Etched in Stone: The Story of John Shook

In a lonely rural cemetery in Western Illinois, a young casualty of the Civil

 War is buried.  His is a story and a site that deserve to be better known.  Recently

 one of John Shook’s descendants, Alfred Marion Chard, has self-published a

 
beautiful volume containing the “Civil War Letters of John Shook” through

 Blurb.com. The volume is pricey, but the treatment of the material is superbly

rendered, justifying the purchase price..  The letters and the wonderful stationary

and illustrated envelopes from that tumultuous time are rendered in color, and Mr. Chard

 has transcribed the letters as well to make them easier to read.  He’s done a good job

describing the events that the letters refer to, and relating what little information that’s

known about young John Shook.

     Quotations from young John’s letters can perhaps give you a slight glimpse of

 the young man’s character.  I’ll go easy on these as to not quote too extensively

 from Mr. Chard’s volume.  The book is available through purchase or inter-library

 loan.  The numbering used to indicate the letters below are the numbers Mr. Chard uses

to refer to them in his volume.

 

Letter #9 talks of young Shook’s initial impressions of how long the war would be.

         

          “it is a general opinion that we will never get into a battle and most every body

     thinks that the war will end in about three monthe more.  This is my third letter that

     I have rote to you since I have been in this camp and I have not received any

    answer yet.  I do not no whether it is because you have not got mine or what.  We have

     to live on hard cracker hard anuff to nock a bull down with and full of live sockto.

     But for all of this we get along fine and have plenty of fun.  There has been one or

     two ridgements left here in the past week.  Give my regards to the rest of the folks and

     tell them to right to me. So no more at the present but remains your affectionate son.”

   
 Letter #31 talks of the Battle of Pea Ridge.

           “…you wished to hear from my company to know if any of theme was killed in

     the battle of pea ridge.  I should have wrote to you sooner and let you knowed, but

     I supposed you had saw it all in the papers.  there was 1 killed and 1 wounded.  Wm

    Gipson had his right arm taken off.  There is no prospect of us getting to the army in

     less than a month or two.  I have nothing more worth writing at the present.  Yours

     untel death..”

      Letter #36 was written in Mississippi after day out in the field.  One gets a good

 sense of the fog of war and the rumors and fears that men fell prey to.

           “…..about a week ago our company and company B were orderd out on a

     scout to support a battra.  We martched down near Boonville where we encamped

     untell a few days ago when our scouts informed us that the enemy was gathern all

     around us and it soon became evident that we would have to fall back or else we

     would be cut off and be taken so we fell back about 5 miles but we had scarsley got

     out of camp 2 miles untell there war a rebbel battery planted in our old camp.  But

     however we lay in our new positoun undisturbed untell about tenoclock yesterday. 

     Some of the boys wer off a blackburring and some one place andsome and other.

     I wer a burry hunting amg the rest and I had got out a mild from camp and had

     found some fine burrys and wer a macking good use of them when I heard some

     cavalry a coming a long the road.  I suspisiond them so I scadadeld into the brush

     ubtell they passed & they proved to be cesesh so as soon as they got passed I maid

     my way back to the company & I just got back and they wer faling into line.”

     From that point every few minutes a cavalryman would come galloping up with a

 new report, but after several miles of marching, counter-marching, and being ordered

 to fall back and form battle lines on a few occasions, Shook and his comrades finally

 pitched camp, still looking over their shoulders anticipating an attack.  It never came.

Young John ended his letter thus…

          “…so we were orderd back where we now lay but how long we will lay here I

     do not knowfor we ar a looking  for to be attacted every minit and if they don’t soon

     attact us or leave we will them.  I do not have time to write any more at the present.

     Yours untell death.”

     Letter #49, the last of John Shook’s letters, is written from the Union camp on

 Millcreek, TN.  In it he writes of the impending battle that seems certain to occur.  He

 waxes philosophical about how his army experiences have changed him as well.  In less

 than a week the Battle of Stone’s River will take place.

        ….”we have stood out in line of battle at leaist half of our time for the last week, and

     We ar looking to be called out in lin every minit.  They are a cannonading out on the picket

     line write livelyand have been for the past 2 hours.  Whether it will bring on a general

     engaingement or not I do not know.  I think that if they dont soon attact us we will soon

     move on theme.  You stated that mother did not know my likeness and she thinks I  have

     changed.  So the likeness was the best one I every had taken all excepet one part of the

     neck is shaded to mutch.  I do not dont but I am changed or at leaist I am very much

     sunburn.  You cannot itspect that I look as I did when I left home for I have hardly

     saw the inside of a house since I left home and there has been over a month at a time

     that I have not seen the inside of a tent and I believe that I was a better man when I left

     home than I am now or every will be again…”

      He ends this final letter with……

                     …”the nuse just came that we wer agoing to move forward tomorrow.  William

     Kingsland send you his best respects.  Nothing more at the present yours untell death.

                                                                                                          Farewell

                                                                                                                  John Shook”

 

      Farewell John Shook.  “Yours until death.”   He ended so many of his letters with that

 morbid closing.  It’s almost as though the young man had a premonition that he would not

  live to the end of the war.  He was, indeed, wounded mortally at the Battle of Stone’s River.

 

     Now, on to John Shook’s final resting place. As with much of history,

 time is its worst enemy.  The inscription on the weathered white obelisk is slowly

wearing away.  Before the ravages of weather or vandals consign this stone’s story

to memory, though, a student of Civil War history might resolve to make a pilgrimage

 to Salter’s Grove Cemetery, situated near the border of Warren County, barely

 in Henderson County, Illinois.

  

The cemetery rests amidst a pastoral setting of farmland now, two intersections

 south of Highway 34, but as you look at John Shook’s monument, let your mind

  carry you back to the end of December in 1862 when Union and Confederate armies

 were squaring off near Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

  John Shook’s birthdate is given as March 13, 1842.  That made him less than

twenty-one years old as he stood shivering with his regiment on that cold December

morning of the 31^st.  Despite his youth though, he was already a veteran who had

survived the bloody battle of Pea Ridge and.  New Year’s Eve would be

 the first day of the Battle of Stone’s River.  As John’s obelisk tells us,

he was wounded there later that day.  His regiment was the 36^th Illinois Infantry;

information also etched on his stone.  His monument even tells us that he served in Company C.

          On the 31^st John’s regiment had bravely slugged it out against their determined

 Confederate foes.  The 36^th Illinois suffered 46 killed, 151 wounded and 15 missing,

 eloquent testimony to the ferocity of the fighting in their sector of the battlefield.

     John’s obelisk goes on to relate that he was taken to Nashville after the battle.  He died

there on January 17^th, 1863. Reading further on the one side of the stone, we find that John’s

 father made the long, heart-rending journey to Tennessee to be with his wounded son, and

eventually to bring his son’s body home.  In the dead of winter, driving a buckboard with

his son’s coffin behind him, or gazing disconsolately at the bleak winter landscape from the

  window of a train, the landscape must have looked to him like a world devoid of life, of hope. 

 He no doubt wondered bitterly, as any parent would, what his son had died for. 

 Did his sacrifice mean anything at all?  The stone goes on to tell us that young John Shook

 

was interred in the frozen ground of the cold, wind-swept cemetery on February 13^th, 1863.

     John’s father no doubt wanted his son’s death to have some meaning, something more

 

than the poignant details of his son’s wound, suffering and death, and the trip that he

had made to Tennessee to bring his boy’s remains home.  He wanted something to fling

at the Copperheads who were so vociferous in Illinois, men who had no love for the

 Lincoln administration; men who couldn’t appreciate the patriotism that drove his son to

 fight for the Union.

  Carved on the opposite side of the obelisk are his son’s bitter words.

  Words that his father wished to have carved in stone as well for the world to view…

 and take note of.

          “The last opinion of JOHN SHOOK on the rebellion

          was that if our once proud America is lost

           it will be by the traitors of the North

           when they get in power and betray us

           while we are fighting in the South.

     In this rural Illinois cemetery we can read a tale of sacrifice, of grief and of bitterness.

 It’s a poignant portrait of a casualty of war that is etched eternally in stone.