WITHIN Shiloh Church that fateful day of 1862, no sound of song or praise was heard. But all without the leaden missiles rang and sang in chorus of red death. Green blades of grass, dew-tipped, sprang up to greet the sun that April morn, but ere night fell were bowed to earth with weight of human blood. Ne’er before had little church looked out on such a scene. Ten thousand homes and hearts of North and South were there made desolate; and twice ten thousand men gave up their lives. The world looked on and wondered.

Albert Sidney Johnston, the hero of three wars, had staked his life and cause that April day, for victory or defeat.

He met—both.

It was recognized by both the Northern and Southern armies that Johnston was a formidable antagonist. That he was a man of most magnetic personality as well as a brave officer.

Where he led men followed.

The Black Hawk War made his name familiar throughout the country. In the War with Mexico he won distinction.

As he reviewed his troops at Shiloh, he beheld on every side his friends of other days, and men who had served under him on other fields.

When the War between the States came on, Johnston was a brigadier general in the United States Army; and although he was offered any position he might desire with the Federal government, he resigned to cast his lot with the South, and against the land of his ancestry, for he was a son of Connecticut. Texas had been his home, and to the Lone Star State he felt his allegiance due.

Disappointment, as pertained to his life ambitions, had often before waited upon his footsteps when the thing desired seemed ready to his grasp. Yet, seeing his duty clearly, he did it.

To his sister by marriage, when she, in surprise at his action in resigning, wrote him in California, where he was then stationed, he replied that he was deeply sensible of the “calamitious condition” of the country; and that whatever his part thereafter regarding it, he congratulated himself that no act of his had aided in bringing it about; that the adjustment of the difficulties by the sword was not in his judgment the remedy.

Secession was to him a grievous thing.

Arriving at Richmond from the West, General Johnston was given the command of the Western Department of the Confederacy.

From September to February, 1862, he held the line against heavy odds at Bowling Green, Ky., when he retreated to Corinth, Miss., where he assembled his entire army and attacked Grant at Shiloh Church near Pittsburg Landing, Tenn.

In the flush tide of a great victory, he was struck by a Minie ball and expired in a few moments.

He rode a magnificent black animal called “Fire-eater.” On horseback General Johnston appeared to distinct advantage. The masterly manner in which he sat his horse attracted the attention of the commander in chief of the army, Thomas J. Rusk, during the Texan Revolution, and procured him the appointment of adjutant general over several eager aspirants for the position.

As he passed along the lines to the front of the troops at Shiloh, he raised his hat and cried out,

“I will lead you!”

To this the men responded with a mighty cheer and quickened movement, albeit they knew he was leading many of them to death.

Hard up the slopes they pressed.

Nor shot, nor shell, nor falling men deterred them.

The summit was reached. The Federals were in retreat. A little apart from the others, a fine target for the deadly marksman, the figure of General Johnston on “Fire-eater” was plainly visible.

His clothing was torn in places. His boot sole was slashed by a ball, but he himself was uninjured.

In his countenance was reflected a satisfaction of the day’s results.

The wisdom of his decisions had been proven; his judgment justified.

From the last line of the retreating Federals a bullet whistled back, whistled back and cut him down, did its fatal work in the very moment in which he felt the conviction that success now lay with the Confederate cause.

His death seemed for a time to paralyze the further efforts of his troops, to whom his presence had been a continual inspiration.

General Beauregard took command.

Night fell and the battle was stayed.

The Federals had been driven to the banks of the Tennessee River, where the gunboats afforded but meager protection.

From Nashville, General Buell arrived before daybreak with the needed reËnforcements. Lew Wallace came in. Grant assumed the offensive; and the afternoon of the second day of the hard-fought contest the final victory swept to the Federals.

What would have been the result to the Confederate cause had the great leader not fallen that first day, who can say?

“In his fall, the great pillar of the Southern Confederacy was crushed,” says Jefferson Davis in his Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, “and beneath its fragments the best hope of the Southland lay buried.”