CSACW Shiloh Battlefield Tour - Stop Seventeen - Ruggles' Battery

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#17 - Ruggles' Battery

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Quotes from Actual Battlefield Participants

"It seemed like a mighty hurricane sweeping everything before it. . . . The great storm of cannon balls made the forest in places fall before its sweep, . . . men and horses were dying, and a blaze of unearthly fire lit up the scene. At this moment of horror, when our regiment was lying close to the ground to avoid the storm of balls, the little birds were singing in the green trees over our heads!"
Lt. Abner Dunhan, 12th Iowa

Notes from the Field . . .

The string of unsuccessful assaults convinced some Confederate officers by mid-afternoon that something more would be needed in order to break the Union position. What would finally do it was pushing back the Federal units on either side and then flanking the strong-point. However, several Confederate officers thought it might be done by a heavy bombardment. They began diligently collecting artillery batteries and ranging them along this ridge so that they could bear on the Sunken Road and Hornets' Nest. One of the officers gathering and deploying guns was Brig. Gen. Daniel Ruggles, a division commander in Bragg's Corps. Traditionally, the large concentration of guns has been called "Ruggles's Battery," but it wasn't his alone. The line of cannon that now stretches to the east of the Corinth Road here commemorates the guns that bombarded the Sunken Road and Hornets' Nest during the late afternoon, at least fifty-three of them and possibly as many as sixty-two. The barrage reached its peak intensity at about 4:30 p.m., but faded quickly thereafter. Even before that time, however, it put on an impressive show. Lt. Abner Dunhan, of the 12th Iowa wrote that the in-coming artillery fire "seemed like a mighty hurricane sweeping everything before it. . . . The great storm of cannon balls made the forest in places fall before its sweep, . . . men and horses were dying, and a blaze of unearthly fire lit up the scene. At this moment of horror, when our regiment was lying close to the ground to avoid the storm of balls, the little birds were singing in the green trees over our heads!"

Yet for all its sound and fury, the bombardment did not break the Union line or force it to retreat. The blue-coats lay prone behind the scant cover of the roadside embankments and doggedly stuck to their position. By the time the maximum number of Confederate guns were on line and firing, Wallace's division was already beginning its withdrawal, due not to the bombardment but to the uncovering of its right flank by the retreat of McClernand's division.