family childhood like his peers. Living out of a wagon coach for days at a time as they traveled along the banks of the Big and Little Miami Rivers, whose courses emptied into the greater Ohio River, they crossed in and out of the counties that made up his father’s circuit. Methodist societies and classes dotted crossroad villages and farming communities between the two Miami River valleys.

At the age of twenty five, he consented to take on a few of the communities to shepherd the flock. He found the work agreeable at first and brought his own brand of the Good Book and teaching to his circuit. Young and often in over his head, he began to feel the itch to do something else after the novelty wore off. He was well regarded in each class and society, but he felt that but for the labors of his father he would be little revered. His father was the more eloquent teacher, but Philip could write. To compensate, he began writing out his sermons and committing them to memory. This worked well when he remembered his lines; often he would break his oratory in mid-thought, leaving his listeners acutely aware of his predicament. He would panic when that happened, nervously shuffling the pages on his podium in a vain attempt to remind himself of the next part of his oration. Rather than hiding his subterfuge, he would begin again, under the concept that the need to impart God’s wisdom was more important than hiding behind a façade.

The monotony of the circuit began to wear upon him; his restlessness was heightened by the disturbing news from the southern churches. Talk of secession should the “Black Republicans” come to power reached his ears in the run-up to the 1860 elections. The balance between slave and free states and territories was a decades-old topic. Secession, however, was a decidedly new and unthinkable one. Moreover, many in his circuit migrated and still had relations in Kentucky and Virginia; even as late as a generation prior, people with a decidedly southern flavor and sympathy were opening up the rich farmland in the river valleys. Although none brought slaves with them, they were uneasy with the abolitionist platform of the Republicans. The time of the campaign and vote was tense. Each visit to his societies was progressively more distressing with talk of dividing of the country. Many parishioners after vespers voiced support for the southern complaint that northern interests were wielding a heavy hand on their southern brethren, both financially and morally. When asked what the good Lord would say in those troubled times, Philip was unable to reconcile his own feelings from those of the movement.

Even the Methodist leadership could not answer that question with a unified voice. Word coming from the national assemblies was of bitter recriminations and debate as to the propriety of slavery and the clergy’s response based on biblical teachings. At times, in the debate chambers, a southern apologist would harangue his listeners with biblical proofs of God’s ordination of slavery, only to be replaced at the podium by a northern speaker who would use the same scripture to prove the opposite. Without a solid foundation to deal with the worried looks of his parishioners, Philip attempted to reason his own way through.

Then the unthinkable occurred. The Republicans were swept into the White House and both houses of Congress. South Carolina’s secession began the feared break-up of the country; one state after another followed her lead. Divided in loyalty by family ties to the states seceding, but contemptuous of the secession ordinances, the residents of the Ohio River valleys girded themselves for what was to come. Overnight, Methodists as a movement became sectional, though little divided them relationally. His parishioners whole-heartedly supported the federal government, and overnight the debates over God’s ordination of slavery ended.

The question of war had not manifested itself after the election, although both politicians and traveling orators fanned the patriotic fervor. In his own heart, Philip began to see a way that he could quietly slip away from the pressure he felt in tending to the spiritual needs of his circuit and not disappoint his father too terribly. He was torn by his desire to see the life through but relieve the burden of responsibility. Then, in 1861, the brazen acts of the Confederates in Charleston Harbor released a national tension that had peaked with the election of Abraham Lincoln. Faces that day were grim with the talk of war, and southern recalcitrance became indignity. Faint stirrings of his own patriotism were realized that day in Waynesville at a war rally. He would volunteer, not as a regimental chaplain, but as a foot soldier and join the familiar faces he found in the crowd from his own circuit.

Relieved at the release from his ministerial burdens and the chance to relinquish his collar, before the events of the Harper affair forced the Bishop’s hand, he bade farewell to his parents and joined with his fellow volunteers in Waynesville, Ohio. They traveled to Columbus by rail for muster into Federal service. The life of patriotism was as hard as he had imagined it would be, but he was no longer responsible for people, their well-being, or their spiritual education. In that regard, army life was a relief.

In no time at all, the men in the company began calling him “reverend.” Philip was not quick to act the part, wishing to be left alone, but the needs of familiar faces prevented him from distancing himself from his old responsibility. Resigned that he could not escape his former calling, he saw to the spiritual needs of anyone who inquired; after all, even Jonah was compelled to bring God’s warning of repentance to the Ninehvites. Being called “Rev” had its advantages, as he would discover. Men would confide in him just about anything, which kept him in the know about everything. However, he soon found this to be a double-edged sword, creating both instant companions and instant enemies. Most were not malicious in their dislike, and no hostility directed at his person. There were just those from whom he knew association would not be reciprocated. A few men, such as Second Sergeant Harper, who was from a family in his circuit, could not restrain their feelings of disdain even before things turned ugly between him and this family.