They Met at Shiloh by Phillip Bryant Read Free Book Online Page A

expatriates afforded Robert a unique childhood. His father, Edward Mitchell, saw within the small but fiercely independent community an opportunity to expand his own business interests into Europe and avail himself of the industrious nature of these new “Americans.” Many who crossed the Atlantic to touch down in the New World were fresh from the violence of the constant in-fighting of the confederation of German states. The states of Saxony and Thuringia fought to free themselves of Prussian domination; the failure to do so brought to America’s shores an influx of the disaffected, well-to-do, and ex-military men. They migrated to the interior to St. Louis and brought with them a culture and a business sense that intrigued the elder Mitchell.
    Robert’s father enrolled him in a parochial school run by the Lutheran Brotherhood, which expatriate German businessmen and clergy formed to care for the spiritual and cultural needs of St. Louis’s burgeoning German population. Here, Robert found himself immersed in the foreign culture of its German charges. Although English was the principal language taught, German was still the unofficial language used by both students and teachers.
    Purposefully exposing his children to German culture, the elder Mitchell hoped to pass on his own business efforts and alliances to his sons once he was too old to maintain the imports and shipping empire he hoped to build. Going so far as to instruct them to speak German whenever possible at home and at the dinner table, Robert’s father gave him a childhood with the same mixture of American ideals and German culture that had gained him entrance to one of the German societies as an associate member. The societies became an extension of the public life the members did not have in the old country, eventually coming to control the political and social life of the neighborhoods. Shaped after the Turnverein Society started in Berlin in 1840, the Turners provided both a gymnastic education and sport and an intellectual grounding from the old country. Chess clubs, debate clubs, rifle teams, and political networking allowed the Mitchells to solidify business and social ties that would otherwise have been denied them.
    Given such a childhood, Robert felt at home amid his fellow European soldiers in the 25th Missouri. Swedes, Irish, Germans, Norwegians, and the smattering of other ethnicities made up the companies of the 25th and created a multiplicity of languages that could be heard round the camp fires. Robert’s own company had a highly Germanic flavor, as many of its members were fellow Turners from townships surrounding St. Louis. It was Turner militia companies, hastily formed by Major Nathanial Lyon, that confronted pro-secessionist companies composed largely of Irish expatriates for control of St. Louis in the early days of the conflict. Bloody confrontations ensued as agents of the federal government and the Confederacy wrestled for ownership of Missouri.
    Of his pards and messmates, Hildebrande was a fellow Turner and had worked as a foreman for his father at the Maple Street warehouse. Gustavson was a burley Swede whose rough voice and booming laughter always announced his presence nearby. Then there was the hapless Huebner, a youth from St. Louis whose father escaped from Saxony. After the 25th was mustered into Federal service, these men became Robert’s constant companions, placed together by luck.
    Early in the siege of Fort Donelson, his close childhood friend, Gunther Hauser, took a minié ball to the leg while in the rifle pits and had been sent to the hospital steamer, Princeton. Gunther’s regiment, belonging to W. H. L. Wallace’s division, weathered the bitter Tennessee winter by besieging Fort Donelson while the 13th Missouri cooled their heels on garrison duty before being reorganized and filled out with recruits as the 25th Missouri. Robert and his comrades were saved the embarrassment of being made prisoners when the old