Battle of Shiloh

Background

In February 1862 Ulysses S. Grant's army, supported by Flag-Officer Andrew Foote's gunboats, took Forts Henry and Donelson. These were the Union's largest victories of the war so far, and they opened the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers. Albert Sidney Johnston, the Confederate commander in the West, gave up Kentucky and Middle Tennessee; the last of his troops left Nashville on 23 February. He concentrated at Corinth, Mississippi, where the Memphis & Charleston and Mobile & Ohio railroads crossed, and by the end of March had more than 40,000 men there, including troops brought up from Mobile and New Orleans.

Henry Halleck, given command of the Union armies in the West on 11 March, sent them up the Tennessee. Grant's divisions gathered at Pittsburg Landing, on the west bank about 22 miles north-east of Corinth, and camped around a log meeting house called Shiloh Church, some 3 miles inland. Lew Wallace's division lay 5 miles downstream at Crump's Landing, and Grant kept his headquarters at Savannah, 9 miles away. Halleck forbade a battle until Don Carlos Buell's Army of the Ohio came up from Nashville; Buell set out on 15 March, but high water on the Duck River turned a nine-day march into twenty-two.

Late on 2 April Johnston decided to strike Grant before Buell arrived. Rain, mud, poor guides and green troops put the army hours behind schedule, and the attack slipped from 4 to 5 April, then to dawn on the 6th. A skirmish with Sherman's pickets on 4 April showed the Federals that something was in front of them. On the evening of 5 April Beauregard and Bragg urged a return to Corinth, arguing that surprise was lost; Johnston refused, declaring, by one account, that he would fight them if they were a million.

The armies

Grant's Army of the Tennessee had six divisions, roughly 49,000 men: McClernand's (1st), W. H. L. Wallace's (2nd), Lew Wallace's (3rd), Hurlbut's (4th), Sherman's (5th) and Prentiss's (6th). McClernand's and W. H. L. Wallace's men had fought at Donelson; Sherman's and Prentiss's, camped furthest forward, were the least experienced, and Sherman was the only division commander on the field that morning trained at West Point. The timberclad gunboats Tyler and Lexington lay off the landing. Buell brought about 18,000 men of the Army of the Ohio to the field for the second day: Nelson's, Crittenden's and McCook's divisions and two brigades of Wood's. None of his regiments had fought a major battle, but they were well trained and equipped.

Johnston's Army of the Mississippi, roughly 40,000 to 45,000 strong, had four small corps under Polk, Bragg, Hardee and Breckinridge, with Beauregard as second in command. Bragg's men were the best drilled, but most of the army had never been in action. Its weapons were a mixture of flintlocks, shotguns, sporting rifles and percussion muskets, with a few thousand Enfields; only a third of the cavalry was armed at the start. Wikipedia counts 119 Union and 117 Confederate guns. The Confederate cavalry was the more effective, and kept Johnston informed of where both Union armies were.

The battle

CDB90 treats the two days as a single engagement (178).

Dawn, 6 April: the attack opens (5 a.m. to 9 a.m.). Colonel Everett Peabody of Prentiss's division sent a five-company patrol under Major James Powell forward on his own authority. At about 5 a.m. it met Hardee's skirmishers, the 3rd Mississippi Battalion, in Fraley's cotton field, and the two fought for more than an hour. Hearing the firing, Johnston ordered a general attack at about 5.30 and rode forward, leaving Beauregard in the rear and, in effect, in control of the battle. Hardee and Bragg advanced in one line nearly 3 miles wide, and Polk and Breckinridge were fed in at about 7.30; the corps intermingled, and the weight was spread along the front rather than massed against the Union left as Johnston intended. Sherman, who had dismissed warnings for days, was convinced only when an orderly was shot dead beside him at about 7 a.m. Peabody was killed and his camp taken by 8.30; hungry Confederates stopped to loot. Grant arrived from Savannah about 9 a.m.

Morning to mid-afternoon: the Union line bends (9 a.m. to 3.30 p.m.). Sherman and McClernand fought a series of stands on the Union right, losing the Hamburg-Purdy road crossroads by about 11.20 and falling back to Jones Field. In the centre, W. H. L. Wallace's brigades, Hurlbut's division and Prentiss's remnants, about 600 men plus the newly landed 23rd Missouri, held an old farm lane running from Duncan Field to the Peach Orchard, later called the Sunken Road; Grant told Prentiss to hold at all hazards. Some 5,700 infantry and 25 guns held it. The Confederates, who named the thicket the Hornets' Nest, attacked a brigade at a time; Gibson's brigade alone made three or four attempts in two hours.

Johnston went to his right to break the Union left. When Breckinridge's first attacks failed he led five brigades forward himself, driving Hurlbut and McArthur back from the Peach Orchard. At about 2 p.m., riding ahead of the line, he was hit behind the right knee; the bullet cut an artery, his high boot hid the wound, and he bled to death at about 2.30. A tourniquet might have saved him, but his surgeon had been sent to tend the wounded. Beauregard took command.

Late afternoon: the Hornets' Nest falls (3.30 p.m. to 5.30 p.m.). From about 3.30 the Confederates massed eleven batteries opposite the Union centre, known as Ruggles's Battery: traditionally 62 guns, though Cunningham and Daniel count 51 to 53. With both Union flanks gone, W. H. L. Wallace tried to break out northwards and was mortally wounded at about 4.15; more than 1,000 men were taken in Hell's Hollow. At about 5.30 Prentiss surrendered with some 2,200 to 2,250 men.

Evening: Grant's Last Line. Colonel Joseph Webster had massed some 40 to 50 guns, including five 24-pounder siege guns, on the ridge above the landing, with Tyler and Lexington on the left. Chalmers's and Jackson's brigades attacked across the Dill Branch ravine and were stopped, as Nelson's leading regiments crossed the river. Beauregard called off the attack near sunset. Lew Wallace, sent for that morning, had marched on the wrong road and arrived about 7 p.m.; Buell's divisions were ferried over through a night of rain and gunboat shelling.

7 April: the Union counter-offensive. At dawn Grant and Buell advanced with more than 45,000 men, many of them fresh, against about 28,000 Confederates. Lew Wallace cleared Jones Field; Buell's divisions pushed through Wicker Field and the Hornets' Nest towards Water Oaks Pond, where Beauregard's counterattacks around noon briefly reached McClernand's old camp before Veatch's brigade struck their flank. Beauregard began to withdraw at about 1 p.m.; Breckinridge's rearguard held south of Shiloh Church until about 5 p.m., and the Federals did not pursue. On 8 April Forrest's cavalry checked Sherman's follow-up at Fallen Timbers, which lies outside CDB90's engagement.

Aftermath

The Union lost 13,047 men (1,754 killed, 8,408 wounded, 2,885 missing or captured) and the Confederates 10,699 (1,728, 8,012 and 959): 23,746 in all, more than the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812 and the Mexican War combined. Some historians think both totals understated. Johnston was the highest-ranking soldier killed in combat in the war; Jefferson Davis later called his fall "the turning point of our fate". Halleck took personal command on 11 April and sidelined Grant as his second-in-command, and the Federals found Corinth abandoned on 30 May. Grant, accused of being surprised and even drunk, survived; Lincoln reportedly said he could not spare a man who fought.

Three old stories have been revised. The surprise, spread by Whitelaw Reid's report from well behind the lines, is now usually treated as partial: Timothy Smith argues that the Federals knew an enemy was close and that Peabody's patrol prevented total tactical surprise, though no one expected 40,000 men a mile away and no earthworks had been dug. A National Park Service essay still concludes that Grant was surprised. The Hornets' Nest was made the heart of the battle by the park's first historian, David Reed, who had fought there; Smith argues that the heaviest fighting was on the flanks, and Daniel counts eight assaults against the dozen or more often claimed. Finally, few modern historians, Cunningham and Daniel among them, believe Beauregard threw away a victory by halting.

Wargaming it

Shiloh is a two-day battle on a small, closed field: a rough triangle bounded by Owl and Snake Creeks, Lick Creek and the Tennessee River, mostly woodland broken by small farms, cotton fields and orchards. It suits a brigade-level game with regiments as units, and the first day alone makes a full evening's play.

The woods should dominate the rules: short sight lines, broken formations, units drifting out of command, and attackers stopping to plunder captured camps. Raw troops on both sides argue for brittle morale and a high cost to rallying. The Confederate player is racing a clock: break the Union left and get between Grant and the landing before Lew Wallace and Buell arrive. Make Wallace's arrival variable, to reflect his wrong-road march, and Nelson's regiments a late, uncertain trickle. The Hornets' Nest is a test of whether the attacker repeats the piecemeal frontal assaults or works round its flanks, and the massed battery is a tempting set piece. Gunboat fire is worth randomising, since witnesses disagreed about its effect.

What ifs: Johnston masses against the Union left as planned; Johnston survives (Smith doubts it would have changed the result); Beauregard presses on at dusk against Grant's Last Line; Lew Wallace takes the direct road. The second day works as a separate scenario: about 28,000 exhausted Confederates conducting a fighting withdrawal against a fresh, larger Union force.

Maps and pictures