Battle of Shiloh

 

Pittsburg Landing

Pittsburg was your typical riverboat landing. It stood in the middle of nowhere where the Tennessee River spreads out over one hundred yards wide. Off to the east, there is nothing but marshland and forests. The landing itself sits on the west bank. There were no houses or buildings (other than two simple log huts). Its significance was that it stood where the road from Corinth intersected with the river, making it easy for the rebels to land and transport supplies.

The Union army pitched their camp at Pittsburg Landing. The rebels waited at Corinth, roughly twenty miles distant. Corinth formed the junction of several major railroads in the Mississippi Valley. One ran east to Memphis; the other traveled south into the heart of Dixie. A third railroad connected Corinth with Jackson, Tennessee. 

Grant lined his troops up in a semi-circle running from Lick Creek on the left to Owl Creek on the right. The floodwaters protected the army’s rear. One result of this was that the rebels could only attack from the front. Grant did not need to worry about which direction an attack would come from.

The rebel troops were stationed behind strong fortifications at Corinth. It never occurred to Grant that the Confederates would come out from behind their breastworks to attack him. He figured he would need to draw them out.

Better intelligence would have helped Grant here. Time was ticking off for the Confederates. When General Albert Sydney Johnston learned General Don Carlos Buell’s army was getting ready to meet up with Grant, he decided to dislodge Grant immediately. “On Thursday, April 3, the Army of the Mississippi was ordered to advance from Corinth to Shiloh.”

Sherman’s troops camped at what would become the epicenter of the battle near Shiloh, a small wooden church two or three miles outside of Pittsburg Landing. General McClernand’s forces held the position to Sherman’s left and rear. To McClernand’s left was Prentiss and then Stuart. General Charles F. Smith’s brigade was stationed to the right of Sherman—held in reserve until needed.

On Friday night, two days before the battle, General Sherman’s pickets bumped into a Confederate reconnaissance party. That sparked a heated exchange of fire for some time. Several soldiers playing euchre in the woods got caught in the crossfire. One unlucky trooper got killed instantly. Another had three fingers shot off his hand.

The firing afterward lasted for hours, but nothing came of it. Sherman had orders from General Grant not to “bring on an attack,” so the pickets eventually pulled back. Sherman, like Grant, did not expect Beauregard to attack. It made more sense for him to “chose ground as far back from our stores as possible.”

Map showing the fighting on April 6, Day One at Shiloh

The Confederates marched up from Corinth on April 4. They had planned to attack early the next morning, but a storm the previous night made that impossible. It turned the roads into muck and mud that stopped all travel. As a result, none of the troops could get into position.

A reporter from the Chicago Daily Tribune was nearby McClernand’s camp when fighting broke out early Sunday morning, April 6. He said they heard shots coming from the direction of Sherman’s camp, but not enough to make it seem like “anything important,” so they sat down to breakfast. At half-past seven, wounded men began to pour in from Sherman’s hospitals. They said they had come under heavy fire during the attack, and the hospitals were moving to the rear. 

McClernand marched his troops out at double-quick speed to reinforce Sherman. When McClernand’s soldiers came up, they stood on a ravine that overlooked the Union camp. They could see the rebel troops looting Sherman’s tents. 

Colonel Smith of the Lead Mine regiment opened fire on the rebels. Then, Major Smith drew his saber and led the charge, calling out, “Go in, boys. Give them some more Galena pills. They’ll think they opened a new lead mine.”

When they ran out of ammunition, the Galena men fixed their bayonets and charged. The enemy turned and ran.

The fighting that day was fierce. Grant thought that the rebel assault showed a “disregard of losses on their side.” He would later be accused of the same thing when newspapers called him a “butcher” and Lincoln the “widow maker” after the battles of the Wilderness and Cold Harbor.

General Ulysses S. Grant

There were other smaller battles fought at Shiloh on those two days—Fallen Timbers, Widow Bell’s Cotton Field, and the Peach Orchard, to name a few, but the fight at the Hornet’s Nest symbolizes the actions that took place there.

General Prentiss was in the thickest of the fighting almost from the start.

 

His division and General W. H. L. Wallace’s division positioned themselves in a field near what is now called the Sunken Road. The rebels attacked them continuously for nearly ten hours. The Minie balls whizzed by the men like hornets rushing out of their nests.

Early Sunday, Grant visited Prentiss and ordered him to “maintain his position” at the Sunken Road “at all hazards.” F. Quinn, Colonel of the Twelfth Michigan Infantry, said that Prentiss held his position from nine o’clock to half-past four “amid the most dreadful carnage for a little space ever witnessed on any field of battle during this war.”

 

Lt. Col. Quin Morton of the Twenty-Third Missouri Infantry said they were forced to change position several times. By four o’clock, the enemy had outflanked them. Several times, they pushed the rebels back, but Johnny Reb charged again and again. At half-past five, they were “surrounded and fired upon from front and rear by two batteries and infantry.” Still, Prentiss tried to breakthrough.

 

Even the Confederates admired his spunk. S. S. Heard, Colonel of the Seventeenth Regiment Louisiana Volunteers, reported that by one o’clock, they had carried all the enemy encampments except Prentiss’. “For two hours, our success at that point appeared doubtful.”

 

By midafternoon, the battle could have gone either way.

 

Prentiss held his own as reinforcements continued to strengthen his position. Then about four o’clock, Ruggles’ Battery concentrated a heavy fire on Prentiss’ position, preventing more reinforcements from reaching him.

 

That proved effective. The men going to reinforce Prentiss turned and ran towards the river rather than face the “shower of shot, shell, and shrapnel” thrown at them.

Map showing the fighting on April 7, Day Two at Shiloh

After General W. H. L. Wallace was mortally wounded, his men pulled back, leaving Prentiss alone on the field. Prentiss fought like a wildcat, but by half-past five, “finding that further resistance must result in the slaughter of every man in the command,” he said, “I had to yield the fight.” Prentiss surrendered his force of 2200 men.

 

That was on the first day of fighting at Shiloh.

 

Immediately after the Civil War, the fighting at the Hornet’s Nest became the focus of Shiloh. Everyone talked about it as the key to the conflict. Today, historians are not so sure that’s accurate. They acknowledge the action at the Hornet’s Nest bought Grant the precious time he needed to regroup and turn the battle around. As far as the Hornet’s Nest being the key to Shiloh, that’s open to debate.

 

The same goes for Prentiss’ action that day. Early in the fighting, his troops dwindled from 5400 to 500 as his frightened soldiers fled from the rebels along the Sunken Road. Not long after that, reinforcements arrived from W. H. L. Wallace’s division.

 

Some historians say Prentiss became the hero of the Hornet’s Nest because he was the last man standing. General W. H. L. Wallace received a mortal wound. Colonel Peabody died early in the day. Because they couldn’t tell their stories, Prentiss’s report was taken as Gospel. He became the Hero of the Day.

 

Grant and Sherman had plenty of warnings that a rebel attack was imminent. Union pickets bumped up against Confederate pickets daily. Shots were exchanged often, but no one considered it more than enemy reconnaissance missions—sometimes in force.

On Friday, April 4th, Sergeant C. J. Eagler spotted a large force of rebels in front of Company B. Eagler said he and Samuel Tracey walked to the edge of a plantation. “There, we saw the enemy in force, and to all appearances, they were getting breakfast. We saw infantry, cavalry, and artillery very plainly.” When Sherman found out, he “ordered him [Eagler] put under arrest for bringing a false alarm into camp.”

Map showing the fighting at the Hornets Nest and along the Sunken Road

Sherman did not believe the report. He dismissed the rebel sighting as nothing more than a scouting party in force.

 

Later that day, Colonel Ralph P. Buckland’s pickets captured a dozen rebel prisoners. Several admitted they were part of a larger Confederate force dispatched to take Pittsburg Landing. But, again, Sherman ignored the warning. Like Grant, he believed the rebels would never come out from behind their fortifications at Corinth.

 

William “Bull” Nelson, of Buell’s command, marched his troops into Savannah on the morning of April 5th. He’d busted his ass rushing his men from Nashville to Pittsburg Landing and was eager to get his men into position before the battle started. Nelson was surprised when Grant told him that the soonest he could get him to Pittsburg Landing was Tuesday, April 8.

 

If Grant had paid more attention to the early warning signals from Shiloh, Nelson’s men could have made the difference on April 6.

The fighting started just after two o’clock that morning when Colonel Peabody from Prentiss’ Division set out with four-hundred men to scout the area directly ahead of them. Less than half a mile from camp, Peabody’s scouts encountered a large force of Confederates and came under heavy fire. 

 

At six o’clock that morning, all hell busted out along Sherman’s lines. By half-past eight o’clock, the fighting had spread across the entire front. The Cincinnati Times correspondent said thousands of stragglers clogged the roads. For many of them, this was their first taste of battle. From the looks of things, they did not find it “much to their liking.” The stragglers drifted toward the river, and “neither persuasion nor threats could induce them to change their course.”

The Gunboat Tyler in action off Pittsburg Landing

“Foot by foot, the ground was contested.” By the end of the day, “a single narrow strip of open land dividing the opponents” was all the ground the Union had left. The sound of artillery and musket fire was deafening. Men fell in bloody piles. The men behind them stepped over their fallen bodies as they would walk over fallen logs. 

 

The gunboat Tyler made its way upriver and joined in the fighting early in the afternoon. “The shell went tearing and crashing through the woods, felling trees in its course and spreading havoc everywhere it fell.” The gunfire from the ship helped check the rebel advance on the left.

 

At five o’clock, the rebel fire ceased momentarily as they fell back to their center. Then just as quickly, they wheeled about and attacked the left-wing with all their forces. At about that same time, General Buell’s command arrived. Grant directed the gunboats Tyler and Lexington to a position a half-mile above Pittsburg Landing, where they let loose a terrible and murderous cannonading. Not long after that, General Lew Wallace’s troops arrived at the landing.

 

That convinced General Beauregard to call it quits for the day. The rebels slowly fell back to their center on the Corinth Road. 

General William T. Sherman

Grant called the fighting “a case of Southern dash against Northern pluck and endurance.” Most of the troops were raw. Many “were hardly able to load their muskets according to the manual.” The officers were no better than their men. Grant understood why several regiments turned and ran. Only the colonels who marched their men off the battlefield at the first sound of gunfire were “Constitutional cowards” in his eyes.

Sherman’s troops were raw and untested. They were among the first to turn and run. That did not surprise anyone. Many of them had just got their guns a few days before. Several Ohio regiments dropped their weapons and fled to the rear, notably Colonel Appler’s 53rd Ohio.

Andrew F. Davis of the 15th Indiana Infantry Regiment, Company I, watched everything unfold. He noted in his diary, “Several regiments of the Ohio Troops and one of the Iowa Regts took a regular stampede and made a most cowardly retreat.”

When Grant rode back to the river to meet with Buell, he estimated there were four or five thousand “stragglers lying under the cover of the river-bluff, panic-stricken, most of whom would have been shot where they lay, without resistance, before they would have taken up muskets and marched to the front to protect themselves.” He did not seem worried or anxious about returning them to the front.

Cowardice wasn’t unique to the Union army. On Monday, Colonel Moore’s Second Texas Regiment “broke and fled disgracefully from the field.”

For the regular soldiers, it was just another day’s fighting. Sherman described the rebel attack as a “beautiful, dreadful sight.” He had at least five close calls with the Grim Reaper on the first day. His soldiers reported seeing him all over the battlefield, urging his men on and helping to sight artillery. Many of his soldiers thought Sherman harbored a death wish.

A Union cannon battery in action at Shiloh

In his official report of the battle, Grant commended Sherman. He said that Sherman “displayed great judgment and skills in the management of his men.” Grant noted that Sherman got wounded in the hand the first day of fighting, wounded again later in the day, and had three horses “killed under him.”

All the commanders experienced close calls. Lieutenant Colonel McPherson had a horse shot out from under him. Captain Carson got his head blown off by a cannonball while riding next to General Grant.

Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston died at half-past two. “One of his legs was torn by a shell, and a Minie ball struck him in the body.” General Beauregard assumed command of the army upon his death. Grant didn’t believe Johnston’s wound was so bad. He thought Johnston died because he didn’t take care of his injury. He bled to death rather than leave his men alone on the battlefield.

The Evening Star joined several other papers in rumormongering and speculation. They reported that General Beauregard “had his arm shot off.” That eventually proved untrue, as did the rumor that Beauregard had been killed during the battle. He received a “slight wound” in his left arm.

The correspondent for the Cincinnati Commercial reported, “Each man fought as if success or defeat depended upon his own right arm, and charge after charge was made upon the Rebels to regain the ground we had lost.

“They stood firm as a rock, and though our artillery often swept down their ranks and left fearful gaps in their columns, they manifested no trepidation, nor did they waver for a moment.

“The living supplied the place of the dead. The musket that had fallen from a lifeless hand was seized at once. Hand-to-hand struggles were innumerable. Every struggle was for life. Quarter was asked on neither side, and the ground drank up the blood of hundreds of brave fellows every hour.”

The correspondent thought the men “lost all semblance of humanity.” All he could see was the “spirit of the demon” in their faces.

Defeat followed every success. The rebels pushed ahead and then gave way to the Union advance. Then the Union advanced, only to fall back. The men were nothing more than “wild beasts.” Powder and smoke filled the air. “Arms, legs, and heads were torn off” as the troops advanced into the melee.”

A scene on the battlefield at Shiloh

The fighting on April 6 “raged with a fury that defies description.” At five o’clock, the rebels ceased fire. Then, just as quickly, the fight was back on. “The gunboats Tyler and Lexington poured in their shot thick and fast, with terrible effect.”

Andrew Davis stepped off a steamboat at Pittsburg Landing around one o’clock on Sunday afternoon. “The Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Illinois, and Indiana troops contested every inch of ground during the whole day,” he said, “but were compelled to gradually fall back.” By nightfall, the Union men were crammed into a tiny strip only three-quarters of a mile wide. Surrender appeared imminent. “Had it not been for the river,” Davis was sure, “it would have been a worse stampede than Bull Run ever was.”

 

The next day when he reached the battlefield, “the enemy were in full retreat.” 

 

He saw his first dead body a quarter of a mile from the landing. “In many places, they lay so thick that a person could step from one to another for many rods. In one place, I counted seven rebels piled on top of each other where they had stood at their cannon and fought.” There were bodies with the “head entirely shot away.” Another one was “cut entirely in two.” Others had “their legs or arms shot off.” Still others were “so mangled that it would be almost impossible to tell that they had ever been a human being.”

 

Despite losing ground on the first day, General Grant felt confident he could turn things around. “We can hold them off until tomorrow,” he told his commanders. “Then, they’ll be exhausted, and we’ll go at them with fresh troops.” Buell’s army arrived close to five o’clock. Too late to help on the first day, but a welcome addition for the next day’s battle.

Lew Wallace finally made it up with his five thousand troops. Grant couldn’t help feeling Wallace’s absence was a big part of the problem on Sunday. Early in the morning, Grant sent Captain A. A. Baxter to order Wallace to march immediately to Pittsburg Landing. When Wallace did not arrive by one o’clock, Grant dispatched Colonel McPherson and Captain Rowley to find him. Wallace took the wrong road and missed the entire first day of fighting.

A massive thunderstorm rolled in after midnight. That and the continued cannonading from the gunboats kept the men awake most of the night. 

Grant ordered his division commanders to throw out skirmishers early the next morning. 

The battle opened around seven o’clock on the morning of April 7th. By nine o’clock, the roar of the artillery and musketry was mind-numbing. The firing from the Union line “was as steady as clockwork.” The “roar of the battle shook the earth.”

General Nelson’s men crossed the river early and fell in on the left flank. General Buell’s troops arrived at the landing at about eleven o’clock. They marched up the hill and took a position on the right near General Lew Wallace’s command.

 

The Union guns shook the earth, throwing cannonballs into the rebel positions. Taylor’s Chicago Battery poured volley after volley of canister into an open field known as the “Battalion Drill Ground” near Sherman’s command. It tore into the rebels, leaving death and destruction at every turn.

The second day did not go as well for the Confederates. Colonel R. G. Shaver of the Seventh Arkansas Infantry reported a “terrific and murderous fire” opened upon them that compelled them to fall back. “Disorder and confusion prevailed.”

A rebel soldier said they “drove the Federals from hill to hill and from ravine to ravine all day long. We exhausted our cartridges time and again and continued on with the bayonet...the dead were piled up on every field by the hundreds, with the most-ghastly looking wounds you ever looked at. Most of the Yankees that I saw dead were shot through the head, and their brains had oozed out on the ground.”

By early afternoon, it was apparent the rebels were retreating towards Corinth. General Hardee said that Beauregard gave the order to pull back at one o’clock.

 

General Beauregard claimed the victory because the rebels sustained fewer casualties than the Federal troops, but the Evening Star was not so sure. 

“Was it a defeat?” they asked. “Certainly not. If a man attempts to knock me down and the matter ends in my knocking him down, I’m not defeated.” Later, the paper added, “Certainly, it was not a defeat. But was it a decisive victory?” Ultimately, they did not have enough information “to form a satisfactory opinion.”

General Grant estimated the Union loss at 1,500 killed and 3,500 wounded. He believed the rebel loss was much higher. The animals took it just as hard. Two hundred horses died in the fighting.

The uproar over the alleged misconduct of Grant and Sherman roared as intensely as the battle. Everyone had an opinion. No one had proof.

Stories circulated about Sherman and Grant not taking enough care at Pittsburg Landing and Shiloh. Some observers thought they should have had their pickets out farther in advance to prevent a surprise attack.

General Don Carlos Buell felt Grant and Sherman were a bunch of bunglers who nearly lost their armies. When he arrived at Pittsburg Landing, the command “had no line or order of battle, no defensive work of any sort, no outposts...and no recognized head during the absence of the regular commander.” Buell believed Grant’s army was a disaster waiting to happen. His account of the battle at Shiloh, published in Century Magazine’s Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, implied Grant and Sherman doctored their accounts of the fighting to negate the element of surprise paid in their near defeat on the first day of the battle at Shiloh.

Sherman dismissed those reports in a letter to his brother John. The newspaper reports, “as usual,” were made “by people who ran away and had to excuse their cowardice by charging bad management on the part of leaders.” In Sherman’s opinion, it was petty jealousy mixed with overzealous news reporters.

In another letter to his brother, John, in December, Sherman displayed the same disdain for reporters. “I allow no reporters about.” This time, it was for security. “The enemy shall learn nothing of my forces, plans, or purposes through an egotistical and corrupt press.”

Looking back on the battle twenty-five years later, Grant described Shiloh as “constantly misunderstood.” He didn’t see any need to defend his conduct. “As to the talk about a surprise here, nothing could be more false. If the enemy had sent us word when and where they would attack us, we could not have been better prepared. Skirmishing had been going on for two days between our reconnoitering parties and the enemy’s advance lines. I did not believe; however, they intended to make a determined attack but were simply making a reconnaissance in force.”

No matter. The papers were for and against him.

The Muscatine Weekly Journal (Iowa) wrote, “General Buell, and not General Grant, is the real hero of Pittsburg Landing.” His timely arrival saved the army from a total defeat by Beauregard. The paper ended its rant, calling Grant “a pompous charlatan” whose name had “no magic for the soldier.”

The New York Herald agreed. Buell “arrived at the critical moment and saved the fight.” That did not stop them from complimenting Grant. They said, “By his enduring heroism, Grant held the enemy at bay until Buell arrived.” That made it sound like Grant was a faithful puppy dog waiting for his master to return. It was a compliment, but... Finally, they got to the point. “Such a man deserves something more than censure.”

If anything, it proved the papers were like the politicians and the people—opinionated, uninformed, and willing to make snap judgments before they had all the facts.

In short, they were human and willing to be swayed by crazy bullshit.

The Cincinnati Commercial started a rumor that Sherman and Prentiss had been taken entirely by surprise at the start of the battle. The article said, “Many guns were unloaded, accouterments lying pell-mell; ammunition was ill-supplied—in short, the camps were completely surprised—disgracefully.” The reporter said many of the men were killed in their sleep or shot while emerging from their tents. “Officers were bayoneted in their beds,” then left to fester in their gore for two days while the battle raged.

The National Republican repeated and embellished that same rumor in the Capitol. “The beginning of the fight on that day [April 6] was a total surprise, many officers and soldiers being overtaken in their tents and slaughtered or taken prisoner.”

The funny thing is, the Confederate leaders never talked about marching in and catching Sherman and Grant with their pants down. General Hardee said the enemy attacked the skirmishers in front of his lines at daybreak on April 6th. In less than a half-hour, the action escalated into a fierce battle. 

The initial advance proved deadly for the rebels. By Hardee’s estimates, the Sixth Mississippi “lost more than 300 killed out of an effective force of 425 men.”

Hardee’s report doesn’t make it sound like the element of surprise played any part in the battle. If it had, he would have talked about the number of Union troops slaughtered, not about three out of four members of one of his regiments being cut down.

The battles at Fort Donelson and Shiloh were just the beginning. Each ensuing battle saw fiercer, more desperate fighting and casualties no one could have imagined at the beginning of the war. Yet in a few short years, the death and destruction at Shiloh would seem inconsequential compared to the losses suffered at Antietam, Gettysburg, and Petersburg.

The Civil War was a game-changer. It altered the way the world looked at war.

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