Return to the 23rd Missouri Home Page
General Benjamin M. Prentiss: Civil War Hero of Shiloh
By Philip Conger - 1971
" On the pages of history his name will appear as one whose bravery and indomitable courage hung the fate of Shiloh Battlefield, and, perhaps, the fate of a nation; a man who knew what was right, and dared to tell it as he believed it . . . " --From a resolution passed by the Missouri Legislature upon the death of major General Benjamin M. Prentiss. (1819-1901)
_______________________________
A little more than 70 years ago, on Feb. 10, 1901, several hundred people gathered at the Bethany First Methodist Church to pay final tribute to one of the city's most famous and respected citizens.His name was Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mayberry Prentiss, a civil war hero and a former Bethany postmaster.
Gen. Prentiss' fame is the result of events that occurred on April 6, 1862, the day he became known to a good share of his fellow Americans as " The Hero of Shiloh". On that day, Prentiss was in command of several thousand Union troops at Pittsburg Landing, Tenn., that held the Confederate army at bay long enough to allow Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's troops to drive off the rebels toward what became a string of future defeats deeper South.
Some have said Gen. Prentiss' Union troops made it possible for Grant to achieve fame and get elected President. Nineteen years later Gen. Prentiss moved to Bethany (Missouri). For many long years, Gen Prentiss and his large family occupied a Bethany home that has become something of a landmark here. The Prentiss family lived at 639 South 17th St. in a large white home built in the style of many mansions of that era. The home is now occupied by the Gerald Seymours.
Gen Prentiss' only living relative in the area is a granddaughter, Mrs. Leah Carter, who as a child used to sit on her grandfather's knee in the bay window of the home and watch trains pass by. Speaking of the area around their Bethany home, Mrs. carter said, " There wasn't much of anything there in those days." As she remembers it, that section of town only boasted a home or two, a barn and the railroad tracks. The barn stood where Seymour Laundries now is located. "I remember sitting on his lap and him showing me how to trace pictures in the clouds," Mrs. Carter said. She remembers her grandfather as having a short, white beard and as being a little thin, but not particularly tall. He smoked a clay pipe and carried a bamboo cane which he used in making a point on the many lecture tours he made in the post-Civil War days. "He used to make speeches over all this part of the country," she said.
Benjamin Prentiss was born in Belleville, Va., on Nov. 23, 1819. During his boyhood days, his family moved to Missouri and settled in a small town near Hannibal, eventually moving on to Quincy, Ill., where he made his home until 1879. In his early life, Prentiss was a rope-maker and served as an auctioneer.
On March 29, 1838, he was married to margaret Ann Lodousky who gave him seven children before her death at Quincy in 1860. Two years later he married Mary Worthington Whitney and five more children were born. Prentiss attended a military academy in the East and was figured to be a born military leader. Prior to the Civil war, the future Bethany resident saw military experience in Illinois during the days of the religious conflict involving the Mormon's and in the Mexican campaign of the 1840's.
On April 16, 1861, when President Abraham Lincoln called for volunteers to fight the Confederates, Prentiss offered the governor of Illinois a company of 100 men. He later was placed in charge of forces at Cairo, Ill., and when the tenth Illinois Volunteers was organized he was given the rank of colonel.
It was Pittsburg Landing Tennessee the next year that Gen. Prentiss became a center of controversy and eventually emerged as one of the Civil War's great leaders. In March 1862, Prentiss was ordered to report to Gen. Grant at Pittsburg Landing and was given command of the Sixth division, a force made up mostly of green troops. Prentiss was told to head the forces but apparently was given no advise from Grant on what to do to prepare for a rebel surprise.
Evidently expecting trouble, Gen. Prentiss asked a superior officer for permission to send out reconnaissance troops to keep a lookout for rebel forces but was refused. This set the stage for the ensuing events that would be the subject of debate long years after the war ended. According to an article by Carl Landrum in the Quincy, Ill., Herald-Whig, the events at Pittsburg Landing unfolded rapidly:
"The battle began at 4:45 a.m. on the morning of April 6, 1862, when (a) reconnoitering party, three companies of the 25th Missouri, ran into the Confederate advance and slowly retreated toward its camp, where it was reinforced by four companies of the 16th Wisconsin and five companies of the 21st Missouri. These troops were then taken reinforced by all of Col. Peabody's brigade and held the line until 8 a.m., when they fell back to Prentiss' line of camps, closely followed by the Confederates."
There followed a series of defeats for the Union army, which fell back to an old, sunken road later known as the "Hornet's Nest," mostly because of the sound of the bullets whizzing over the heads of the entrenched troops. It was here, at this place and time, that Gen. Prentiss earned his reputation.
With a force of about a thousand men, Prentiss was told to hold the line against the right flank of the rebel onslaught, and gen Sherman and gen McClellan (?) were ordered to protect the left flank from a defensive point along a ridge at Shiloh church. Gen. Grant, who at the time was at breakfast in Savannah (Tenn.), ordered the formation of an expeditionary force to strenghten the lines, and several men were sent on their way toward battle. Then, reports the author of the historical article, "General Grant rode to the Hornet's Nest where he met with General Prentiss and directed him to hold his position at all odds."
With Grant's troops reinforcing both flanks, Gen. Prentiss withstood until sundown several charges from the Confederate troops which were led on his section of the line by Confederate Gen. Daniel Ruggles. But, after hurling eleven unsuccessful attacks against Gen. Prentiss, the Confederate forces opened up with an artillery barrage from 62 field pieces. Under the cover of this barrage, the Confederates attacked again and the Union forces on Prentiss' right and left withdrew from the campaign, leaving the general's troops surrounded by the rebels.Prentiss continued to resist the attacks until about 5:30 p.m. when he finally was forced to surrender his remaining men.
Gen. Benjamin M. Prentiss received criticism, which later was found to be unjust, from the public -- especially New York newspapermen of the time -- for surrendering his troops at Shiloh. The debate was typified by apparently spurious statements that Prentiss was captured before ten in the morning on the day of the battle by Confederate troops who routed him from his bunk.At first, Gen Prentiss refused to defend himself against the verbal onslaught, and only two years later, when the full details of the battle were disclosed, was his record cleared.
Now Prentiss' troops at the Hornets Nest are generally credited with giving Grant time to regroup and assembled a battery of seige guns that eventually forced the Confederates to withdraw further south. The author of a historical tract on the subject says this:
"Both sides claimed a victory at first, but it soon became evident that the Confederates had been compelled to withdraw southward and by the end of June, 1862, only those forts on the Mississippi near Vicksburg were in southern hands. After a seige Vicksburg fell, cutting the south in two."
After a release from imprisonment in exchange for rebel prisoners held by the Union army, Prentiss was promoted to the rank of major General and later defeated a large force of Confederate troops at Helena, Ark., on July 4, 1863. Resigning his commission later that year, Gen. Prentiss returned to Quincy where he served in several governmental posts, then moved to Kirksville in 1878 where he practiced law and finally came to Bethany in 1881.
In 1889 he was appointed postmaster on Bethany by President harrison and later was reappointed by President McKinley. General Prentiss died on Feb 8, 1901, after years of failing health, and even in death the Bethanian was the subject of abuse from large city newspapers. In attempting to set the record straight, the Bethany Republican reported the following"
"We would state that in the telegraphic reports appearing in last Saturday's papers of the General's death, there were several mistatements, the most annoying to the family and friends being that the general left a widow in destitute circumstances, and that he and his wife for some time had been living on the charity of a married daughter. The facts were that the General left no widow, she having died in July 1884; that he was not dependant upon the charity of a married daughter or anyone else, and that he owned, free from all incumbrance, one of the best residences in this city."