 With the outbreak of the American Civil War, Collier’s master Howell Hinds and his seventeen-year-old son Tom, who was Collier's childhood companion, left for the war.Although told by his master that he was too young to fight, Collier stowed away on a riverboat and joined Howell and his son in Memphis, Tennessee.At the 1862 Battle of Shiloh in western Tennessee, Collier witnessed the death of Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston.