“In that hour, God sheltered me. How otherwise could I have escaped? When bullets flew around me like hail, my comrades fell by my side. We were soon conducted off the field and placed on our way to prison. Since that time we have suffered the pangs of hunger, exposure to inclement weather, ill treatment from Rebels, and all the difficulties of Prisoners of War.”- Sgt. McCarron, 12th Iowa Infantry

This three page letter describing the Battle of Shiloh was penned by Sgt. Wilbur F. McCarron of Co. I, 12th Iowa Infantry. In his account, Wilbur describes the sequence of events as they unfolded for the Iowa Brigade on that April morning and how they disputed every inch of ground as the Rebels closed in and surrounded them in the Hornet’s Nest. Though he made no such claim in this letter, other veterans of the Iowa Brigade would later insist that they had saved Grant’s army from total annihilation by fighting “till almost at the point of the bayonet.”

Interested parties can read a full transcription here:

https://sparedshared22.wordpress.com/2021/08/28/1862-wilbur-fiske-mccarron-to-martha-janney/?fbclid=IwAR1ff_vp6R72i9oEMgSeHECI-oKyyf-cRKqdltvprLrMUXocncSmmBllnFE
[Civil War, Union, Confederate, Abraham Lincoln, Paper Ephemera]