In my readings about the Civil War, I’ve been amazed at the recurrence of an odd atmospheric condition called “acoustic shadowing” where the sound of battle only a mile or two away couldn’t be heard. A series of these events occurred in the summer and early fall of 1862, first at the Battle of Gaines Mill in June 1862 during the Seven Days Battles around Richmond:
A similar event had occurred three months later on September 19, 1862 at the Battle of Iuka in northeastern Mississippi. From Ron Chernow’s winning biography Grant, describing what happened to Grant’s plan to trap a Confederate army in a pincer between two forces commanded by his Generals Ord and Rosecrans:
On the afternoon of June 27th, 1862, I rode, in company with General G. W. Randolph, then Secretary of War of the Confederate States, to Price’s house, about nine miles from Richmond. The evening before General Lee had begun his attack on McClellan’s army, by crossing the Chickahominy about four miles above Price’s, and driving in McClellan’s right wing.
The battle of Gaines’s Mill was fought the afternoon to which I refer. The valley of the Chickahominy is about one and a half miles wide from hill-top to hill- top. Price’s is on one hill-top, that nearest to Richmond: Gaines’s farm, just opposite, is on the other, reaching back in a plateau to Cold Harbor.
Looking across the valley, I saw a good deal of the battle, Lee’s right resting in the valley, the Federal left wing the same. My line of vision was nearly in the line of the lines of battle. I saw the advance of the Confederates, their repulse two or three times, and in the gray of the evening the final retreat of the Federal forces. I distinctly saw the musket-fire of both lines, the smoke, individual discharges, the flash of the guns. I saw batteries of artillery on both sides come into action and fire rapidly. Several field-batteries on each side were plainly in sight . Many more were hid by the timber which bounded the range of vision.
Yet looking for nearly two hours, from about 5 to 7 P. M. on a midsummer afternoon, at a battle in which at least 50,000 men were actually engaged, and doubtless at least 100 pieces of field-artillery, through an atmosphere optically as limpid as possible, not a single sound of the battle was audible to General Randolph and myself. I remarked it to him at the time as astonishing.
A similar event had occurred three months later on September 19, 1862 at the Battle of Iuka in northeastern Mississippi. From Ron Chernow’s winning biography Grant, describing what happened to Grant’s plan to trap a Confederate army in a pincer between two forces commanded by his Generals Ord and Rosecrans:
Before dawn on September 19, Ord began to advance on Iuka from the northwest, but was told by Grant to delay his final push until he heard gunfire from the south, signaling Rosecrans’s arrival. Ord halted four miles short of town. With the poor country roads of northern Mississippi, Rosecrans’s movements were hampered by thick woods and plentiful streams and he didn’t reach Iuka till late afternoon. Unfortunately, the wind blew the wrong way, and owing to this “acoustic shadow,” neither Ord nor Grant heard Rosecrans engaging the enemy and being driven back that evening. In frustration, a baffled Rosecrans sputtered, “Where in the name of God is Grant?” Not until nightfall did Grant even know a battle had occurred.
And just a couple of weeks later, on October 8, 1862 at the battle of Perryville in central Kentucky, this occurred:In his statement before the Commission, Gen. Buell remarks that it had been a matter of surprise that so severe an engagement could have taken place within 2 ½ miles of his headquarters without his knowledge. After commenting on his arrangements for the attack next day, and the dependence of a commander on his distant subordinates for information, he says:
“I received, with astonishment, the intelligence of the severe fighting the commenced at 2 o’clock. Not a musket shot had been heard, nor did the sound of artillery indicate anything like a battle. This was probably caused by the configuration of the ground, which broke the sound, and by the heavy wind, which it appears blew from the right to the left during the day.”
In his official report of the battle, Gen. Buell again says:
“At 4 o’clock, however, Maj. Gen. McCook’s aide-de-camp arrived and reported to me that the general was sustaining a severe attack, which he would not be able to withstand unless reinforced, that his flanks were already giving way. He added, to my astonishment, that the left corps had actually been engaged in a severe battle for several hours. It was so difficult to credit the latter that I thought there must be some misapprehension in regard to the former.”
. . . .
In the afternoon we moved out for a position near Crittenden, as I inferred from the direction taken. A message came from the direction of the center to Gen. Buell and in a few moments Col. James B Fry, our Chief of Staff, called me up, and sent me an order to Gen. Gilbert, commanding the center corps, to send at once two brigades to reinforce General McCook, commanding the left corps. And this is how I came to be a witness to some of the curious features of Perryville.
I did not know what was going on at the left, and Col. Fry did not inform me. He told me what to say to Gen. Gilbert, and to go fast, and, taking one of the general’s orderlies with me, I started on my errand. I found Gen. Gilbert at the front, and as he had no staff officer at hand at the moment, he asked me to go to Gen. (Albin) Schoepf, a division commander, with the order. I found Schoepf riding in an ambulance in a corn field. I have read that about this time General Schoepf fired by the din of battle on the left, was weeping with rage because he was not permitted to carry his division to the rescue. He was not weeping when I saw him; he seemed to be in a placid frame of mind, and he made no comment on the fact that he was not ordered to go with his two brigades. The din of battle on the left was not audible to me, and he did not seem to hear it. At that moment I was still uninformed of the necessity for reinforcing the left.
My mission was to convey an order to Gen. Gilbert, but I had to got into business. Schoepf detached two brigades, and they started to the left, and he told me I had better go ahead and find out where they were to go. There was no sound to direct me, and as I tried to take an air-line I passed outside the Federal lines and was overtaken by a cavalry officer, who gave me the pleasing information that I was riding toward the enemy’s lines. Now up to this time I had heard no sound of battle; I had heard no artillery in front of me, and no heavy infantry firing. I wrote back and passed behind the cavalry regiment in the woods, and started in the direction indicated to me by the officer who called me back. At some distance I overtook ambulance train, urged to their best speed in my direction, and then I knew something serious was up, and this was the first information I had that one of the fiercest struggles of the war was at that moment raging almost within my sight.
Directed by the officer in charge of the ambulances I made another detour and pushing on a greater speed I suddenly turned into a road, and there before me, within a few hundred yards, the battle of Perryville burst into view, and the roar of artillery and the continuous rattle of musketry first broke upon my ear. It was the finest spectacle I ever saw. It was wholly unexpected, and if fixed me with astonishment. It was like tearing away a curtain from the front of a great picture. It was like the sudden bursting of a thundercloud with the sky in front seems serene and clear. I had seen an unlooked for storm at sea, with hardly a moment’s notice, hurl itself out of the clouds and lashed the ocean into a foam of wild rage. But here there was not the warning of an instant. At one bound my horse carried me from stillness into the roar of battle. One turned from a lonely bridle path through the woods brought me face-to-face with the great and bloody struggle of thousands of men.
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