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Mara L. Pratt

Brother against Brother

It often happened in the "civil war," that one in a family would fight on the Union side, and another on the Confederate side—each one fighting on the side which to him seemed right.

In Kentucky, where the people were so divided in their opinions of the war, that one hardly could tell whether to call Kentucky a Union State or a Confederate State, it often happened that own brothers would meet fighting face to face in battle.

At the battle of Shiloh, during the hottest of the strife, it happened that two of these Kentucky regiments met and fought each other with the fury and hatred which usually marks civil warfare. One of the Union soldiers happened to wound and take prisoner his own brother; and after handing him to the rear, began firing at a man near a tree. "Hold, Bill," shouted his captured brother, "don't shoot there any more! That's father!"