Evening came and a nightmare began to unfold over the battlefield. Dead and wounded soldiers littered the area by the thousands. In the darkness it was impossible to locate them all, so they groaned and cried out for help. Around midnight the situation worsened. An early spring thunderstorm rocked the field. Torrential downpours fell. The combination of the wounded multitudes shrieking for assistance and the fierce lightning created a bizarre effect that had few equals throughout the course of the war.
Then there were the Federal gunboats. They continued to fire into the Confederate positions throughout the night. Their shots produced more fear than physical damage, but midair explosions were frequent. On more than one occasion, a naval shell exploded amongst the hardwoods, causing treetops to come crashing down on the Rebels.
Inside Grant’s final line fresh troops were arriving. Lew Wallace’s Third division finally made it to the field about 7 p.m. Carlos Buell’s Army of the Ohio crossed the river and formed ranks beyond the Landing before the storms hit. These new troops were shocked at the sight of the thousands of stragglers that still crowded the riverside.
April 7 dawned with the two sides in a dramatic reversal of the previous day’s fighting. Beauregard’s army was hopelessly disorganized. Brigades from different corps were so intermingled that few commanders could obtain orders as to where to form their ranks. Many regiments were out of ammunition and, though there were countless rounds scattered about the battlefield, no officers made the effort to replenish supplies.
Expecting the Yankees to withdraw, the Army of the Mississippi made no preparations for a second day of battle. Grant, however, had no intention of evacuating his position. By 8 a.m. Buell was ready to advance with three fresh Northern divisions. Grant planned to use these men, along with the few units in his own army still capable of attacking, to drive the fatigued Southerners back to Corinth.
Bull Nelson’s division opened the second day of Shiloh by moving against the Confederate right. The two remaining divisions of Buell’s army formed the center of the Union advance. Together, this force pushed forward, chasing the Rebels from one defensive line after another throughout the next several hours. Though the Southerner’s managed a few isolated counterattacks, their resistance was largely feeble against fresh, organized troops.
On the Federal right, Lew Wallace’s division advanced. Supported by reformed units from Sherman and McClernand, this Union flank pushed the mangled Confederate left back to Shiloh Church by mid-afternoon. Here too, the Southern fighting spirit managed a counterattack or two, but without any significance. At no time did the Rebel army break, but neither could it hold any ground against the Northern assault.
By 3:30 Beauregard ordered his tattered army to retreat. The Union armies did not pursue. Grant’s men were exhausted from the two days of brutal fighting. Buell had no taste for further fighting either. He had no cavalry with which to patrol the area and was totally ignorant of the layout of the terrain between the battlefield and Corinth. So, the Battle of Shiloh ended with a whimper. The firing gradually subsided.
With both sides exhausted and disorganized, the battle might be considered a draw were it not for the fact that the Confederates left the field, their commander dead. In effect, their extensive fortifications near Memphis and along the upper Mississippi were rendered strategically impotent. The Yankees now threatened these positions from the rear. With the line of communication jeopardized, Memphis and most of Tennessee was soon abandoned.
Since the battle itself was not fought over a major strategic objective and since both sides were stunned by the highly disorganized fighting, Shiloh leaves many students of the war with the impression of being a muddled, confused affair. Southern leaders formed mediocre plans and executed them in a chaotic manner. Grant’s response to the attack was more tenacious than brilliant. This is hardly a basis for the adoring study and concerted myth-making always present in other military events dubbed as “decisive”.
The degree of decisiveness a particular military event holds in history is usually judged by what the victor achieved. At Shiloh, the Union secured it’s gains along the path of the Tennessee River. This guaranteed the fall of western Tennessee, particularly of Memphis, the base from which Grant eventually began his brilliant campaign to capture Vicksburg. But Memphis is nowhere near Shiloh Church. So the connection between the two places is convoluted at best.
For these reasons, Shiloh is rarely considered a decisive event in the American Civil War. Surely, it was no Gettysburg in terms of the way it was fought, but it is still, perhaps, more important than that great battle in the east. The true significance Shiloh can be seen once you consider how it played out in the overall course of the war. The greatest repercussion of the battle for the Confederacy was not the loss of two-thirds of Tennessee. Rather, it was the penetrating insight the battle conferred to Ulysses S. Grant.
Prior to Shiloh, Grant felt the movement for Southern independence would be quickly crushed. His experiences at Forts Henry and Donelson had led him to the false conclusion that the Rebel heart and soul was destitute. “Up to the battle of Shiloh I, as well as thousands of other citizens, believed that the rebellion against the Government would collapse suddenly and soon,” wrote the pedagogue of unconditional surrender (Grant’s Memoirs p.246).
Then came the hard knocks his forces took at the hands of a more robust Southern army than the incompetently lead garrisons he had previously tackled. These sobering blows convinced him that nothing short of total conquest of the South by the North would lead to the re-establishment of the Union. The expectations of unconditional surrender collided with the reality of Southern audacity. The result was a crucible for Grant. This is the nature of the battle’s decisive quality.
At the end of the first day Sherman, beaten and battered, found his commander among the oaks at Pittsburgh Landing. A cynical realist by nature, Sherman complained of how the day had gone. “Well, Grant, we’ve had the devil’s own day, haven’t we,” he quipped. As advanced elements of Buell’s Army of the Ohio crossed the Tennessee to take up positions for the second day’s counterattack, Grant chewed his cigar. “Yes. Lick ‘em tomorrow though,” was his reply. (Catton, p.242) Grant learned much in the school of hard knocks.
This moment was one of the most profound in the American Civil War. It was the dawn of the relationship that would lead to the capture of Vicksburg, the rout of the Confederate Army of Tennessee at Missionary Ridge, the March to the Sea, and the bottling up of Robert E. Lee at Petersburg. The tenacious ability to withstand all the South had to give and to work together to win the war was conceived by the experience of Sherman and Grant on the first day at Shiloh.
Grant was impressed with Sherman’s fighting spirit, with the way he continued to reform his lines all day long, though his division was all but annihilated. Sherman, in turn, found Grant a solid rock upon which to anchor his restless soul. They were a superb complement to one another. Years later, when Grant won the presidency of the United States, Sherman would sum up their friendship crudely but accurately in terms of their mutual need for one another: “He stood by me when I was crazy and I stood by him when he was drunk...” (Marszalek, p.423)
Sherman later disagreed with Grant’s Vicksburg maneuver, but it worked brilliantly. Grant differed with Sherman’s plan to march to Savannah after the fall of Atlanta, but this campaign profoundly impacted the Southern society’s will to fight. They were a team, each offsetting the other’s weaknesses, each finding operational insights when the other failed to see a way to victory.
All this would have meant little, however, in the context of a Southern victory at Shiloh. Under that scenario, a defeated Ulysses S. Grant’s rise to supreme commander in 1864 was less probable than his dismissal from the service. It almost turned out that way even though he won the battle.
Grant came under heavy fire in the North after Shiloh. Politicians and the press from all across the nation criticized him. The Governor of Ohio, for example, brusquely proclaimed that Grant should be “court-martialed or shot” for the “criminal negligence” of his command. (Catton, p.254) In response, Henry Halleck, took charge of the army in the field. Grant became little more than his administrative subordinate. How much worse would Grant’s position have been had he clearly lost the battle?
In the days following Shiloh, Grant considered leaving the service entirely. He was depressed by the petty leadership role imposed upon him by Halleck. Sherman convinced Grant to stay, arguing that some opportunity might yet occur that would reverse the tide of criticism against him. Weeks later, Halleck was reassigned to Washington. Sherman’s sympathetic support paid handsome dividends for Grant’s military career (Catton, p.274).
President Lincoln recognized Grant’s fighting tenacity and saved him from dismissal following the Union victory. The president would have been less supportive, however, of a general who lost his entire army deep in enemy territory. A Southern victory at Shiloh would probably have deprived the North of Grant’s genius later at Vicksburg and against Lee in Virginia in 1864. Damage to Sherman’s reputation, already questionable at the time of the battle, was also likely.
Sherman was deeply depressed at the time of the battle. The annihilation of his division, placed in the context of a great Northern setback at Shiloh, could have conceivably resulted in his suicide. He seriously considered taking such a drastic course of action several times anyway in the weeks leading up to the battle (see Fellman, Citizen Sherman, 1995). How much more depressed would he have been if the Army of the Tennessee had lost its hold on Pittsburgh Landing on April 6?
Beyond this debatable speculation, however, it is reasonable to presuppose a more severely reprimanded U.S. Grant in the light of a Union defeat at Shiloh. His rise to four-star general is unlikely under the circumstances. Further, even if Sherman chose not to commit suicide in the face of defeat, his appointment as commander of the western theater in 1864 is implausible without Grant’s advocacy.
Of Grant’s maturity as a leader John Keegan wrote: “No future experience would alter the vision of reality he had now conceived for himself. The face he showed his soldiers at Shiloh would be the same face he showed the world at Appomattox and in the White House.” (Keegan, p.228-229) He was the only general that demonstrated the perseverance to hammer Robert E. Lee into submission. Without Grant’s leadership in Virginia, Meade would probably stall in the face of a Wilderness-like assault. The 1864 Virginia Campaign might happen differently.
With Grant unable to be a coach and advocate for Sherman, the capture of Atlanta would be a different problem. The failure of the Northern Democratic peace movement of 1864 and the subsequent re-election of Abraham Lincoln over George McCellan might have to look elsewhere for their impetus.
There is nothing in the Southern experience at Shiloh to counterbalance the fantastic Grant-Sherman catharsis and their subsequent increase in strategic influence on the Northern war effort. That side of the ledger holds little more than Beauregard’s simple headlong strategy, Bragg’s hammerblows at the Hornet’s Nest, and the mythology of doom so common in the Southern interpretation of the war as evidenced in the death Albert Sydney Johnston.
Beauregard later turned ill and was ultimately relieved of his command. He later played an important role in the Southern defense of Charleston and Petersburg. But these efforts were purely reactionary and contributed little of significance to the Confederacy’s bid for Independence. At most, he contributed to a prolonging of the war without any measureable impact on its outcome.
In his report on the battle, Braxton Bragg began his ignominious stumble to the level of scoundrel in the minds of the Confederate Army of Tennessee by dismissing the Southern demise at Shiloh as little more than the result of “ a want of discipline and a want of officers.” (McWhiney, p.250) Without Shiloh, Braxton Bragg might have remained a commander of coastal fortifications. His leadership at Pensacola and Mobile early in the war played an important role in the establishment of a disciplined military presence along the Confederacy’s Gulf territory. His aggressive display of corps level command at Shiloh, coupled with the death of Johnston and the dismissal of Beauregard, established him as the favored western general of Jefferson Davis.
Bragg knew military administration. He possessed the stern demeanor and the Celtic hawkish nature to mold mere Southern rabble into a disciplined and efficient fighting force. Legions of historians have classified Bragg as incompetent. His indecisive quality at Perryville, Murfreesboro, and Chickamauga, coupled with his inability to truly inspire men, provide plenty of justification for their point of view.
Whether he was inept or not, Bragg came into power at Shiloh. He was the logical choice to lead the Army of Tennessee for the next year and a half of the war. He could organize it, train it, supply it, and use it in strategically sweeping operations. He would take the army that fought at Shiloh all the way to the Kentucky state capitol. No one else came close to that throughout the span of the war. All this, because of his experience at Shiloh.
If it is accepted, however, that Bragg’s leadership ultimately led to the loss of eastern Tennessee and Chattanooga, then his role at Shiloh was a watershed event in the fate of the Southern war effort. The limited resources the South put at the disposal of Braxton Bragg was made possible by his repeated assaults and ultimate capture of the Hornet’s Nest.
Of Albert Syndey Johnston, Jefferson Davis later wrote: “...it was the turning point of our fate; for we had no other hand to take up his work in the West.” (Sword, p.436) A wonderful epithet, at best revealing the hopes the Southern nation placed upon the top ranking Confederate General early in the war. Johnston’s experience was, perhaps, the most symbolic of the Southern army at Shiloh.
For him, Shiloh was a personal affair. It was his opportunity for redemption from the catastrophic collapse at Forts Henry and Donelson. He was close to the action, leading charges, stabilizing the disorder, inspiring his men, but only directing a small portion of the battlefield at any one time. As a result, he was killed, brave but ultimately unable to realize his plans.
The turning of the Union left and the capture of Pittsburgh Landing seemed to be working well at his untimely death. But, his style of generalship resulted in no one else fully knowing what to do with the Confederate success in his absence. His private aspirations and personal vision were lost. The whole personality of the Southern attack changed with his last breath.
At the end of the day, the Southern ferocity of Johnston, Bragg and the other commanders was no match for the circumscription of Sherman and Grant. The real victory was in the maturing of the war perspectives in the North as opposed to renewing of dreams in the South. Following Shiloh, the Union forces went to work on the capture of Corinth. Though their efforts were clumsy, they produced a tangible gain five months after Shiloh.
The Johnstonless Army of Tennessee used the southern rail system again to rapidly move troops in a round about way to Chattanooga for a raid into Kentucky. Bragg countered the prudent Northern approach of securing the Mississippi River with an attempt to take the war to the Ohio River. Southern dreams of “On to the Ohio” applied nothing of the Shiloh experience, while Northern pragmatism cautiously perpetuated the momentum of the battle. So went the war in the western theater.
Any criteria for military decisiveness should include a weighing of the accomplishments of the victors on equal footing with the lost opportunities of the defeated. In other words, what makes a battle decisive is not just what historically happened, but also what became historically inconceivable as a result of the event.
Antietam, for example, is not only significant because it led to Lincoln’s opportunistic Emancipation Proclamation, which essentially changed the nature of the war. Rather, it garners additional importance from the fact that Lee’s army did not remain outside Virginia long enough to affect the fall elections in the North or to relieve the northern Virginia landscape of foragers. The results of the 1862 Maryland Campaign also failed to engender a vision of Independence for the Southern Confederacy in the politically conscious eyes of Britain or France.
At Shiloh, though the Union forces secured their gains since Fort Donelson and preserved their strategic initiative, it was because the preeminent Southern effort failed that the battle deserves consideration as THE decisive moment in the American Civil War. Had the Southern forces won, instead of marching into Kentucky by way of Chattanooga, penetration might have occurred through western Tennessee, without the loss of Memphis.
By far, the battle represented the South’s best opportunity to annihilate a sizable Northern army. Except for a few regiments, the attack began with the Yankees at leisure around their tents, arms stacked, bored with the prospect of another routine day of camplife. By mid-morning, entire Union divisions were isolated from one another and tended to fight incoherently, every brigade for itself. Grant did not arrive on the field until three hours after the battle started, so there was little opportunity to direct the Union defensive efforts in an coordinated fashion. In all the war, no other gathering of 40,000 plus Union soldiers was more unprepared to accept an assault.
The South never again came close to capturing or annihilating a Union army of this size. On the first day the total firepower of the Southern army was superior in numbers of artillery and troops. It was one of the few times the Confederates outnumbered the Federals. The destruction of Grant’s force at this early stage in the war would have provided plenty of fuel for the Northern doomsayers who blossomed in full in 1864 when the North was actually much closer to victory.
It took the ever-cautious Halleck some five months after Shiloh to capture Corinth, even though that important rail junction was only 20 miles away. Given the fact that Bragg later moved into Kentucky anyway, it is likely that Johnston, commanding the field of a victorious Army of the Mississippi and bolstered by reinforcements from the late-arriving Van Dorn, would have seized the initiative from the slow-moving Halleck and taken the war northward in an attempt to regain Nashville. Such a move would have fully vindicated his personal vendetta for redeeming the losses at Forts Henry and Donelson.
Shiloh was the event which solidified the relationship of Grant and Sherman and led them to a deeper appreciation of the war. In turn, all the principal victories of the North in 1863 and 1864 were made possible. Conversely, had Johnston’s marshaled forces cut the Army of the Tennessee off from the river on April 6, the land-naval campaign against Vicksburg, the March to the Sea, and the Siege of Petersburg might not have occurred at all.
Copyright © W. Keith Beason, 1999
Version 1.5
Version 2.0 is forthcoming with photos, original maps, updated information based upon new research. Stay tuned.
