Shiloh: A Battlefield Guide (This Hallowed Ground: Guides to Civil Wa)

This Hallowed Ground: Guides to Civil War Battlefields SERIES EDITORS Brooks D. Simpson Arizona State University Mark Grimsley The Ohio State University Steven E. Woodworth Texas Christian University

SHILOH A BATTLEFIELD GUIDE BY MARK GRIMSLEY AND STEVEN E. WOODWORTH

Cartography by Christopher L. Brest • University of Nebraska Press Lincoln and London

© 2006 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America. Text set by G&S Typesetters, Inc., in Linotype Swift, designed by Gerard Unger, with Helvetica display. Book designed by Richard Eckersley. Book printed by Edwards Brothers, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Grimsley, Mark. Shiloh : a battlefield guide / by Mark Grimsley and Steven E. Woodworth. p. cm. – (This hallowed ground : guides to Civil War battlefields) Includes bibliographical references. isbn-13: 978-0-8032-7100-5 (paperback : alk. paper) isbn-10: 0-8032-7100-x (paperback : alkaline paper) 1. Shiloh, Battle of, Tenn., 1862. 2. Shiloh National Military Park (Tenn.) – Guidebooks. i. Woodworth, Steven E. ii. Title. iii. This hallowed ground. e473.54.g75 2006 976.8'04–dc22 2005011383

Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction How to Use This Guide

viii xi xiii

The Shiloh Campaign: March–April 1862

3

overview of the first day, april 6, 1862

11

stop 1

Pittsburg Landing, March 1862

13

1a

Union Commanders Select an Encampment, March 17–April 5

13

1b

The Confederates Plan an Attack, March 15 –April 1

15

stop 2

Shiloh Church, April 4 –5

17

stop 3

Fraley Field, April 6

20

3a

Powell’s Reconnaissance, April 6, 3:00–5:30 a.m.

21

3b

The Confederate Army Advances, April 3–5

23

3c

“Tonight We Will Water Our Horses in the Tennessee River,” April 6, 5:30 a.m.

24

stop 4

Peabody’s Battle Line, 5:30– 8:00 a.m.

27

stop 5

Peabody’s Camp, 8:00– 8:30 a.m.

30

Eastern Route, April 6

32

east stop 6

Spain Field, 7:30–10:00 a.m.

32

6a

Miller’s Brigade Deploys, 7:30– 8:00 a.m.

33

6b

Gladden’s Brigade Attacks, 8:30–9:00 a.m.

35

6c

The Collapse of Miller’s Defense, 8:30–9:00 a.m.

37

6d

Chalmers and Jackson Redeploy, 9:00–10:00 a.m.

39

east stop 7

McCuller’s Field, 10:00–11:00 a.m.

41

east stop 8

Stuart’s Defense, 11:00–11:30 a.m.

43

east stop 9

The Peach Orchard, 7 :30 a.m.–2:30 p.m.

46

9a

Hurlbut to the Rescue, 7:30– 8:30 a.m.

47

9b

Hurlbut Deploys, 8:30–9:30 a.m.

49

9c

The First “Attack,” 9:00–10:00 a.m.

51

9d

The Formation of the Sunken Road Position,

9e

10:00–11:00 a.m.

53

“A Few More Charges and the Day Is Ours,” 12:30–2:00 p.m.

56

The First Assaults, 2:00–2:30 p.m.

58

Hornets’ Nest Excursion

59

stop a

31st Indiana Infantry

60

stop b

12th Michigan Infantry

61

stop c

Hickenlooper’s Battery

62

stop d

Arkansas State Memorial

63

stop e

Munch’s Battery Monument

65

stop f

7th Iowa Infantry

66

stop g

2nd Iowa Infantry

67

east stop 10

The Collapse of the Union Left, 2:00– 4:00 p.m.

69

east stop 11

Johnston’s Death, 2:30 p.m.

71

Western Route, April 6

73

west stop 6

Rea Field, 6:00– 8:00 a.m.

73

6a

Sherman’s Division Is Attacked, 6:00–7:00 a.m.

74

6b

The 53rd Ohio Fights and Retreats, 7:00– 8:00 a.m.

77

west stop 7

Shiloh Branch, 6:00– 8:00 a.m.

80

west stop 8

Ridge near Shiloh Church

83

8a

Buckland’s Brigade Holds Fast, 8:30–10:00 a.m.

84

8b

Sherman’s Division Fights and Falls Back, 8:00–10:00 a.m.

86

west stop 9

On the Hamburg-Purdy Road, 10:30–11:00 a.m.

89

west stop 10

Review Field, 10:30–11:00 a.m.

92

west stop 11

McClernand’s Camps

95

11a

The Confederates Advance, 11:00–11:30 a.m.

96

11b

The Federals Counterattack, 11:30 a.m.–1:00 p.m.

98

west stop 12

Duncan Field, 10 :00 a.m.– 4:30 p.m.

101

west stop 13

Hell’s Hollow, 4:00–5:00 p.m.

105

stop 14

Grant’s Last Line, 5: 00 – 6 : 30 p.m.

108

Dill Branch Excursion

111

overview of the second day, april 7, 1862

113

Eastern Route, April 7

115

east stop 15

The Line of Departure, 5:00 a.m.

115

east stop 16

Wicker Field, 5:00–10:00 a.m.

117

9f

east stop 17

Bloody Pond, 10:00–11:00 a.m.

119

east stop 18

Davis Wheat Field

122

18a

The Federals Attack, 10:30–11:30 a.m.

123

18b

The Confederates Counterattack, 11:30 a.m.– 12:00 noon

125

Western Route, April 7

126

west stop 15

Lew Wallace’s Approach, April 6, 12 : 00 noon–7:15 p.m.

126

west stop 16

Tilghman Branch, 6:30–9:00 a.m.

130

west stop 17

Jones Field, 9 :00 a.m.–12:00 noon

132

west stop 18

Sowell Field, 12 :00 noon

135

west stop 19

Water Oaks Pond, 12 :00 noon–2 : 00 p.m.

138

afterword

The Corinth Campaign, April 8–May 30, 1862

141

appendix a

The Union and Confederate Commands on April 6, 1862

145

appendix b

Orders of Battle

151

appendix c

Organization, Weapons, and Tactics

156

Sources

167

For Further Reading

171

Acknowledgments The authors would like to extend their sincere appreciation to Stacy D. Allen, the National Park Service historian at Shiloh National Military Park. Stacy probably knows more about the battle than anyone, living or dead, and his assistance has greatly improved this guide. During the summer of 1998, Mark Grimsley conducted a staff ride of the battlefield with the officer cadre of the 3/502nd Infantry Battalion, then commanded by Lt. Col. William O. Odom. As always in such cases, the learning experience was decidedly mutual. Mark benefited from it considerably in preparing his share of the guide. Finally, we have dedicated this book to Lt. Col. John F. Guilmartin Jr. (usaf, Ret.), who flew rescue helicopters during the Vietnam War, received the Silver Star for valor under fire, and received a PhD from Princeton (which, to hear him tell it, required considerable valor as well). A gifted historian, Joe is an even more gifted teacher. Steve had the privilege of studying under Joe at Rice University. Mark had the same privilege at The Ohio State University and currently enjoys the pleasure of having Joe as a fellow colleague. Joe epitomizes the term “soldier-scholar.” He is also a generous friend, a born raconteur, and a mean hand with a barbecue. The frontispiece of this book is from the collection of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. All other illustrations first appeared in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, 4 vols., ed. Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel (New York: Century Co., 1887—88). The volume and page number from which each illustration was taken appear at the end of each caption.

For John F. Guilmartin Jr.

Teacher, colleague, and friend

On the skirmish line, blcw 1:465

On the skirmish line, blcw 3:31

Introduction People visit Civil War battlefields to see the ground. This guide, like its companion volumes in this series, is designed to help them understand what they see. With a little assistance, they can quickly discern how an almost imperceptible ridgeline could offer crucial advantages in terms of observation and fields of fire. They can imagine how an ordinary patch of undergrowth could disrupt an orderly line of battle. They can perceive the significance of minor streams, ravines, and other terrain features that in peacetime easily pass unnoticed. In short, visitors can extend their appreciation of the battlefield well beyond the simple reading of plaques or contemplation of statues and monuments. Other guides exist, at least for some battlefields. But the one in your hands was carefully crafted to fill a niche between the cursory overviews of the battle available in brochures or pamphlets and the detailed treatment of battle terrain and action offered in (for example) the series of U. S. Army War College guides, which were originally devised for professional officers. Although outstanding for that purpose,

xii

Introduction

the War College guides consist primarily of contemporary after-action reports, which are often opaquely written, selfserving (the tendency of commanders to cover one’s rear end is hardly a modern development), and require considerable self-study to master. By contrast, Shiloh: A Battlefield Guide is designed for people who are willing to invest a day examining the battlefield but who are not necessarily experts— though we believe even experts will learn a thing or two. The authors describe what happened, tell you why it mattered, and whenever possible emphasize the influence of terrain. Descriptions and maps convey the appearance of the battlefield in 1862, the position of the contending forces, and the action in various areas on the field. Although the guide is not an exhaustive treatment of the entire engagement, it explores the major (and some of the not-so-major) fighting that made up the battle of Shiloh. Finally, while users might benefit from perusing the guide before visiting the battlefield, such preparation is not essential. One can simply pick up the guide, drive out to the battlefield, and begin touring immediately. The main tour can be completed in approximately six hours. Also included are two walking excursions, including one to the so-called Hornets’ Nest, or Sunken Road. Short summaries of the campaign and of each day’s operations help establish context. At the end of the guide, there is an abbreviated order of battle listing the units present on the field, a glossary of terms, a discussion of tactics and weaponry, and a bibliography for further reading.

How to Use This Guide This book is divided into 29 main stops. These proceed from one part of the battlefield to another in chronological order. That is, the tour follows the battle as it progressed, from the morning of April 6 through the afternoon of April 7. Most stops require about 10 to 15 minutes to complete. A few, such as the Peach Orchard, take a bit longer. Only a few stops require users to walk more than 50 yards from their car. Some of the main stops are divided into two or more substops. Substops seldom ask you to do much additional walking. They are simply designed to develop the action at each point in a clear, organized fashion, and there are as many substops as required to do the job. In the guidebook, each substop has a section of text “married” to a map. This technique enables you to visualize the troop dispositions and movements at each stop without having to flip around the guide looking for maps. The stops and substops follow a standard format: Directions, Orientation, What Happened, Analysis, and/or Vignette. The Directions tell you how to get from one stop to the next (and sometimes from one substop to another). They not only give you driving instructions but also ask you, once you have reached a given stop, to walk to a precise spot on the battlefield. When driving, keep an eye on your odometer; many distances are given to the nearest tenth of a mile. Important note: The directions often suggest points of interest en route from one stop to another. We have found that it works best to give the directions to a given stop first and then mention the points of interest. These are always introduced by the italicized words en route. Orientation. Once you’ve reached a stop, this section describes the terrain around you so that you can quickly pick out the key terrain and get your bearings. What Happened. This is the heart of each stop. It explains the action succinctly without becoming simplistic, and whenever possible it also explains how the terrain affected the fighting. Many stops have a section called Analysis, which explains why a particular decision was made, why a given attack met with success or failure, and so on. The purpose is to give you additional insight into the battle. Others have a section called Vignette, whose purpose is to enhance your emotional understanding of the battle by offering a short eyewitness account or a particularly vivid anecdote. Although the basic tour can be completed in about six

xiv

How to Use This Guide

hours, you can also take Excursions to places of special interest. These sections use the same format as the basic stops. A few conventions are used in the guidebook to keep confusion to a minimum. We have tried not to burden the text with a proliferation of names and unit designations. They are used as sparingly as a solid understanding of the battle permits. Names of Confederate leaders and field units are in italics. The full name and rank of each individual is usually given only the first time he is mentioned; the Order of Battle in the back of the book can remind you of precise ranks when needed. Directions are particularly important in a guidebook, but we know that they can often be confusing. We have therefore tried to make them as foolproof as possible. At each stop you are asked to face a specific, easily identifiable landmark. From that point you may be asked to look to your left or right. To make this as precise as possible, we may sometimes ask you to look to your left front, left, left rear, or such, according to the system shown below: straight ahead left front right front left right left rear right rear behind/directly to the rear Often, after the relative directions (left, right, etc.), we add the compass directions (north, south, etc.) in parentheses. The maps can also help you get your bearings. The many War Department tablets are also excellent tools for understanding the battlefield. Those outlined in blue represent units belonging to Grant’s army (identified for the sake of convenience as the Army of the Tennessee, though it did not officially acquire that name until after the battle); those in red correspond to units belonging to the Confederate army (dubbed the Army of the Mississippi); those in yellow indicate units belonging to Buell’s army (the Army of the Ohio). Square tablets designate positions occupied during the first day’s battle. Oval tablets identify positions occupied on the second day. Monuments commemorate many Union regiments (and a few Confederate ones), each placed at a key point where a unit fought, usually its main line of defense. The monument itself usually occupies the center of the position. The directions routinely use War Department tablets, National Park Service interpretive markers, and monuments to help you orient yourself.

xv

How to Use This Guide

Although this guidebook is intended primarily for use on the battlefield, it also contains information helpful for further study of the battle. A campaign introduction at the beginning of the book describes the action that preceded Shiloh; a similar section at the end tells what happened afterward. The stops for each day are preceded by overviews that outline the day’s main developments. One final note: Each guide in this series develops the action in chronological order to the greatest extent possible. We want your tour of the battlefield to unfold just as the battle itself unfolded. But because Shiloh was essentially a vast shoving match—the Confederates pushed the Federals northward on the first day, the Federals did the same in reverse on the second day—a strictly chronological approach would have you constantly weaving back and forth in a confusing pattern of zigzags. For that reason we have created a two-axis system so that you can follow the action as it progressed on the eastern side of the battlefield, then on the western side (or vice versa). The result is a far more coherent picture of the fighting. We hope you enjoy your battlefield tour of Shiloh. Mark Grimsley, Brooks D. Simpson, & Steven E. Woodworth series editors

Battle of Shiloh by Thure de Thulstrup lc-usz62-3583

The Shiloh Campaign

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The Shiloh Campaign When Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, in April 1861, the regular U.S. Army numbered scarcely 16,000 officers and men. The Confederacy possessed no regular army at all, merely a few hundred U.S. Army officers who had resigned their commissions to join the South. But both sides would soon employ hundreds of thousands of soldiers, and in doing so face the task of raising large armies almost from scratch. Both sides decided to use the state volunteer system. Each president called on each of his states to provide a certain quota of troops, organized into regiments of about a thousand men. To create these regiments, state governors depended on local politicians or community leaders to raise companies of volunteers. These companies were hometown affairs, made up of “boys” and men who had known each other long before the war. With colorful and warlike names, homemade banners, and homemade uniforms (or no uniforms at all), companies like the Rockford Zouaves (of Illinois) or the Raymond Fencibles (of Mississippi) marched off to battle as representatives and extensions of their hometowns, often with the community leaders who had taken the lead in recruiting now serving as their officers. At large rendezvous camps, often in or near the state capitals, these homespun outfits combined into regiments of ten companies. They packed away their company flags or sent them home— only regiments would carry colors now—and received new names. The Rockford Zouaves, for example, officially became Company F, 11th Illinois Volunteer Infantry. The officers in the various companies then elected a colonel and other field officers from among their number. All this took a great deal of time and was plagued by errors, confusion, and false starts. Lincoln initially called for only 75,000 volunteers to serve for three months, the legal term established by the Uniform Militia Act of 1792. By the end of the summer of 1861, that term had expired. But by then the Northern states, again at Lincoln’s behest, were raising vastly larger armies of volunteers for two and three years’ service. Some of the three-month regiments reenlisted as a body for three-year terms, among them the 11th Illinois, including the erstwhile Rockford Zouaves. Much larger numbers of troops enlisted for the first time in the fall of 1861. Through that fall, winter, and spring, the North continued to raise its armies and forward them to their jump-off points for offensives into the South. For the Mississippi Valley campaign, that point was Cairo (pronounced “KAY-ro”), Illinois, where the Ohio River joins the Mississippi.

4

The Shiloh Campaign

The South got off to a somewhat better start, thanks to Confederate president Jefferson Davis’s legal ability to summon volunteers for twelve months, not three. But the firstorganized regiments from all the Southern states, including as they did disproportionate numbers of those who had military training or Mexican War experience, generally went to Virginia to defend the Confederate capital at Richmond. The first defensive arrangements west of the Appalachians were made by Tennessee governor Isham G. Harris and adopted by Confederate authorities once Tennessee formally joined the Confederacy in June 1861. Harris’s preparations, however, relied on the self-proclaimed neutrality of Kentucky, whose government forbade troops of either side to cross its borders. This prohibition was an important benefit to the South since it protected Tennessee’s entire northern boundary and Lincoln felt compelled to respect it, for losing Kentucky, he feared, might well mean losing the whole war. It was disastrous for the South, therefore, when in September 1861 Maj. Gen. Leonidas Polk, commanding Confederate forces in the Mississippi Valley, decided on his own questionable authority to violate Kentucky neutrality by occupying the Mississippi River town of Columbus, Kentucky. Although sensible in purely military terms—Columbus stands atop a high bluff that commands the river for miles—politically the incursion drove most Kentuckians into the arms of the Union. While some citizens of the Bluegrass State would fight for the South (including at Shiloh), four times as many would don the blue. Even worse, Tennessee’s long, nearly defenseless northern border was now open to Union invasion. That invasion did not come at once. A few days after he seized Columbus, Polk was superseded as overall western Confederate commander by his old West Point classmate Albert Sidney Johnston. Colonel of the crack 2nd U.S. Cavalry before the war and a brevet (honorary) brigadier general, Johnston had one of the best reputations in the pre–Civil War U.S. Army. Now as a full Confederate general, he was responsible for defending all Southern territory from the Appalachians to the Great Plains. The resources available to him were so scant that he based his strategy on bluff, keeping his troops spread out and pushed well forward to create the illusion of having greater strength. Coupled with the North’s slowness in raising a large army and the hesitation of the Union generals who confronted him, Johnston’s deception worked—for a time. During the winter of 1861– 62, Union forces in the valleys of the Tennessee and Mississippi Rivers were under the command of Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck, a learned but cautious

5

The Shiloh Campaign

officer. Commanding at the post of Cairo under Halleck was Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, who had plenty of aggressiveness. In November 1861 Grant took some of his troops on a foray down the Mississippi, resulting in the small and inconclusive battle of Belmont, Missouri. Grant’s intention, however, had been to rip open the Confederate defenses of the Mississippi Valley. When it failed to happen, he downplayed the movement. Then, in early 1862, Grant made plans for another foray, this time with Halleck’s approval and the cooperation of a squadron of ironclad gunboats under the command of U.S. Navy flag officer Andrew H. Foote. The gunboats proved too much for the ill-sited and incomplete Confederate Fort Henry, guarding the Tennessee River, and it surrendered on February 6, 1862, before Grant’s ground troops could even get into position. Johnston had ordered Polk to see to it that the fortifications along the Tennessee River were completed, but the latter officer had not done so. Grant then marched a few miles eastward to the Cumberland River and attacked Fort Donelson. That bastion proved more difficult than its sister fort on the Tennessee. Confederate artillerists fended off the gunboats, and the infantry garrison made a sally that caught Grant by surprise and for a time drove back the Federals. Grant, however, refused to accept defeat and counterattacked. Taking advantage of a mistake by the Rebel commander, he pushed the Confederates into their fortifications again, where they surrendered next morning, February 16. The surrender of Fort Donelson cost the Confederacy not only the fort and control of the Cumberland River but also 15,000 prisoners of war—soldiers Johnston could ill afford to lose. Once again Johnston’s orders, this time for the garrison to fight its way out of Donelson, had been ignored. These twin Confederate disasters had enormous consequences. Union gunboats, transports, and supply vessels could now range up the Tennessee River all the way to Muscle Shoals, Alabama, cutting railroad bridges and penetrating to such Southern heartland states as Mississippi and Alabama. The fall of the Cumberland River gave the Union the city of Nashville, capital of Tennessee, which capitulated without a fight on February 25. With these two rivers under Federal control, Polk’s bastion at Columbus, on the Mississippi, was effectively “turned” and had to be abandoned. Other Rebel defenses along the Mississippi proved inadequate, and by the beginning of April, Union naval and land forces were approaching Memphis, with every prospect of taking it. As a result of this campaign, Grant gained national fame and a major general’s commission. Unfortunately he also

6

The Shiloh Campaign

gained the intense jealousy of his commander, Halleck. The latter ordered Grant’s army (identified at the Shiloh National Military Park and in this guidebook as the Army of the Tennessee, though officially it gained that name only months after the battle) to proceed up the Tennessee River toward the Mississippi border and await his arrival and that of another Union army, now also under Halleck’s supervision, under the command of Brig. Gen. Don Carlos Buell. Buell’s army had advanced from central Kentucky to occupy Nashville after Grant’s offensive had forced the Confederates out of that city. Now Buell was to advance overland from Nashville to Grant’s camp along the Tennessee. Then the combined armies, under the direct personal command of Halleck, would advance on the key railroad-junction town of Corinth in northeastern Mississippi. In the meantime Halleck trumped up unfounded allegations that Grant had taken to the bottle—in a supposed relapse of problems he had experienced in the Old Army—and that he was not properly communicating with Halleck’s headquarters. He therefore relieved Grant and turned over command of the Army of the Tennessee to Grant’s senior division commander (and former West Point commandant), Charles F. Smith. Providence intervened, however. Smith injured his leg climbing into a small boat. The wound became infected, and a seriously ill Smith took to his bed, allowing Grant to resume command of his army in late March. The Army of the Tennessee had encamped on a high, rolling plateau on the west bank of the Tennessee River just north of the Mississippi line and about twenty miles from Corinth. The place, named after a little nearby stopping place for steamboats, Pittsburg Landing, was an ideal jumpingoff spot for a campaign against Corinth. Grant himself made his headquarters ten miles downstream (or to the north) at Savannah, Tennessee. Camped nearby were the various divisions of his army, which by April 6 numbered six, each averaging about 7,000 men. The 1st Division, commanded by Illinois politician Brig. Gen. John A. McClernand, had born the brunt of the heavy fighting at Donelson. It camped near Pittsburg Landing along with the 2nd Division. Originally commanded by Charles Smith, the 2nd was now commanded by newly promoted Brig. Gen. William H. L. Wallace, also of Illinois. Grant was highly impressed with Wallace, who was one of the rising stars of the army. Wallace’s men, like McClernand’s, were veterans of Fort Donelson. Grant’s other veteran division, the 3rd, commanded by Brig. Gen. Lew Wallace of Indiana, camped about

7

The Shiloh Campaign

five miles downstream from Pittsburg Landing at Crump’s Landing. The 4th and 5th Divisions, mostly inexperienced new troops, were organized immediately before the army moved up the Tennessee River in mid-March. The 6th Division came into existence at its encampment inland from Pittsburg Landing. By the time Brig. Gen. Benjamin Prentiss began organizing his command, good campsites close to the landing were scarce, so his green division found itself on the outskirts of the Union camp. Also in a front-line position was Brig. Gen. William T. Sherman’s 5th Division. Sherman’s had been one of the first two divisions to disembark at Pittsburg Landing and had orders from Charles Smith, then commanding the expedition, to push far enough inland to allow camps behind it for three other divisions. Sherman was the only West Pointer among the division commanders. Until formal notification of John A. McClernand’s promotion to major general arrived the day before the battle, Sherman was also the senior officer in the encampment. His own headquarters was near a little Methodist meeting house called Shiloh Church. While Grant waited and organized his growing army, and while Buell slowly approached from Nashville, Albert Sidney Johnston looked for an opportunity to reverse his previous dismal fortunes. Much of Confederate public opinion turned against him after the debacles at Forts Henry and Donelson and sent up a hue and cry for his removal. Johnston could not have helped but realize that both his own career and the long-term survival of the Confederacy depended on his finding a way to hurl back the Union advance into the Southern heartland. Grant’s February advance up the Tennessee River had severed Confederate defenses. Johnston himself retained direct personal command of the forces east of the Tennessee River, leading them back from Bowling Green, Kentucky, through Nashville, then southward, and finally west, through northern Alabama below the southernmost bend of the Tennessee River. The forces west of the Tennessee came under the command of Gen. Pierre G. T. Beauregard. The fortuitous hero of Fort Sumter and of First Manassas (First Bull Run), Beauregard made himself obnoxious in his Virginia assignment through his constant propensity to meddle in politics. That, and the desire of Jefferson Davis to aid Johnston without subtracting troops from the eastern theater, led to Beauregard’s transfer west. When Beauregard arrived, Johnston set him to supervising Polk in withdrawing the western segment of Con-

8

The Shiloh Campaign

federate forces southward through West Tennessee and into Mississippi. Both of these sundered halves were striving toward Corinth, Mississippi, where the north-south Mobile & Ohio Railroad crossed the Memphis & Charleston, an east-west route that Confederate secretary of war George W. Randolph called “the vertebrae of the Confederacy.” This spring, all military movements—in the West at least—seemed to lead to Corinth. Also headed for that rail junction was a contingent of troops under Brig. Gen. Braxton Bragg. The general and his men had previously been stationed around Mobile, Alabama, and Pensacola, Florida, where for a year they did little but drill. In the spring of 1861, while the eyes of the nation had been on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, Bragg’s command had watched another Union post, Fort Pickens, off Pensacola. Although war had started at Sumter, Bragg and his men had remained in Florida, where the general had excelled at training his new troops. In the crisis after the fall of Forts Henry and Donelson, President Davis finally gave Bragg orders to take his command to an active fighting front, sending him to reinforce Johnston. Bragg’s troops moved up the Mobile & Ohio Railroad and reached Corinth before either Beauregard or Johnston, securing the vital rail junction, at least for the time being. When Confederate forces concentrated at Corinth, Johnston had about 40,000 men in all. He gave Beauregard, his second in command, the task of organizing these troops. On March 29 Beauregard divided the troops into three corps and a “Reserve.” The First Corps was commanded by Polk, the Second by Bragg, the Third by Maj. Gen. William J. Hardee, and the Reserve by Maj. Gen. George B. Crittenden. Bragg’s Corps was somewhat oversized, at about 13,000 men, while Crittenden’s Reserve was rather small. Crittenden himself was soon removed from his position due to allegations of intoxication while on duty connected with the minor Confederate debacle at Mill Springs, Kentucky, on January 19, 1862. His replacement, almost on the eve of the march to battle, was former U.S. senator and vice president John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, now a major general in the Confederate army. Even with his combined force, Johnston obviously could not afford to wait for Halleck to organize an even larger force and march down to besiege him at Corinth. Johnston’s only hope was to seize the initiative and attack the Union force in its component parts before they could combine into an unstoppable juggernaut. Just as obviously, this would have to mean attacking Grant before Buell could arrive to reinforce

9

The Shiloh Campaign

him. Yet Johnston’s newly cobbled-together army, literally only days old as a unit, needed all the time it could get to sort out its organization and prepare for battle. Johnston’s plan then was to wait until his scouts informed him that Buell’s junction with Grant was imminent. Late on the evening of April 2, 1862, that notice arrived. Johnston directed Beauregard to draft orders for the army to march at daybreak the next morning for Pittsburg Landing. His plan was that the army should cover the twenty miles or so to the Union position in a single long march on April 3. Then at dawn on Friday, April 4, the Confederates would attack Grant’s army as it lay in its camps on the west bank of the Tennessee, between Owl and Snake Creeks on the north and Lick Creek on the south. As Johnston explained his battle plan in a letter to the president, Polk’s Corps would attack on the left, Hardee’s in the center, and Bragg’s on the right. Johnston hoped to hit hardest with that large corps on his right wing, crushing the Union left. He would then drive Grant’s army away from Pittsburg Landing and possible escape into the hopeless cul-de-sac of the swampy Owl and Snake Creek bottoms, where he would be ruined. But this is not quite how things worked out. In the first place Johnston was overoptimistic to think that his inexperienced, ill-trained army could march on a night’s notice and cover twenty miles in a day. In fact many units did not even leave their camps at Corinth until after the time when the general had anticipated they would be in position to launch their attacks. These troops were a far cry from the regulars Johnston had known in prewar days on the Great Plains. A second cause of delay lay in Beauregard’s overly complex marching orders, which had units weaving in and out between other columns at various road intersections where their routes crossed. The old regulars themselves—had any been present—would have been hard pressed to have conformed to that schedule. Finally, no sooner had the march gotten underway than the clouds disgorged the first drops of what turned out to be a three-day spring rain. Tramping columns and rolling wheels soon churned dirt roads into bottomless mire, and the march bogged down correspondingly. The result was that despite everyone’s best efforts, the scheduled attack had to be postponed from April 4 to the fifth and then again from the fifth to the sixth. By that time Beauregard was mistakenly sure that the crucial element of surprise had been lost, and on the evening of April 5, he strongly urged Johnston to call off the whole operation and drag his army back through the mud all the way to Corinth. He was seconded by several of the corps commanders. Re-

10

The Shiloh Campaign

gardless, Johnston was determined that the attack should be launched at daybreak. Early the next morning, Sunday, April 6, as Confederate forces were deploying in preparation for the assault, Beauregard renewed his demand for an immediate retreat. Again Johnston remained resolute. As they talked, firing broke out from the front (see Stop 3c), indicating that the battle had opened and rendering Beauregard’s argument moot. The deployment of the Confederate army for the attack differed from what Johnston had described in his letter to Davis three days earlier. The orders, written under Beauregard’s direction, called for each corps to stretch in a single line of battle across the entire front of the army. Hardee’s Corps was in front, then came Bragg’s, and then Polk’s Corps formed a third line. Behind them came the Reserve. Hardee found that his corps could not stretch across the whole front and so had to borrow a brigade from Bragg to fill out his line. This arrangement assured that once the battle started, all Confederate organization above the level of brigade (and sometimes even regiment) would immediately disintegrate. Johnston apparently left the details to his second in command and only discovered Beauregard’s alteration too late to rectify the situation.

Lieutenant-General W. J. Hardee, C.S.A. blcw 1:553

Overview of the First Day, April 6, 1862 Although Johnston’s Confederates did indeed achieve strategic surprise in their attack on the Army of the Tennessee, it was a Union patrol from Prentiss’s division that initiated the fighting early on the morning of April 6 as it probed forward into Fraley Field and collided with advancing Confederates of Hardee’s Corps. Prentiss’s division was soon fighting desperately, and shortly thereafter the Rebel attack struck Sherman’s division, farther north on the Union right. Although the troops of both Union commands as well as the attacking Confederates were untested in battle, most fought stoutly despite sometimes confused officers and always confusing terrain. Most of the Union camps had been laid out with little thought of defense. When Sherman’s and Prentiss’s divisions deployed into line of battle, their flanks did not join each other. This became a problem for the Federals throughout much of the day, as they succeeded in maintaining a continuous battle line only for a few brief periods. The fighting developed along two separate axes, almost as if there were two separate battles being fought parallel to and simultaneous with each other. When the Confederates blundered into the gap between the two halves of the Union front, the result was usually to send one or both of those halves reeling back in retreat. Yet that did not happen as often as one might at first think. The rough, broken terrain and dense thickets that cover much of the battlefield obstructed vision even in early April, with trees not yet fully leafed out. The Rebels could usually discover Union positions only by plowing into them, and unengaged Confederate units tended to march toward the heaviest firing. The gap between Sherman’s and Prentiss’s divisions proved their undoing in the first phase of the battle, though heavy Confederate numbers would soon have driven them back anyway. McClernand came up and supported Sherman in his second position. Hurlbut and W. H. L. Wallace did the same for what was left of Prentiss’s division. In a series of intense encounters, the Confederates continued to batter at the Union lines and gradually drove them back throughout most of the day. McClernand and Sherman, on the Union right, staged a briefly successful counterattack around midday but then had to continue their retreat. Wallace and Hurlbut, with Prentiss’s remnant, made a determined stand throughout the middle of the day along the line of the Peach Orchard, the Sunken Road, and a thicket called “the Hornets’ Nest.” Johnston fell while leading a midafternoon charge

12

Overview of the First Day

against the Peach Orchard, and Beauregard succeeded to the Confederate command. Finally, late in the day, the Peach Orchard–Sunken Road position crumbled on both its flanks. Hurlbut was driven back on the left, and Wallace on the right lost contact with McClernand. With Confederates surging around both sides of the position, Wallace attempted to withdraw his division but was wounded and left for dead. Most of his command escaped encirclement, but some units were trapped and had to surrender along with General Prentiss. With this obstacle out of the way, during the last hour of daylight, the Confederates advanced toward a final defensive line Grant had set up along the last high ground before the landing. The position was strong, being protected naturally by deep ravines. Grant had packed every available cannon, including the army’s siege guns, into the line, and infantrymen were aplenty as well, as the battered survivors of Sherman’s, McClernand’s, and Hurlbut’s divisions crowded into the shortened line. From the river the gunboats uss Tyler and uss Lexington added their heavy cannon to Grant’s defensive firepower, while transports ferried over the lead regiment from Buell’s army, which began arriving at this opportune moment. Daylight remained for only a single, immediate assault with no extensive preparation. The odds against Confederate success were long, and the cost would likely be high. Yet so too were the potential rewards. Grant never could have formed another line had this one broken. His army would have become a disorganized mob, pushed up against the river and forced to surrender or swim for it. The Rebels had paid a very high price to get within this long chance of victory, and there was no telling when they would ever see such a chance again. But Beauregard chose not to take it. From his position well to the rear he sent orders for the troops to suspend the attack, fall back, and make camp for the night. The general believed that nothing more could be accomplished that night, that the gunboats were slaughtering his men (in fact their fire was not all that destructive to the front-line Confederates), and that Buell’s army was still at least a day’s march away. Under those circumstances he assumed his army could finish off Grant in the morning. Note: Road names in the tour correspond to those currently used by the National Park Service. They differ in a few instances from those used in 1862. (At the time of the battle, for example, present-day Gladden Road was a continuation of Eastern Corinth Road, Fraley Drive was a continuation of Bark Road, and so on.)

Union Commanders Select an Encampment

iver wl

ee Cr

k

W. H. L. WALLACE (2nd division)

ad

reek

h Ro

ke C

O

anna

Sna

pi

To Crump’s Landing and Lew Wallace’s 3rd Division, 6 miles

-Sav

Clear Cr.

un

LEW WALLACE’S 3rd Division

ke

Stop 1a

burg

Stoney Crump’s Savannah Lonesome Landing

Overshot Mill Sh

Ham

Adamsville

Tennessee R

13

Pittsburg Landing

Pittsburg Landing

Corinth Road

March 17 – April 5

bu

rg -

h rn Ro Corin ad t

Ea

am

ste

Sherman’s HQ Shiloh Church H

Tennessee River

MCCLERNAND (1st Division)

SHERMAN (5th Division)

To Corinth, 20 miles

Stop 1

HURLBUT (4th division)

Shiloh Church

Pu

rd y

Road

PRENTISS (6th Division)

Stuart’s Brigade (5th Division)

N

Union commanders select an encampment.

L

ick

ee Cr

k

STOP 1

Pittsburg Landing, March 1862

Directions

Leave the Visitor Center and turn left onto pittsburg landing road. Proceed 0.1 mile to Pittsburg Landing. Alternatively, you can easily walk from the center to the landing and back. Stop 1a Union Commanders Select an Encampment

March 17–April 5 Directions

Walk to the National Park Service interpretive marker facing the Tennessee River. Several cabins, no longer extant, stood near this location at the time of the battle.

What Happened

Grant’s victory at Fort Donelson opened the Tennessee River to Union navigation as far as Muscle Shoals, Alabama. But the principal strategic objective in the region was obviously Corinth, Mississippi, about twenty miles south of where you presently stand. Corinth was significant because two trunk railroads intersected there: the Mobile & Ohio and the Memphis & Charleston. The latter was widely hailed as the Confederacy’s backbone: its only direct line of communications

14

Stop 1

from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. The seizure of Corinth would not only break this “backbone” but also make the large river port of Memphis untenable for the Confederates. Although all but forgotten today, in the spring of 1862, Corinth seemed nearly as important as the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. Any Union offensive against Corinth would require an initial concentration of forces somewhere on the western bank of the Tennessee River. That concentration began on March 15, when Maj. Gen. Charles F. Smith instructed Brig. Gen. William T. Sherman to land his own division and that of Brig. Gen. Stephen A. Hurlbut at Pittsburg Landing. Smith, ailing from an infected leg that would shortly prove fatal, was downstream in Savannah and selected the landing based on a map reconnaissance. Grant, restored to command because of Smith’s illness, inspected the landing in person and on March 17 approved it as the best location for his army’s advanced base. The first troops disembarked the following day. More divisions arrived over the next several days, until by month’s end six divisions had reached the area: five near Pittsburg Landing and a sixth at Crump’s Landing some five miles downstream (north). All in all, the six divisions contained about 42,000 men, most without combat experience. Analysis

Grant approved Pittsburg Landing as a concentration point because the terrain beyond it offered enough space to encamp 100,000 men, the total anticipated when Maj Gen. Henry W. Halleck’s entire command—that is, the combined forces of Grant, Brig. Gen. John Pope, and Brig. Gen. Don Carlos Buell— eventually reached the area. Furthermore, it was protected to the west by two streams, Owl Creek and Snake Creek, and to the southeast by a third stream, Lick Creek. All were swampy and nearly impassable, thereby offering the Confederates only one avenue of attack, from the southwest. But neither Grant, Sherman, nor any other senior commander anticipated such an attack. Although the doctrines of Dennis Hart Mahan, a West Point instructor and America’s premier military thinker, stipulated that any position involving volunteer troops— especially inexperienced ones— should be fortified, Grant and Sherman ignored such counsel because, in Sherman’s words, “such a course would have made our raw men timid.” This was, at that stage of the war, a common viewpoint.

15

The Confederates Plan an Attack

n Ten

Stop 1b

KENTUCKY

ess

Bowling Green

ee

MISSOURI

Riv er

Columbus

Union City

T

Miss

AS

POLK

E

KA

NS

Fort Donelson

Fort Henry

Nashville

C. F. SMITH

issipp

i Riv

er

Island No. 10

N

N

E

S

E

E

BUELL

Jackson

AR

S

Murfreesboro Columbia

VAN DORN Waynesboro JOHNSTON Crump’s Landing Savannah Fayetteville Pittsburg Landing Bethel Station

Memphis

C

or

in

th

MEMPHIS & CHARLESTON RR

Huntsville

Iuka Tuscumbia

Decatur MOBILE & OHIO RR

RUGGLES

Grenada

BRAGG

ALABAMA

MISSISSIPPI

N 0

100

March 15 – April 1 Confederates plan an attack.

Miles

Stop 1b

The Confederates Plan an Attack March 15 –

April 1 Directions

Remain in place.

What Happened

Twenty miles south at Corinth, Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston gathered in his own troops from Columbus and Bowling Green, Kentucky. Additional forces arrived by rail from New Orleans and Mobile, bringing Confederate strength to a bit

16

Stop 1b

more than 40,000 men by the end of March. Well aware that Grant’s army would soon be heavily reinforced, Johnston concluded that it must be attacked and destroyed as soon as possible. Responsibility for organizing the Confederate force—now designated the Army of the Mississippi— devolved upon Gen. P. G. T. Beauregard, Johnston’s second in command and virtually his de facto co-commander. Beauregard divided the army into four corps of various sizes. The smallest, the Reserve, under Brig. Gen. John C. Breckinridge, numbered only 6,439 troops, no more than an average division. The largest, under Maj. Gen. Braxton Bragg, contained 13,589 troops. The remaining corps, led by Maj. Gens. Leonidas Polk and William J. Hardee, mustered 9,136 and 6,789 men respectively. Beauregard’s rationale for the four-corps arrangement was to give the impression of a much larger army, since a European corps d’armée normally contained about 20,000 men. On April 2, reports that Buell’s army was rapidly approaching from the east made it imperative to strike Grant at once. The next morning the leading elements of the Army of the Mississippi left their camps around Corinth and marched northward. As with Grant’s command, the great majority of Confederate troops had no combat experience. Vignette

In mid-March Beauregard instructed Col. Thomas Jordan to locate Sidney Johnston, then at Decatur, Alabama, and personally deliver a message conveying the urgent need to concentrate all available forces at Corinth and attack Grant at the earliest possible moment. According to Jordan, Johnston read the message, paced the floor, and then said: “It is so; the policy is correct in all its details. We should fall upon Grant like a hurricane and overwhelm him with our concentrated army as soon as he lands from his transports, then cross the Tennessee River and give Buell battle on his way with reenforcements, and thus relieve our disasters from [Fort] Donelson down.”

17

Shiloh Church Ham

April 4 – 5

N

Stop 2

burg

Shiloh Church.

-Sav anna h Ro

Creek

Pittsburg Landing

rn Ro Corin ad t

h

SHERMAN (5th Division)

Tennessee River

HURLBUT (4th division)

MCCLERNAND (1st Division)

Corinth Road

am

bu

rg -

Ea

53rd OH

ste

Sherman’s HQ Shiloh Church H

Stop 2

To Corinth, 20 miles

W. H. L. WALLACE (2nd division)

ad

Owl

To Crump’s Landing and Lew Wallace’s 3rd Division, 6 miles

Pu

PRENTISS (6th Division)

rd y

Confederate Cavalry spotted, April 4, 4:00 P.M.

Road

Stuart’s Brigade (5th Division)

L

C ick

e re

k

STOP 2

Shiloh Church, April 4 –5

Directions

Return to your car, drive to the Visitor Center, and reset your odometer. Proceed west on pittsburg landing road 0.3 mile to corinth–pittsburg landing road. Turn left. Proceed 0.6 mile to a fork in the road. Bear right, continuing on corinth–pittsburg landing road, and proceed 0.4 mile to a second fork. Bear right again, continuing on corinth–pittsburg landing road. After another 0.2 mile you will come to yet another fork. Bear left this time, still continuing on corinth–pittsburg landing road. Proceed another 0.6 mile to Shiloh Church. Pause by the side of the road. You need not leave the car. En route you will pass through much of the area occupied by Union forces before the battle. None of the troops were in defensive positions. Rather, they were simply encamped pending the start of the great offensive against Corinth.

Orientation

The Shiloh Church, to your left, is obviously a modern structure, but it stands on the site of its 1862 namesake. As of 2001 the Sons of Confederate Veterans had constructed a full-scale replica of the original church, which was small—just 25 by

18

Stop 2

30 feet—and constructed of rough-hewn logs surmounted by a clapboard roof. Organized in 1854, the congregation was part of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (like many denominations in the prewar years, the Methodist Episcopal Church had split into Northern and Southern branches, largely over the issue of slavery). The church lent its name to the battle, though in the North the engagement was for a time known as the battle of Pittsburg Landing. What Happened

Prior to the battle, Brig. Gen. William T. Sherman’s 5th Division occupied the ground on which you stand. As senior commander whenever Grant was not present in the area, Sherman had day-to-day charge of the Union encampments, which by March 31 contained five divisions and 34,500 combat troops, as well as perhaps 7,500 cooks, hospital orderlies and doctors, teamsters, and other noncombatants. Additional units continued to arrive as late as early morning of the battle’s first day so that when the Confederates attacked, they faced roughly 45,000 Union troops (excluding a sixth division stationed at Crump’s Landing). Sherman had his headquarters about 500 yards to your left rear (east-northeast of the church). On the morning of April 4, he first received reports about the approach of a large Confederate force, based on a number of small firefights south of the Union encampments, but dismissed them as nothing more than Rebel scouting patrols. When a cavalry officer and one of his own brigade commanders suggested the possibility of an enemy attack, Sherman replied: “Oh! Tut, tut. You militia officers get scared too easily.” Col. Thomas Worthington of the 46th Ohio offered the same warning, and prisoners held at Shiloh Church spoke freely about being part of an approaching army of 50,000 men. Sherman still refused to credit the idea. Finally, around 4: 00 p.m. on April 5, soldiers of the 53rd Ohio spotted enemy cavalry at the far end of Rea Field. The colonel of the 53rd, Jesse J. Appler, sent a detachment to investigate. Shots rang out. An officer ran up to the colonel with word that he had been fired upon by a “line of men in butternut clothes.” (“Butternut” was the color of the homemade dye frequently used in Confederate uniform cloth.) Appler put his regiment in line of battle and sent word of the encounter to Sherman. He was mortified when the courier returned and reported, within earshot of many of the Ohioans, “Colonel Appler, General Sherman says: ‘Take your damned regiment back to Ohio. There is no enemy closer than Corinth.’ ”

19

Shiloh Church

Analysis

Sherman’s response offers two lessons: first, how a commander may overcompensate for previous errors in judgment; second, the reluctance with which many commanders are willing to reassess their assumptions about a given situation. In the autumn of 1861, while in command of a force in Kentucky, Sherman became irrationally convinced that the enemy confronted him in overwhelming strength. Visited by Simon Cameron, then Lincoln’s secretary of war, he was asked how many troops he would need to launch an offensive. Two hundred thousand, Sherman replied. The number was so ludicrously large that he was shortly relieved of command. Many regarded him as mentally unbalanced. Only impeccable political connections—his brother John was a U.S. senator—gained Sherman a second chance. Having been too jittery a few months previously, he proved overly imperturbable now. Sherman was all the more unflappable because both his immediate superior, Grant, and the overall Union commander in the western theater, Halleck, were convinced that recent Northern victories had placed the enemy firmly on the defensive. On the same afternoon that Appler sent up his alarm, Grant visited the Union encampment, partly in response to Sherman’s routine reports about Confederate scouting activity just to the south. Upon returning to his headquarters at Savannah, Grant seconded Sherman’s appraisal in a telegram to Halleck. “I have scarcely the faintest idea of an attack (general one) being made on us,” he wrote, adding, in words that would return to haunt him, “but will be prepared should such a thing take place.” In fact the Union encampments were as ill-prepared to receive a major attack as if the Confederates were a hundred miles away.

20

Stop 3

STOP 3

Fraley Field, April 6

Directions

Continue 0.9 mile to Fraley Field, where the road makes a sharp left turn and becomes reconnoitering road. Park at the sharp turn.

Confederate sharp-shooter. blcw 2:202

21

Powell’s Reconnaissance

Peabody

Stop 3a

16th WI 21st MO 12th MI 25th MO camp camp camp camp

Peabody

Road

rin th

Reco

Co

nnoit

ering Road

Rea Field

Ro ad

Fraley’s Field

Confederate Cavalry Pickets

Stop 3

H

Powell

N Seay Field

3:00 – 5:30 A.M.

ar dc

Powell’s reconnaissance.

as tle Stop 3a Powell’s Reconnaissance 3:00–5:30 a.m. Directions

Face in the direction you were traveling before the turn. In front of you are two small trails. The southernmost of these (to your left) corresponds to the 1862 trace of the main Corinth Road. Take the other trail and walk about 150 yards to a second National Park Service interpretive marker, labeled “The Battle Begins.”

Orientation

You are at the eastern edge of Fraley Field, named for its 1862 owner, James J. Fraley. At the time of the battle it was a fortyacre cotton field about 800 yards beyond the southernmost Union encampments. The Confederate attack in this sector began from the tree line directly across from you.

What Happened

Had you continued up Reconnoitering Road (as you will do shortly), you would soon have encountered the encampment of the 1st Brigade of Brig. Gen. Benjamin M. Prentiss’s 6th Division, led by Col. Everett Peabody, a prewar railroad engineer. On both April 4 and April 5, Federals drilling in Peabody’s sector noticed Confederate cavalry watching them

22

Stop 3a

from a distance. The colonel dispatched a reconnaissance party at 4:00 p.m. on the fifth, but darkness fell before they discovered any enemy forces, and the patrol returned to camp. Prentiss, in any event, pooh-poohed the notion that there was any danger in front. Unconvinced, around midnight Peabody ordered a second reconnaissance. Led by Maj. James E. Powell of the 25th Missouri, the scouting expedition consisted of three companies from the 25th Missouri and two from the 12th Michigan— about 400 men in all. Initially advancing toward Seay Field (to your left rear), Powell’s men encountered a handful of Confederate cavalry pickets, who fired three shots and quickly withdrew. The major formed his five companies in a long skirmish line and gingerly continued into Fraley Field. There, about 200 yards across the field, the Federals encountered two outposts composed of enemy infantry. Although Powell could not know it, these belonged to Maj. Aaron B. Hardcastle’s 3rd Mississippi Battalion, whose main line stood on a slight rise marked by the red metal tablet about 250 yards in front of you. The pickets fired one volley and withdrew to Hardcastle’s main line. Powell pursued. At a range of less than 200 yards, the Mississippians opened fire. In the predawn darkness each side spotted the other mainly by the muzzle flashes from their muskets. For over an hour they traded volleys until at length Powell detected a body of enemy cavalry apparently trying to turn his left flank. At that point he withdrew. Neither his men nor Hardcastle’s had suffered significant losses, but the battle of Shiloh was underway. Note: If the weather is hot or otherwise inclement, the remaining portions of Stop 3 can be read from the comfort of your vehicle.

23

The Confederate Army Advances

Pittsburg Landing

Stop 3b

GRANT

Cheatham’s division, detached at Bethel Station, rejoined Polk’s corps at Needmore

II

I

POLK Michie

III

Tennessee River

HARDEE BRAGG

II (Needmore)

IV

BRAGG

BRECKENRIDGE

Monterrey (present-day Michie)

III HARDEE

N

I POLK

II IV

BRAGG BRECKENRIDGE TENNESSEE

Corinth is four miles south of state line on Polk’s line of march

MISSISSIPPI

Stop 3b

April 3 – April 5 The Confederate Army advances.

The Confederate Army Advances April 3–5

Directions

Remain in place.

What Happened

Powell’s patrol had, of course, encountered the vanguard of the Army of the Mississippi, finally arrived on the battlefield after a three-day march from Corinth. Beauregard had directed his adjutant, Col. Thomas Jordan, to draft instructions for the approach and attack. Designated Special Order No. 8, Jordan patterned it after Napoleon’s battle plan for Waterloo, a copy of which lay before him as he wrote. Fittingly, considering its model, Special Order No. 8 was a marvel of ineptitude. It had two main problems. First, the order gave insufficient thought to the limited road network between Corinth and Pittsburg Landing, resulting in overcrowding and traffic jams. Second, it directed each corps to attack in successive waves, one behind the other. In theory each corps would reinforce its predecessor, creating a breaking strain on the Federal divisions at Pittsburg Landing. As events would demonstrate, it was a tactic guaranteed to result in the intermingling of units and consequent loss of organizational control.

24

Stop 3c

5:30 A.M.

Stop 3c

N

“Tonight we will water our horses in the Tennessee River.”

Road

y

ad

25th MO camp

co

rdc

e

Ha

n bur

nd Po

ll we Po

Cle

Fraley Field

Re

oad

nn

oit

eri

ng

Ro

ad

Corinth Road

d rd rega

od

oa

tt R

Ro

eR

Beau

Pra

Rea Field

ab

rde 142

Pe

Ha

53rd OH camp

22

as Ro

ad

tle th Co

son

rin

der

od Wo

An

Seay Field

r ave

son

Sh

Gib

dde

son

Gla

k Jac

POLK

n

HARDEE

Ch alm ers

Beauregard’s HQ

BRAGG Note: Polk’s and Breckinridge’s brigades were still in column at the battle’s commencement. Breckinridge’s Reserve Corps was off-map to the southwest, along the Corinth Road.

Stop 3c “Tonight We Will Water Our Horses in the Tennessee River”

5 :30 a.m.

Directions

Remain in place.

What Happened

The Confederate plan called for the Union encampments to be attacked at daybreak on Friday, April 4. Heavy rain, primitive roads, and wretched traffic management forced the attack’s postponement until the following day. Even then the

25

“Tonight We Will Water Our Horses in the Tennessee River”

troops did not reach their jump-off points before midafternoon, further delaying the assault until Sunday, April 6. Making matters worse, the unseasoned Southern troops did little to keep their approach quiet. Concerned lest the rains had dampened their powder, for example, they tested their charges by firing them rather than prudently extracting them and loading their muskets afresh. Between the delays and the racket, Beauregard feared the army had lost all chance of surprise and, to a coterie of senior commanders, urged a withdrawal to Corinth. But Johnston, though just as impatient with the problems on the march, insisted that the attack must go forward. “Gentlemen,” he told the assembled generals, “we shall attack at daylight tomorrow.” With that, he spun on his heel and strode off, telling his chief of staff: “I would fight them if they were a million. They can present no greater front between those two creeks [the Lick and the Owl] than we can; and the more men they crowd in there, the hotter we can make it for them.” Johnston’s pronouncement, however, did not end the debate. Dawn on April 6 found Beauregard, Bragg, Hardee, and several other generals still discussing the advisability of an attack. Johnston and his staff mutely listened to the exchange until it was interrupted by the rattle of musketry at Fraley Field. “The battle has opened gentlemen,” said Johnston. “It is too late to change our dispositions.” Hoisting himself atop Fire-eater, his splendid bay thoroughbred, Johnston rode toward the front, telling his staff, “Tonight we will water our horses in the Tennessee River.” Analysis

Johnston did not merely ride to the front. He remained there, directing operations on the spot, and behaved in some respects more like a “super-colonel” than a general commanding an army. Critics have generally censured Johnston for this decision, arguing that he should have remained at the rear in a central location from which he could supervise the entire battlefield and feed in reinforcements as needed. Instead he delegated that function to Beauregard. While Johnston rode toward Fraley Field, Beauregard maintained army headquarters at the junction of the Corinth and Bark Roads, from which he dispatched the troops of Polk and Breckinridge as they came upon the field. Why did Johnston abdicate his “proper” function as army commander? After the war his son, William Preston Johnston, explained the decision this way: “He knew that the chief strategy of the battle was in the decision to fight. Once in the presence of the enemy, he knew that the result would depend on the way in which his troops were handled. This was his part of the

26

Stop 3c

work, and he felt full confidence in his own ability to carry it out successfully.” Historian John Keegan implicitly validates Johnston’s decision when he writes, “The first and greatest imperative of command is to be present in person. Those who impose risk must be seen to share it.” A reputation for risk taking in the past is not enough. “Old warriors who have survived risk intact seem to the young to be merely old. . . . It is the spectacle of heroism, or its immediate report, that fires the blood.” This was especially true in an army comprised overwhelmingly of raw officers and troops, and eyewitnesses repeatedly testified to the inspiring effect of Johnston’s direct presence on the battlefield. Even veteran troops sometimes required such examples. On several occasions, for example, Gen. Robert E. Lee made— or attempted to make—the same choice, as in the famous incidents at the battles of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania in which he attempted to lead counterattacks in person.

General Albert Sidney Johnston in 1860. blcw 1:542

27

Peabody’s Battle Line

Stop 4

Rea Field

Ro 12

Wo o

d

th

ad

MI

25

MO

ave r

Stop 4

Rec

onn

oite

ring

Sh

th

21st MO (previous position)

N

5:30 – 8:00 A.M. Peabody’s battle line.

STOP 4

Peabody’s Battle Line, 5 : 30 a.m.– 8 : 00 a.m.

Directions

Return to your car. Proceed 0.4 mile on reconnoitering road until you reach the Shaver’s Brigade tablet on the right side of the road. Pull over into the paved turnout and exit your vehicle. Face northeast (the same direction you were driving).

Orientation

The Reconnoitering Road follows the approximate Confederate axis of advance as they surged forward to the attack. Their battle lines would have extended well out of sight on either side of you. Note the surrounding vegetation, which is similar to its 1862 appearance, and the way in which it reduces visibility to a matter of yards. Note, too, the slight rise in the ground ahead. Peabody posted two regiments there to delay the Southern advance.

What Happened

The firing in Fraley Field attracted the 6th Division’s commander, Brig. Gen. Benjamin M. Prentiss, who entered Peabody’s camp and demanded to know what it meant. When Peabody explained about having sent Powell out on patrol, Prentiss furiously (and quite irrationally) accused him of hav-

28

Stop 4

ing brought on a major engagement. The general then dispatched five companies from the 21st Missouri, under Col. David Moore, to reinforce Powell’s men. As these moved forward, a company of the 16th Wisconsin, just returning from picket duty, spontaneously joined them. This augmented force, astride the present-day Reconnoitering Road, engaged the enemy in Seay Field about 500 yards behind you. In response to a request from Moore (now the senior officer on the spot), Prentiss soon dispatched the 21st Missouri’s remaining five companies as well. Eventually four companies from the 16th Wisconsin also joined the fray, though by that time Powell had withdrawn his men from the fight. All in all, the skirmish in Seay Field lasted about thirty minutes. By that time Peabody had posted the 25th Missouri and 12th Michigan Regiments on the low ridgeline ahead of you. These were soon supported by the remaining companies of the 16th Wisconsin. The first major fighting on this sector of the battlefield now occurred as two Confederate brigades under Brig. Gen. Sterling A. M. Wood and Col. R. G. Shaver collided with the Federals. The Yankees held their fire until the Rebels came within 125 yards, then unleashed a massive volley. Because the 25th Missouri contained numerous former members of the regular army, the firing was effective enough that it briefly sent the raw Confederates fleeing to the rear. Only the efforts of numerous officers, including General Johnston himself, reforged them into a line of battle. At that point the Confederates advanced to within 75 yards and fired a volley of their own. A sharp firefight developed at murderously close range for several minutes until the numerically superior Confederates curled around Peabody’s open flanks and forced him back. Vignette

Among the Southern soldiers was future journalist-adventurer Henry Morton Stanley, who nine years later would locate and resupply the famed missionary David Livingstone in central Africa (“Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”). On this morning Stanley was a rifleman in the 6th Arkansas in Shaver’s Brigade: We . . . loaded, and fired, with such nervous haste as though it depended on each of us how soon this fiendish roar would be hushed. My nerves tingled, my pulses beat double-quick, my heart throbbed loudly, almost painfully. . . . I was angry with my rear rank [i.e., the soldier directly behind him], because he made my eyes smart with the powder of his musket; and I felt like cuffing him for deafening my ears! . . . We continued advancing, step by step, loading and firing as we went. To every forward step, they took a backward move, loading

29

Peabody’s Battle Line

and firing as they slowly withdrew. . . . After a steady exchange of musketry, which lasted some time, we heard the order: “Fix bayonets! On the double-quick!” There was a simultaneous bound forward. . . . The Federals appeared inclined to await us; but, at this juncture, our men raised a yell, thousands responded to it, and burst out into the wildest yelling it has ever been my lot to hear. It served the double purpose of relieving pent-up feelings and transmitting encouragement along the attacking line. . . . “They fly!” was echoed from lip to lip. It accelerated our pace, and filled us with a noble rage. . . . It deluged us with rapture, and transfigured each Southerner into an exulting victor. At such a moment, nothing could have halted us. Those savage yells, and the sight of thousands of racing figures coming toward them, discomfited the blue-coats, and when we arrived upon the place where they had stood, they had vanished. Then we caught sight of their beautiful array of tents. After the next stop (Stop 5) you have two choices. You may elect to continue to the right, following the fortunes of the Union and Confederate forces engaged on the eastern portion of the battlefield, or you may turn left and do the same for the troops engaged to the west. In this way it becomes possible to follow the action with the least disruption to the battle’s chronological development. The two routes eventually converge at Stop 14 (near the Visitor Center), but of course it is advisable to follow first one route, then the other.

A Confederate private of the West. blcw 1:594

30

Stop 5

Stop 5

Pe Rea Field

ab

od

y

Ro

2 (re 5th mn MO an ts) 25th MO Camp

ad

gR

oad

Corinth Road

od Wo

Stop 5

1 (re 2th mn M an I ts) 12th MI Camp

rin

Shaver

Rec

onn

oite

Swett’s MS Battery

8:00 – 8:30 A.M.

N

Peabody’s camp.

STOP 5

Peabody’s Camp, 8: 00– 8 : 30 a.m.

Directions

Return to your car and drive 0.3 mile to the T intersection. Turn right or left (depending on whether you plan to pursue the eastern or western route), park immediately, and walk to the pentagonal tablet labeled “25th Missouri Camp,” which stands immediately north of the t intersection. Face southwest (back down reconnoitering road).

Orientation

In this area you would have seen the “beautiful array of tents” described by Private Stanley: Sibley tents for the most part, designed by former U.S. captain Henry Hopkins Sibley (by 1862 a Confederate brigadier general) and patterned after the teepees of the Plains Indians. A regulation Sibley tent was a large cone of canvas, 18 feet in diameter, 12 feet tall, and supported by a center pole, with a circular opening at the top for ventilation and a cone-shaped stove for heat. It could fit 12 men in comfort or, more usually, 20 men in considerably less.

31

Peabody’s Camp

What Happened

As the pentagonal tablet indicates, the tents in this sector belonged to the 25th Missouri Regiment of Peabody’s brigade. By the time Peabody’s survivors withdrew to this position, they came under fire from six guns of the Warren Mississippi Light Artillery Battery, commanded by Capt. Charles Swett. The battery raked the encampment with shot and shell, but its gunners were exposed to Federal riflemen, and General Hardee soon ordered it withdrawn. Nevertheless, by that time Peabody’s brigade had been wrecked. The colonel himself was dead, shot through the head. (The upturned cannon just behind you marks the spot where Peabody fell. Similar mortuary monuments commemorate the places where any general officer killed or mortally wounded at Shiloh met his fate.)

Analysis

Throughout the battle, encampments such as this helped dissolve the cohesion of combat units, and in that way they were as damaging as enemy fire. According to Lt. Col. H. M. Woodyard of the 21st Missouri, the very presence of Peabody’s camp contributed to the dissolution of his regiment: “We gradually began to fall back and reached our tents, when the ranks got broken in passing through them. We endeavored to rally our men in the rear of the tents and formed as well as could be expected, but my men got much scattered, a great many falling into other regiments, under the immediate command of General Prentiss; others divided to other divisions, but continued to fight during the two days.” Woodyard was being charitable. Some of his men undoubtedly returned to the ranks, but others, jarred loose from their regiment, did no more fighting—like thousands of others during the course of the day, they went far to the rear out of harm’s way. Peabody’s encampment had a similarly disorganizing effect on the Confederates. “We drew up in the enemy’s camp,” recalled Private Stanley, “panting and breathing hard. Some precious minutes were thus lost in recovering our breaths, indulging our curiosity [by ransacking the abandoned tents], and reforming our line.” Lt. Liberty I. Nixon of the 26th Alabama noted that the “Yankees . . . left everything they had, . . . Corn, Oats, Pants, Vests, Drawers, Shirts, Shoes, and a great many other things in great abundance and of the finest quality.”

Eastern Route, April 6 EAST STOP 6

Spain Field, 7: 30–10: 00 a.m.

Directions

If coming from Stop 5, continue 0.3 mile to a fork in the road. Bear right on bark road, drive an additional 0.1 mile, and pull in to the turnout just beyond the upturned cannon representing the site at which Confederate general Adley H. Gladden was mortally wounded. If coming from West Stop 13, return to your vehicle, turn around, and drive back in the direction from which you just came. Proceed 3.1 miles to a T intersection. Turn right on peabody road. Continue 0.3 mile to a fork in the road. Bear right on bark road, drive an additional 0.1 mile, and pull in to the turnout just beyond the upturned cannon representing the site at which Confederate general Adley H. Gladden was mortally wounded.

A tempting breastwork. blcw 2:196

33

Miller’s Brigade Deploys

7:30 – 8:00 A.M.

East Stop 6a

N

Miller’s Brigade deploys.

Miller

1st MN Art’y

5th OH Art’y

16 th

Spain Field

WI

East Stop 6 18th MO

18th WI

61st IL

15th MI

East Stop 6a Miller’s Brigade Deploys 7:30– 8:00 a.m. Directions

Exit your vehicle and face south (down bark road in the same direction you were traveling).

Orientation

You now stand just west of the encampment occupied by Prentiss’s only other brigade, led by Col. Madison Miller. That unit, consisting of the 18th Missouri, 61st Illinois, and 18th Wisconsin, was in and to the northeast of Spain Field (named for farmer Peter Spain), which was considerably larger in 1862 than today.

What Happened

When Peabody became decisively engaged at 7 : 30 a.m., Prentiss rode to Miller’s headquarters, shouting: “Colonel Miller, get out your brigade! They are fighting on the right!” Miller immediately placed the 18th Missouri in line of battle at the northern end of Spain Field. Prentiss disapproved of the position, however, and instructed Miller to redeploy to the southern end of the field, where the regiment would command the ravine just ahead of you to your left. (A line of tablets indicates Miller’s advanced position.)

34

East Stop 6a

From this base a solid battle line soon began to take shape. A portion of the 16th Wisconsin arrived and extended Miller’s position to the west, across Bark Road, while the 18th Wisconsin and 61st Illinois came up and extended his position to the east. Two batteries attached to Prentiss’s division, the 1st Minnesota Battery and 5th Ohio Battery, took up positions behind the infantry on the west and east sides of Bark Road, respectively. (The 1st Minnesota Battery’s position is partially visible from the east side of the Gladden mortuary monument, though not from your present position). Finally, the 15th Michigan, encamped nearby but as yet unassigned to any brigade or division, further extended Miller’s position to the east. Its contribution was dubious, however, for its troops had no ammunition whatever. By 8 :00 a.m. Miller’s battle line, comprising some 3,000 men, was complete. The troops listened nervously as the crash of gunfire reverberated from the direction of Peabody’s brigade. Then, like the “sweep of a mid-summer thunder head rolling across the stubble field,” as one soldier wrote, the roar of battle surged east to engulf them. Simultaneously they saw the gleam from hundreds of bayonets in the woods to their front: Confederate infantry advancing, their muskets at “right shoulder shift.”

A straggler on the line of march. blcw 2:515

35 Gladden’s Brigade Attacks

8:30 – 9:00 A.M.

East Stop 6b

N

Gladden’s Brigade attacks.

Miller

1st MN Art’y 16

Robertson’s AL Battery

5th OH Art’y

th

Spain Field

WI

Gage’s AL Battery

East Stop 6 18th MO

18th WI

61st IL

15th MI

Gladden

East Stop 6b Gladden’s Brigade Attacks 8:30–9:00 a.m. Directions

Remain in place.

What Happened

Advancing upon Miller’s position was a division under Brig. Gen. Jones M. Withers composed of three brigades: the first under Brig. Gen. Adley H. Gladden, the second under Brig. Gen. James R. Chalmers, the third under Brig. Gen. John K. Jackson. The division was part of Bragg’s Corps and as such, most of it composed part of the second line of the Rebel assault force. In one of the many last-minute reshufflings that characterized the Confederate operation, Gladden’s Brigade had earlier been advanced to the first line to extend Hardee’s lead corps to the east, the purpose being to place the Confederate right flank securely along Lick Creek and the Tennessee River. By 7:30 a.m. Johnston, realizing that Hardee’s attack was veering too far to the left, ordered Chalmers’s Brigade to extend Gladden’s line to the east on the assumption that Gladden would be unable to stretch his brigade far enough to connect both with Hardee’s right and Lick Creek.

36

East Stop 6b

As a result, however, Gladden reached Miller’s line a good half hour before Chalmers could arrive to support him. Undeterred, the Mexican War veteran turned New Orleans merchant sent his four Alabama regiments directly to the attack, where they promptly received a devastating fire from the Union infantry and artillery. Capt. Felix Robertson’s four-gun battery, attached to Gladden’s Brigade, deployed on its left and opened an effective counterbattery fire. Soon thereafter the artillery attached to Chalmers’s Brigade, under Capt. Charles P. Gage, reached the scene and unlimbered within 200 yards of Miller’s troops. Although both batteries came under considerable musketry fire, their efforts helped prepare the way for Gladden’s first infantry assault, which began about 8:45 a.m. Mounted on horseback, the fifty-one-year-old Gladden made an obvious target and, while leading his men forward, was almost immediately mortally wounded by a Union shell fragment. The Confederates recoiled, devastated by both Federal musketry and fire from the two U.S. batteries, at least one of which had switched to canister, a close-range antipersonnel round comprising 27 iron balls, each an inch in diameter. Command of the brigade passed to its senior colonel, Daniel Adams of the 1st Louisiana, who grabbed the regimental colors and called upon the brigade to make a second charge. They did so, supported by Robertson’s gunners, who manhandled their field pieces closer to the enemy. Analysis

Against veteran troops, Adams’s attack would have probably made little headway. But under the stress of their first combat, some of Miller’s men began to filter to the rear, diluting the strength of his defensive line and contributing to a sense of disorganization and anxiety. Further, Prentiss became increasingly concerned about conditions on Peabody’s front. The defense there seemed to have collapsed, and he kept looking for a new enemy threat to materialize from that direction.

37

The Collapse of Miller’s Defense

Direction of Union Retreat

8:30 – 9:00 A.M.

East Stop 6c

Collapse of Miller’s Defense.

N

Confederate units tended to halt and plunder Union camps before resuming the advance.

5th OH Art’y

1st MN Art’y 16

Robertson’s AL Battery

th WI

Spain

Gage’s AL Battery

18th MO

Gladden

18th WI

Field 61st IL

15th MI

Chalmers

East Stop 6c The Collapse of Miller’s Defense

8:30–

9 :00 a.m. Directions

Remain in place.

What Happened

While Adams continued his assault, Prentiss continued to worry about the potential threat to Miller’s right flank. To guard against such a possibility, the division commander gave the order to “change front to the right.” Although a relatively straightforward maneuver for veteran troops, it had serious if not fatal consequences for the integrity of Miller’s defense. Attempting to comply, his raw troops became disorganized. Worse, the redeployment coincided with a renewed Confederate assault, adding to the confusion and exposing Hickenlooper’s battery to a ruinous fire that shot down 59 of its 80 horses. Two of its guns fell directly into Confederate hands. Hickenlooper’s Buckeyes were able to extricate the other four by hand, but the battery’s mobility would be seriously compromised for the balance of the day. Completing the ruin of Miller’s defense, Chalmers’s Brigade arrived on the field around 8 : 30 a.m. and added its weight to

38

East Stop 6c

the attack. Boiling up from the wooded ravine to your left, the Rebels slammed into the 18th Wisconsin and sent it flying in retreat. That opened a hole in Miller’s line and enabled Adams’s troops to break through as well. Miller and Prentiss attempted to reestablish a new position at the north end of Spain Field, but the attempt was fruitless. By 9 : 00 a.m. the brigade had been driven through its camp. It ceased to exist as an organized unit, and hundreds of its men joined the growing exodus to the Federal rear. Vignette

Cavalry orderly. blcw 2:103

George W. McBride, 15th Michigan, described the collapse of Miller’s defense: “The enemy flank us and are moving to our rear; some one calls out ‘Everybody for himself!’ The line breaks, I go with others, back and down the hill, across a small ravine, and into the camp of the 11th Illinois cavalry, with the howling, rushing mass of the enemy pressing in close pursuit. . . . The striking of shot on the ground threw up little clouds of dust, and the falling of men all around me impressed me with a desire to get out of there. . . . I felt sure that a cannon-ball was close behind me, giving me chase as I started for the river. . . . I never ran so fast before.” As happened so often that day, the pursuing Confederates halted to rifle the abandoned Union camps. In the one vacated by the 18th Wisconsin, a young lieutenant collected an armful of trophies only to be confronted by Sidney Johnston himself, who rode onto the scene. “None of that, sir,” the general bellowed, “we are not here for plunder!” The lieutenant looked mortified, so much so that Johnston softened the rebuke by picking up a tin cup and saying, “Let this be my share of the spoils today.”

Roa th rin Co

Eastern

k

Spain Branch

Li

ck

Gladden Road

Jackson Chalmers

Bark Road (his

0

.

Reported Union Division

Cr ee

co nn o Ro iteri ng ad

Re

ad

Miller defeated

r

Jackson Fede ra lR Chalmers d

Adams

ad

ve

Ro

Ri

y

W. Manse George cabin

ad

ee

od

Ro

ss

Corinth Ro

ab

rdy

burg Ham h Road nna Sava

Pu Shiloh Church

ne

East Stop 6d

Pe

n Te

d

39 Chambers and Jackson Redeploy

t

d) ve Dri Roa ley Bark a r F lly, a oric

N

9:00 – 10:00 A.M. Chalmers and Jackson redeploy.

Mile

1.0

East Stop 6d Chalmers and Jackson Redeploy 9:00–

10 :00 a.m. Directions

Turn around so that you are facing north along gladden road.

What Happened

Having wrecked the Union line in this sector, the obvious move was for Adams and Chalmers to continue north. In fact they did so, reinforced by Jackson’s Brigade of Withers’s Division. They got as far as the Hamburg-Purdy Road; some units launched a preliminary attack upon the Union division forming at the Sarah Bell’s Old Cotton Field (see East Stop 9c). But in the meantime a reconnoitering staff officer reported the presence of another Union “division” beyond the Confederate right. Johnston determined that this potential threat would have to be eliminated. At 9 : 30 a.m., therefore, he withdrew Jackson’s and Chalmers’s brigades and sent them on a circuitous cross-country march around the southern side of Locust Grove Branch (also called Spain Branch). Unknown to Johnston, the staff officer had already reported his intelligence to Beauregard, who in turn had sent Breckin-

40

East Stop 6d

ridge’s Reserve Corps to deal with the threat. (Johnston soon sent Beauregard a dispatch instructing him to deploy Breckinridge to the same sector.) Thus by midmorning, approximately 8,000 Confederates were converging on the Federal left flank. In this ad-hoc way, though his immediate intent was defensive, Johnston resurrected his original plan to launch a powerful sweep toward the Tennessee River.

Confederate picket with blanket-capote and raw-hide moccasins. blcw 3:70

41

McCuller’s Field

East Stop 7

10:00 – 11:00 A.M.

N

McCuller’s Field.

71

st

55

Larkin Bell’s Field

th IL

Uni Spai

n Br

Stuart

OH

on S

kir m

ishe

rs 54th OH

anch

East Stop 7 Girardey’s GA Battery

Jackson

Chalmers

Gage’s AL Battery

McCuller’s Field

EAST STOP 7

McCuller’s Field, 10: 00–11 : 00 a.m.

Directions

Return to your vehicle and continue 0.6 mile south to the end of gladden road. Turn left on fraley drive (historically, Bark Road). The sign for fraley drive is not visible from the direction of your approach, but the road will be the first on your left. Proceed 1.7 miles until you reach the tintersection with federal road (historically, Hamburg-Savannah Road). Turn left again and proceed 0.5 mile until you reach the red tablet marking the location of Chalmers’s Brigade. The tablet is a bit hard to spot because it is at the edge of a tree line and atop a cut in the road on the right side. Pull over to the side of the road. You need not leave your vehicle. En route note the rugged nature of the terrain to your left. The brigades of Jackson and Chalmers had to march cross-country over ground much like it. Also, be aware that you will pass within about 200 yards of Lick Creek, which parallels Federal Road for about a quarter mile north of the intersection with Fraley Drive. (In fact, had you turned south instead of north, you would have crossed the creek within 0.1 mile.) The creek’s significance lies in the fact that Johnston depended on

42

East Stop 7

it to anchor his right flank. Evidently he did not realize that it soon veers sharply to the east, thereby creating an additional gap of over half a mile between his projected right flank and the next firm anchor, the Tennessee River. Orientation

The roads over which you have just passed have led you considerably south of the line of march taken by the brigades of Jackson and Chalmers. But you have managed the trip in considerably less time than they did. Not until at least 11 : 00 a.m., a full hour after disengaging from their previous position, did the Confederates reach this vicinity. You are now near the northern end of what was once a large field known as McCuller’s Field. Currently almost completely overgrown, in 1862 it extended a quarter mile to your rear and an additional 200 yards in front of you. Chalmers’s Brigade advanced directly up the road over which you have just passed. Jackson, meanwhile, appeared from the direction of the wooded heights to your left rear, about a quarter mile distant and some 50 feet higher than your current location. Defending this sector was the 54th Ohio of Col. David Stuart’s brigade. Its mission was to guard the ford over Lick Creek to the south, and in fact one of its ten companies remained at the ford even as the others formed line of battle astride the Federal Road.

What Happened

The Confederate staff officer was mistaken about the presence of a Federal division in this sector. The only Union force consisted of a three-regiment brigade under Stuart. Although administratively attached to Sherman’s Fifth Division, on the opposite side of the battlefield, Stuart’s was for all practical purposes functioning as an independent brigade. The sound of artillery fire to the west had earlier prompted the colonel to ready his command for action. Receiving word from Prentiss that he was under attack, Stuart deployed his three regiments facing diagonally toward the southwest, a rather awkward arrangement evidently intended to simultaneously defend against an enemy attack, continue to keep an eye on the Lick Creek ford, and maintain a line of retreat if necessary. The result was to spread the brigade over more than 600 yards, with four companies deployed as skirmishers along Locust Grove Run and no reserve whatever. All in all it would have been prudent for Stuart to withdraw his brigade to a less exposed position. But in the absence of hard information about enemy movements, he chose to remain.

43 Stuart’s Defense

East Stop 8

(se

55 71

Girardey’s GA Battery Ja ck s

on

Larkin Bell’s Field

Spai

n Br

st

th

conStuar dp t osi tio

n)

IL

OH

Gage’s AL Battery East Stop 8

54th OH anch

Chalmers

11:00 – 11:30 A.M.

N

Stuart’s defense.

McCuller’s Field

EAST STOP 8

Stuart’s Defense, 11:00–11:30 a.m.

Directions

Continue 0.3 mile. Pull in to the turnout on the right side of the road, near the sign indicating the park boundary as well as the red tablet indicating the position of Gage’s Alabama Battery.

Orientation

You now face the northern end of McCuller’s Field. Just ahead, on the right side of the road, is the blue tablet indicating the position of the 71st Ohio, the northernmost of Stuart’s three regiments. Opposite it, on the left side of the road, are two cannon representing the advanced positions of Girardey’s Georgia Battery and Jackson’s Brigade.

What Happened

Stuart’s deployment proved fatal. Two Confederate batteries (Girardey and Gage) initially deployed on the heights, chased away Stuart’s skirmishers, and threw shells into the northernmost regiment, the 71st Ohio, whose colonel panicked and permitted—perhaps even led—his regiment on a pell-mell retreat that did not end for half a mile; they fired no more than two or three rounds before fleeing the field. Jack-

44

East Stop 8

son’s Brigade then fell upon Stuart’s center regiment, the 55th Illinois, which withdrew slightly under the pressure but still maintained an effective resistance. At the southern end of Stuart’s line, Chalmers’s Brigade worked its way toward the 54th Ohio, whose troops defended the fence line at the northern end of an orchard (no longer extant) near your current position. If you look behind you (to the south), you will notice that the ground slopes downward. This gave the 54th some protection until Chalmers’s men got within 40 yards of its position, at which point the Ohioans quickly withdrew. Abandoned by the 71st Ohio on its right and no longer protected by the 54th Ohio on its left, the position of the 55th Illinois rapidly became untenable. In an effort to preserve its ground as long as possible, the regiment’s commander, Lt. Col. Oscar Malmborg, gave the command “half wheel left.” As had occurred in the final moments of Miller’s defense, this maneuver proved too complex for unseasoned troops to execute under fire. The regiment’s companies became jumbled, the soldiers panicked, and within moments the 55th broke for the rear. Stuart, who witnessed the event, exercised no better leadership than to denounce the Illinoisans as cowards. But in fact some 500 men from the regiment, together with 300 from the 54th Ohio, rallied about a quarter mile to the north along the lip of a deep ravine. There they stood their ground for several hours. Analysis

A chronic problem at Shiloh was the inability of units to perform necessary tactical maneuvers under fire, which often created panic as the unseasoned soldiers felt matters slipping out of control. During the fight in Stuart’s sector, the 55th Illinois’s confused reaction to the “half wheel left” command was matched by a similar debacle on the part of Chalmers’s 52nd Tennessee Regiment. While crossing Spain Branch during the early stages of the combat with the 54th Ohio, the Tennesseeans received orders to lie down so that the rear rank could fire over them. A moment later they were told to fall back across the stream to clear a field of fire for Gage’s artillery, at which point most of the regiment broke, probably mistaking the temporary pull back as an order to retreat. Chalmers vainly attempted to rally the unit, but only two companies complied. Disgusted, he attached those two companies to a different regiment and refused to let the remainder of the 52nd back into the fight. Prentiss, Miller, Stuart, and Chalmers, like many commanders at Shiloh, were all too ready to pin the blame for their soldiers’ poor performance on cowardice. They should

45 Stuart’s Defense

more properly have pointed an accusing finger at themselves. It was their responsibility to train their units, understand the limits of their soldiers’ tactical abilities at this early stage of the war, and work within them. Note: If you wish to inspect the ravine behind which Stuart’s men rallied, proceed 0.2 mile to the entrance to Stop 11 on the National Park Service tour route, labeled “Field Hospital.” Exit your vehicle and walk behind the “Stuart’s Headquarters” pyramid, then beyond the far side of a rail worm fence and into the tree line. Continue a few more yards and you will reach the southern lip of the ravine. Stuart’s men rallied on the far (northern) side, albeit to the right (east).

Counting the scars in the colors. blcw 3:284

46

East Stop 9

EAST STOP 9

The Peach Orchard, 7: 30 a.m.–2 : 30 p.m.

Directions

Continue 0.5 mile north on federql road to its intersection with hamburg-purdy road. At that point federal road becomes the hamburg-savannah road (its historical name). Not quite 0.3 mile beyond the intersection you will find a parking lot on your left that provides access to the Peach Orchard and the W. Manse George cabin. Note: This is a somewhat lengthy stop, and you may wish to visit the restroom facilities at the Visitor Center before proceeding. If so, simply continue up the hamburg-savannah road, then bear right at the next intersection (the corinth– pittsburg landing road). This will take you directly to the Visitor Center. Excluding the time you spend there, the trip to and from the center requires about 10 minutes. Incidentally, if you do take this option, reset your odometer as you pass the Peach Orchard parking lot. About 0.6 mile ahead, on the right side of the road, you will pass the site of Brig. Gen. Stephen Hurlbut’s 4th Division headquarters prior to the battle.

The Old Hamburg Road which led up to “the hornets’ nest.” From a photograph taken in 1884. blcw 1:476

47

Hurlbut to the Rescue

7:30 – 8:30 A.M.

N

Pitts

burg

Rd.

East Stop 9a

Co r La inth nd –P in itt g R sb oa urg d

Hurlbut to the rescue. Pittsburg Landing

Co

rin

th

Ro

ad

Tennessee River

Veatch

Wicker Field

rn ste Ea

Su

nk

en

Ro

ad

HURLBUT−

Sarah Bell’s Old Cotton Field

East Stop 9

Hamburg-Purdy Road

East Stop 9a Hurlbut to the Rescue 7:30– 8:30 a.m. Directions

Exit your vehicle and walk to the National Park Service interpretive marker labeled “The Peach Orchard.”

Orientation

You are standing at the northern end of Sarah Bell’s Old Cotton Field, looking south. The southwestern part of the field, as well as a portion of its western fringe, is wooded today, but

48

East Stop 9a

otherwise the area is nearly as open now as it was in April 1862. The cotton field was significant for two reasons. First, the Hamburg-Savannah Road led directly back to Pittsburg Landing, the ultimate Confederate objective, and the cotton field offered a good position from which to defend it. Second, it would presently become the eastern anchor of the Hornets’ Nest, or Sunken Road, position, which begins just behind the W. Manse George cabin. What Happened

Neither Sherman’s 5th Division nor Prentiss’s 6th Division, which bore the brunt of the initial Confederate onslaught, had any previous combat experience. Indeed, in many cases their regiments had just arrived at Pittsburg Landing and received brigade assignments, so they often lacked familiarity with the other regiments on which their protection now depended. On the Union left flank, the 4th Division, under Brig. Gen. Stephen Hurlbut, made its appearance on the field about three hours after the initial skirmish in Fraley Field. It came in response to an urgent request for help from Prentiss. At 7: 30 a.m., minutes before Prentiss’s plea reached Hurlbut’s headquarters, an identical request had arrived from Sherman on the left. Hurlbut promptly dispatched his 2nd Brigade, some 2,700 troops under Col. James C. Veatch, to shore up that sector, leaving him with two infantry brigades, three artillery batteries, and two battalions of cavalry with which to assist Prentiss: in all about 4,100 men. It required perhaps 30 minutes for Hurlbut to send word to his widely scattered units and assemble them for action, but around 8: 00 a.m. he was on the march down the Hamburg-Savannah Road and by 8 :30 reached the sector where you currently stand.

Vignette

Hurlbut’s column advanced through a steady stream of men from Prentiss’s division. A few of these were walking wounded. Most, however, had simply left the front. Many no longer even carried their muskets. Some of them warned, by way of self-justification, “You’ll catch it—we are all cut to pieces—the Rebels are coming.” Disgusted by the spectacle, at least one of Hurlbut’s captains growled to his men that if any of them ran from the fight, they could expect to be shot. Perhaps relieved by a show of firmness amid such demoralization, those who heard his threat actually cheered. Overcome by the same wave of contempt, a lieutenant grabbed the bridle of a horse whose rider, a colonel, kept babbling hysterically, “We’re whipped; we’re whipped; we’re all cut to pieces!” Drawing his revolver, the lieutenant vowed to shoot the colonel if he didn’t shut up.

49

Hurlbut Deploys

N

8:30 – 9:30 A.M.

East Stops 9b & 9c

Hurlbut deploys.

9:00 – 10:00 A.M. First “attack.”

Peach Orchard

W. Manse George cabin

East Stop 9 Lauma n

Sarah Bell’s Old Cotton Field

OH 13th Ar t’y 1st MO Lt. Art’y

2nd MI Art’y

Williams

1st MO Lt. Art’y (first position)

2 co

m (Ad panies ams )

2 companies

(Jackson)

East Stop 9b Hurlbut Deploys 8:30–9:30 a.m. Directions

Remain in place.

What Happened

Upon reaching your location, Hurlbut’s two brigades (the 1st under Col. N. G. Williams and the 3rd under Brig. Gen. J. G. Lauman) filed off the Hamburg-Savannah Road onto the country lane leading to the W. Manse George cabin, then crossed the cotton field and took up a line of battle at its far end. Hurlbut placed Williams’s brigade parallel to the Hamburg-Purdy Road. (Williams in turn deployed his men in a shallow ravine that would provide them at least some protection from enemy fire.) He posted Lauman’s brigade in the timberline along the field’s western end at nearly right angles to Williams. As his artillery arrived, Hurlbut placed Lt. Cuthbert W. Laing’s 2nd Michigan Battery in support of Williams and Lt. Edward Brotzman’s 1st Missouri Light Artillery near the intersection of the Hamburg-Purdy and Hamburg-Savannah Roads, so as to cover his left flank against any threat from the southwest. (Hurlbut soon changed his mind and shifted the 1st Missouri Artillery to the apex of his line). His two cavalry

50

East Stop 9b

battalions he strung out behind the division, evidently as a straggler line in case his own troops fell victim to the same panic that had so obviously befallen Prentiss’s men. Hurlbut’s dispositions were now nearly complete, with a single exception: His third battery, the 13th Ohio Battery under Capt. John B. Myers, had yet to arrive. This seemed inexcusable, particularly since the unit’s camp was almost the closest to Sarah Bell’s Old Cotton Field and directly adjacent to the Hamburg-Savannah Road. Hurlbut later complained that he had sent repeated orders to Myers, but a sergeant in the battery maintained that his outfit waited over an hour before any instructions arrived. In any event, around 9:30 a.m., a good half hour after the rest of Hurlbut’s command reached the field, Myers’s battery belatedly arrived. Hurlbut promptly sent it into the timberline to support Lauman’s brigade. (Myers demurred, arguing that the guns should be posted on open ground, but Hurlbut was in no mood to hear objections.) Analysis

Hurlbut’s initial deployment is open to serious query. Since his after-action report does not explain his reasoning, one must speculate. Like many Union generals at Shiloh, Hurlbut seems to have been intent on holding as advanced a position as possible without due consideration for why such a position was advantageous. Here the advantages were scarcely obvious. The salient created by his deployment of Lauman’s and Williams’s brigades would have been difficult to defend against a determined Confederate assault, especially at its apex, where an attack was especially likely. Then too, by deploying so far forward, Hurlbut completely overlooked the admirable field of fire afforded by Sarah Bell’s Old Cotton Field, one of the largest open expanses in terrain characterized by woodlands, steep ravines, or both. It is possible that by hugging the tree lines at the field’s perimeter, Hurlbut expected to gain early warning of an enemy concentration against him, but this mission could have been done more effectively by a thin cordon of skirmishers rather than massed battle lines.

51 The First “Attack”

East Stop 9c The First “Attack”

9:00–10:00 a.m.

Directions

Remain in place.

What Happened

Williams’s men had been in position but a short time when they began to notice Confederate infantry moving through the woods beyond the Hamburg-Purdy Road. They opened fire, though with little effect. Lauman’s men did the same, but only those on the left had anything to shoot at, and armed as they were with smoothbores, their rounds did not even carry to the enemy line: the Confederate infantry remained placidly in formation. A bit later Hurlbut’s division came under a desultory fire from unseen Confederate artillery (probably Robertson’s Alabama Battery). The shelling did little damage, with two conspicuous exceptions. First, a fragment ripped through Williams’s horse, knocking the colonel to the ground, paralyzing him for weeks, and eventually forcing him to resign from the army. Col. Isaac Pugh of the 41st Illinois succeeded him in command. Second, just as Myers’s battery got into position, a Confederate shell scored a fluke direct hit on one of the Federal caissons, causing a terrific blast that killed one man, wounded eight, and sent practically every officer and cannoneer in the battery running headlong for the rear. A team of horses fled as well, taking its caisson and gun along with it. The remaining cannon remained uselessly on the field. With no one to man them, volunteers from the other two batteries eventually went over to spike the guns and cut the horses from their harnesses. (To “spike” a cannon means to render it inoperable, usually by plugging the vent at the breach.) After the battle Hurlbut angrily urged that the 13th Ohio Battery be disbanded and its captain cashiered from the army. Although the Federals had every reason to expect an imminent attack, in fact the Confederates confronting them— Withers’s Division, fresh from its costly victory at Spain Field (East Stop 6)—were thinking along precisely contrary lines. Far from contemplating an assault, the Confederates believed the Federals might well be preparing to attack them. The aggressive movements observed by Hurlbut’s men were simply limited reconnaissances by four companies from the brigades of Adams and Jackson. Then at 10 : 00 a.m., as we have seen (East Stop 6d), Jackson and Chalmers received orders to redeploy elsewhere. Only Adams’s Brigade remained to keep an eye on this sector.

52

East Stop 9c

Analysis

This initial “attack” by the Confederates had only one positive outcome, and that for the Federals, not their opponents. A brief flurry of confusion on Col. Isaac Pugh’s left flank caused him to withdraw one of his regiments back to the Peach Orchard, to your right front. That in turn led Hurlbut to withdraw his entire advanced line, and within a few minutes it occupied a new position behind an old fence along the edge of the woods. This was in every respect a superior placement: more compact, with both brigades on line instead of at right angles to each other, and with an extensive field of fire in front. Had Hurlbut’s division remained in his initial position, it might well have been overrun as soon as strong Confederate forces reached the scene. If that had occurred, the crucial Hornets’ Nest position, described below (East Stop 9e), might have been rendered untenable at the outset.

Confederate types of 1862. blcw 1:548

53

The Formation of the Sunken Road Position

N

East Stop 9d

10:00 – 11:00 A.M. Formation of the Sunken Road position.

ad Ro

tt Tu le th rin Co Ea

en

rn

IA

nk

ste

8th

Su

Ro

e Pr

nt

i

La ad

um

East Stop 9 an

W. Manse George cabin Davis Wheat Field Barnes Field

Road

Wicker Field

ss

urg -Savannah

ny

Hamb

ee Sw

Duncan Field

Pugh McArthur

Sarah Bell’s Old Cotton Field

Hamburg-Purdy Road

East Stop 9d

The Formation of the Sunken Road Position

10:00–11:00 a.m. Directions

Walk north through a thin screen of trees until you find the eastern terminus of the Sunken Road. You need not walk down it (if you wish to do so, see the Hornets’ Nest Excursion on page 59), but note the location and terrain.

Orientation

This “Sunken Road” is nowhere near as impressive as its more famous counterparts at Antietam or Fredericksburg. Today it is little more than a narrow path. In 1862 it was a disused wagon trail running from your current location northwest to the Corinth Road, about half a mile distant. As you will discover if you take the Hornets’ Nest Excursion, parts of the trail do dip beneath the surrounding terrain, but at the time of the battle, few noted this fact, and not a single afteraction report makes reference to a “sunken road.” Indeed, its tactical significance was simply this: it provided a convenient place on which to align the Union troops that presently arrived to defend this sector.

54

East Stop 9d

What Happened

Hurlbut’s division, of course, anchored the eastern end of the position. Prentiss ultimately succeeded in rallying about 600 men (out of the nearly 5,500 troops he commanded when the day began). These he posted on Hurlbut’s left. Later in the day a regiment fresh from St. Louis, the 23rd Missouri, was sent to reinforce him, doubling his strength to 1,200 men. Soon afterward about 5,800 seasoned troops from Brig. Gen. W. H. L. Wallace’s 2nd Division arrived and extended the Sunken Road position all the way to the Corinth Road. These composed the 1st Brigade, under Col. James M. Tuttle, and the 3rd Brigade, under Col. Thomas W. Sweeny. At Prentiss’s request Sweeny detached one of his regiments, the 8th Iowa, to deploy in the 6th Division’s sector in order to shore up Prentiss’s badly depleted command. With that exception, however, Tuttle’s troops held the right center, Sweeny’s men the far right. Including the two surviving batteries from Hurlbut’s division, the Sunken Road position was directly buttressed by eight batteries: about 33 guns in all. By 11 :00 a.m. the position was complete. In addition, Wallace sent two regiments (the 9th and 12th Illinois) from his 2nd Brigade, led by Brig. Gen. John A. McArthur, to extend Hurlbut’s left flank east of the Hamburg-Savannah Road. McArthur brought with him Battery A, Chicago Light Artillery, under Lt. Peter B. Wood. The general also became the beneficiary of an accident: a regiment from Sweeny’s brigade, the 50th Illinois, lost track of its parent unit and wound up with McArthur. All three regiments took cover in a deep wooded ravine. The Chicago battery, for its part, unlimbered east of the Peach Orchard and slightly in front of McArthur’s infantry.

Analysis

The time required to create this line was for all practical purposes a gift from Capt. Samuel Lockett, the Confederate staff officer who had earlier misidentified Stuart’s brigade as an entire Union division. His error illustrates the baneful effects of an inexperienced observer. Not only was Stuart’s unit merely a brigade, it was an under-strength brigade consisting of only three regiments, barely 2,000 men in all. The average Union division at Shiloh consisted of 7,500 men and generally possessed at least two or three artillery batteries. In short, there was precious little reason for Lockett to reach such an alarmist conclusion. But because he did—and because both Johnston and Beauregard accepted his report without question—the brigades of Chalmers and Jackson, as well as the two batteries under Gage and Girardey, were sent to neutralize this threat, to say nothing of the two brigades from Breckinridge’s Reserve Corps that Beauregard dispatched to

55

The Formation of the Sunken Road Position

handle Stuart but did not arrive in time to participate in the action. It is almost certain that if Withers’s entire division had remained near Sarah Bell’s Old Cotton Field, they would have overwhelmed Hurlbut’s under-strength division while it still occupied its questionable salient formation at the southwest fringe of the field. Although it is impossible to predict the ultimate outcome of such a battle, the chronic pattern at Shiloh was for Union troops, when confronted by sudden, forceful pressure, to give way. Further, the decision to send Chalmers and Jackson against Stuart not only cost the Confederates at least 90 minutes of priceless time (from 10 : 00 a.m. until 11 : 30 a.m.) but the rapid cross-country march and subsequent engagement also added to the troops’ fatigue and casualties—and, moreover, drained them of ammunition until a resupply could be arranged. Thus, although these two brigades were barely half a mile from McArthur’s position after defeating Stuart, it would be at least another 90 minutes (from 11 : 30 a.m. until 2 : 00 p.m.) before they could mount another major attack. Note: This lull affords a good opportunity to consider several important developments that were happening on other parts of the battlefield at about this time and that would have significant bearing on the fighting discussed in East Stop 9e. Because these developments apply equally to events addressed in both the eastern and western tours, please turn to Appendix A for a discussion (unless you have already done so in the course of following the western route.)

Bivouac of the Federal troops, Sunday night. blcw 1:482

56

East Stop 9e

East Stops 9e & 9f La

um

an

Bloody Pond

Pu

gh

McArthur

East Stop 9 Gl a (D dde ea n s)

St (remuar t nant ) Ste (M phen an ey) s

Statham

en Bow

s Jack

on

Cha

12:30 – 2:00 P.M.

lme

rs

N

“A few more charges...,”

2:00 – 2:30 P.M. First assaults.

East Stop 9e “A Few More Charges and the Day Is Ours”

12:30–2:00 p.m. Directions

Walk southwest through the Peach Orchard until you reach the four cannon representing the 1st Missouri Light Artillery, designated as “Mann’s Battery” on the blue tablet.

Orientation

You are now standing along the position held by Hurlbut’s division after its withdrawal from the southern end of Sarah Bell’s Old Cotton Field. As you will note if you look to the regimental monuments on your left (28th Illinois) and right (32nd Illinois), the line ran almost directly east to west. Pugh’s brigade held this sector; Lauman’s brigade lay beyond the tree line to your right, its line bearing slightly toward the northwest until it tied in with Prentiss’s command at the Sunken Road. McArthur’s brigade (of W. H. L. Wallace’s division) continued the line east of the Hamburg-Savannah Road, its left flank resting at the lip of a 40-foot ravine.

What Happened

At 12: 30 p.m. the brigade of Col. Winfield S. Statham reached the southern edge of Sarah Bell’s Old Cotton Field and filed into position to the right of Col. William H. Stephens’s brigade

57 “A Few More Charges and the Day Is Ours”

(Cheatham’s Division), which had taken severe losses in the initial attacks on the Sunken Road position near the Eastern Corinth Road (see the Hornets’ Nest Excursion) and had since shifted to a position facing the southwestern corner of the Old Cotton Field. Part of Breckinridge’s Reserve Corps, Statham’s was one of the two brigades that had earlier been tapped to deal with the Union “division” (Stuart’s brigade) beyond the Confederate right flank. Most of its troops took cover under a ridge at the southern end of the Old Cotton Field, many in the camp formerly occupied by the 71st Ohio. (Their position is to your left front but hidden by a belt of trees not present at the time of the battle). From that protected position they initially sparred with Pugh’s men at a range of about 450 yards. Out of Statham’s six regiments, only the rightmost of them, the 20th Tennessee, got into a serious scrap with the enemy— elements of McArthur’s brigade—and might have gotten into serious trouble had not a regiment from another brigade (probably Jackson’s) arrived to shore up its exposed flank. Perhaps 30 minutes later one of Statham’s fellow brigades, under Brig. Gen. John S. Bowen, came on the field and extended the Confederate line to the east. General Johnston himself led it into position. “Only a few more charges,” he assured them, “and the day is won.” Soon two regiments from Jackson’s Brigade arrived as well, so that by 1 : 30 p.m. the Confederates had over 4,000 troops on hand to drive up the Hamburg-Savannah Road. Vignette

Just one detail remained before the attack could resume: someone had to make the soldiers do it. That someone was not Breckinridge. He approached Johnston, fuming, “General Johnston, I cannot get my men to make the charge.” “Then I will help you,” Johnston replied, “we can get them to make the charge.” Striding along Bowen’s line, the commanding general clinked the soldiers’ bayonets with the tin cup he had taken in the 18th Wisconsin’s camp as his share of the “spoils” (see East Stop 6c). “Men of Missouri and Arkansas,” he boomed, “the enemy is stubborn. I want you to show General Beauregard and General Bragg what you can do with your bayonets and tooth picks [i.e., Bowie knives].” Then, galloping across the Hamburg-Savannah Road, he made a similar speech to Statham’s Brigade. “Men, they are stubborn; we must use the bayonet.” He reached the center of the line and cried, “I will lead you!” The Confederate battle line went surging forward.

58

East Stop 9f

East Stop 9f The First Assaults 2:00–2:30 p.m. Directions

Remain in place.

What Happened

From this point at 2: 00 p.m. on April 6, Union infantry and artillerymen watched as rank upon rank of Confederate troops emerged from the tree line in front (which in 1862 was farther away, beyond the Hamburg-Purdy Road). They could see officers dressing the regiments and the Stars and Bars waving above the battle line. Mann’s battery opened up with canister. Pugh’s infantry held their fire until the Confederates came within 200 yards, then loosed a massed volley. But the Southerners continued to charge, and presently the Missouri artillerists abandoned their field pieces and streamed to the rear. As the Confederates angled toward the abandoned guns and the nearby 41st Illinois, Hurlbut took the 32nd Illinois, placed it in support of its fellow Illinois regiment, and extended the 3rd Iowa’s line to cover the gap thus created. Together the three midwestern regiments managed to repel Statham’s men. A few minutes later the Southerners attacked again, this time farther to the west, beyond the tree line to your right. Lauman’s brigade held that part of the line. The attackers included Stephens’s Brigade (now under Col. George Maney) and the remnants of Gladden’s Brigade (now led by Col. Zachariah C. Deas, its third commander of the day). The assault did not get far, however, before these Confederates came under a crossfire, lay down, and began a steady but indecisive musketry duel with Lauman’s men.

59 The Hornets’ Nest Excursion

N

Hornets’ Nest Excursion

ad

Bria

Ruggles

r Cr eek

Stop F

Ro th rin Co rn ste

ad

Ea

Ro

-Pu

Stop B

en

urg

nk

mb

Wicker Field

Stop C

Su

’s Battery

Ha

Stop D & E

Hamburg-Savannah Road

Stop G Duncan Field

Stop A

Bloody Pond

Start Excursion rdy

Ro

ad

W. Manse George cabin

Peach Orchard

Davis Wheat Field

Hornets’ Nest Excursion Directions

Begin the excursion at the W. Manse George cabin (East Stop 9). Walk through the screen of trees behind the cabin until you reach a wide pathway.

Orientation

You are standing in the Sunken Road. Its eastern terminus, at the Hamburg-Savannah Road, lies not quite 200 yards to your right. As you turn left and begin the excursion, you will be walking toward the Eastern Corinth Road, about 800 yards to the west. The trail approximates the Union line of battle. The Confederate attacks would have come from the south—that is, your left as you proceed down the trail.

60

Stop A

STOP A

31st Indiana Infantry

Directions

Walk about 260 yards until you reach a large, obelisk-shaped monument.

What Happened

This monument commemorates one of the regiments that formed the right flank of Hurlbut’s division. The woods in this area looked much the same in April 1862 (though obviously you must imagine the foliage as it appeared in early spring), but thanks to the nineteenth-century practice of enclosing cultivated fields and letting livestock roam freely, there was probably less undergrowth. Nevertheless, the woodlands concealed Union strength and dispositions from the Confederates. In his after-action report, Col. Charles Cruft claimed that the 31st Indiana repelled four attacks from this position. He estimated that it took “some 30 rounds” per man to drive back the first assault, with some Rebel soldiers getting within 10 yards of the Union line. A second attack all but exhausted the regiment’s ammunition. Only a fortunate lull in the action permitted his troops to receive a fresh supply before the third assault began. During another short lull the Hoosiers’ cartridge boxes were again filled, enabling them to drive back the Confederates’ final assault. In all Cruft estimated that his regiment fired an average of about 100 rounds per man. “The piles of the enemy’s dead which were lying along our front when he retreated attested [to] the accuracy and steadiness of the fire.” Not all of the Confederate dead in this action perished by gunfire. During the battle the woods caught fire, and numerous wounded men were burned alive. Beyond the monument you will enter the sector occupied by the remnants of Prentiss’s division (about 1,200 men).

Wood and underbrush called “the hornets’ nest.” blcw 1:588

61

12th Michigan Infantry

STOP B

12th Michigan Infantry

Directions

Walk about 150 yards until you reach the blue tablet commemorating the 12th Michigan Infantry.

What Happened

This tablet commemorates one of two regiments from Peabody’s brigade that preserved its organization after the initial Confederate onslaught (Stops 4 and 5). It also marks the center of Prentiss’s position. Somewhere in this vicinity, probably around noon, Grant visited the division commander. According to Prentiss, he showed the general his entire position. Grant approved it and ordered Prentiss to hold the position “at all hazards.” Seldom during the Civil War was an order more literally obeyed. Prentiss fought his command until it was surrounded. Then, along with many hundreds of Union troops, he surrendered (see East Stop 13). After spending six months as a prisoner of war, Prentiss was released as part of an exchange arrangement negotiated by Union and Confederate authorities in July 1862. For years he received little recognition for his tenacious defense of the Sunken Road. Grant overlooked Prentiss in his after-action report, and though eventually promoted to major general, Prentiss consistently received backwater assignments. Ostensibly on grounds of ill health, but more probably from a sense that the high command lacked confidence in him, he resigned from the army on October 28, 1863. Prentiss lived until 1901, long enough for President Grant to appoint him a federal pension agent and to read, in Grant’s memoirs, this mixed tribute to his performance at Shiloh: “In one of the backward moves, on the 6th, the division commanded by General Prentiss did not fall back with the others. This left his flanks exposed and enabled the enemy to capture him with about 2,200 of his officers and men. . . . I was with [Prentiss], as I was with each of the division commanders that day, several times, and my recollection is that the last time I was with him was about half past four, when his division was standing up firmly and the General was as cool as if expecting victory.” Translation: While Grant respected Prentiss’s pluck, he thought the capture of his division betrayed tactical ineptitude.

62

Stop C

STOP C

Hickenlooper’s Battery

Directions

Walk about 120 feet until you reach the cannon-shaped monument commemorating the 5th Ohio Independent Battery. (As of 2001, the barrel of the cannon was defaced, leaving only the carriage and wheels).

What Happened

Over 30 cannon supported the Sunken Road position. The 5th Ohio Independent Battery was one of two batteries deployed almost directly on the road. The others occupied a low ridge to your right (north). Commanded by Capt. Andrew Hickenlooper, the 5th Ohio consisted of four 6-pounder James rifled guns and two 6pounder smoothbores. Already hotly engaged in the early morning fighting (see East Stop 6), it had lost two guns. Of the remaining four, two were deployed a few yards south of the Sunken Road (to your left) in order to sweep a side trail with fire. The others remained in reserve, with the 8th Iowa Infantry close by to provide support. The advanced guns of the 5th Ohio Battery fought off the second Confederate attack, loading first with shell, then with canister as the Confederates came closer. Even so the Rebels got among the guns, and it briefly seemed that they would capture them until two companies from the 8th Iowa drove them back. Afterward infantrymen helped withdraw the advanced two guns to safety. The last two guns from Hickenlooper’s battery continued to fight from your current position. Unlike most of the Union troops in this sector, the Ohio gunners largely evaded capture by the Confederates. Although they lost an additional gun and caisson during the afternoon retreat, half the battery remained intact to shore up Grant’s final line.

63

Arkansas State Memorial

STOP D

Arkansas State Memorial

Directions

Walk 90 yards to the two cannon representing Munch’s battery. Turn left and continue to the monument surmounted by a Confederate soldier.

What Happened

Although this monument commemorates all thirteen Arkansas units that fought at Shiloh, its location is a particular reminder of the 1st Arkansas, one of four infantry regiments belonging to Col. Randal L. Gibson’s Brigade, Ruggles’s Division, Bragg’s Corps. Gibson’s command made the four successive assaults on the sector through which you have passed during your walk from the 31st Indiana monument to this point. Seldom during the war, let alone the battle of Shiloh, was an outfit more singularly misused. Gibson’s Brigade, 2,400 strong, began the day astride the Corinth Road in the second Confederate attack wave. It advanced in the wake of the first line, encountered only a few rounds from Union artillery en route to the front, and was therefore fresh and all but unbloodied when it reached Davis Wheat Field shortly before noon. Soon thereafter Bragg rode up. Around 11 : 00 a.m., elements of five Confederate brigades had attacked the Union line in the vicinity of the Review Field, but these units had fought all morning, were tired and depleted in numbers, and made scant headway. Bragg seized the chance to throw new troops into the fight. He ordered Gibson to attack the enemy in the sector ahead of him and to his right. “The brigade,” Gibson wrote in his after-action report, “moved forward in fine style, marching through an open field under a heavy fire and half way up an elevation covered with an almost impenetrable thicket, upon which the enemy was posted. On the left a battery [Munch’s 1st Minnesota Battery] opened that raked our flank, while a steady fire of musketry extended along the entire front. Under this combined fire our line was broken and the troops fell back; but they were soon rallied and advanced to the contest. Four times the position was charged and four times the assault proved unavailing. The strong and almost inaccessible position of the enemy—his infantry well covered in ambush and his artillery skillfully posted and efficiently served—was found to be impregnable to infantry alone.” That was putting it mildly. Gibson omitted from the report that when the first attack failed, he sent a plea to Bragg for artillery support. Bragg, observing the action from a distance, imperiously brushed aside the request. He ordered a second assault. When it too failed, Col. Henry W. Allen of the 4th Loui-

64

Stop D

siana—shot through both cheeks during the previous attacks—urged Bragg to let the brigade abandon its frontal assaults and try flanking the Union position instead. The general would have none of that. He ordered two more frontal attacks, both without artillery support and both, of course, made with troops ever more depleted in numbers and worn by the stress of combat. In the end, wrote Col. James Fagan of the 1st Arkansas, “we . . . were forced back by overwhelming numbers entrenched in a strong position. That all was done that could possibly be done the heaps of killed and wounded left there give ample evidence.” At least a third of Gibson’s men were killed or wounded in these four unsupported attacks, made between noon and 2 :00 p.m. Incredibly Bragg deemed these efforts inadequate. Certain that the brigade had been mishandled and that a proper assault would have broken the Union line, he confided to his wife that Gibson was “an arrant coward.”

General Braxton Bragg, C.S.A. blcw 3:601

65

Munch’s Battery Monument

STOP E

Munch’s Battery Monument

Directions

Return to the two guns representing Munch’s battery. As the blue tablet attests, only one section comprising two guns deployed here. The rest of the battery unlimbered at your next destination, 100 yards farther along the trail. En route you will cross the Eastern Corinth Road.

What Happened

Like Hickenlooper’s 5th Ohio Battery, Capt. Emil Munch’s 1st Minnesota Battery had earlier fought in Spain Field (East Stop 6). Although two of their six guns were disabled in that action, the Minnesotans managed to get all six safely away. The two useless cannon were sent to Pittsburg Landing. The others joined the defense of the Sunken Road and played a signal role in smashing Gibson’s forlorn attacks. The 1st Minnesota Battery also helped dozens of Union troops escape from the Hornets’ Nest when Confederate units later surrounded it. Around 4 : 30 p.m., as the battery joined the withdrawal toward Pittsburg Landing, its cannoneers spotted Confederate infantry approaching from the west. They unlimbered long enough to spray the advancing Rebels with canister, halting the enemy long enough to keep an escape route open.

Battery, forward! blcw 1:487

66

Stop F

STOP F

7th Iowa Infantry

Directions

Walk about 110 yards to the 7th Iowa Infantry monument. Find a nearby location from which you have a good, unobstructed view of Duncan Field, the open country to your left (southwest).

What Happened

You now stand in the middle of the sector held by Tuttle’s brigade of W. H. L. Wallace’s 2nd Division, which marched to reinforce the beleaguered Union line around 8 : 00 a.m. (see East Stop 9d). After deploying in the heavy timber behind you, the 7th Iowa reached this position at about 9 : 30 a.m. Here the troops first caught sight of the advancing Confederates. The regiment’s commander, Lt. Col. James C. Parrott, wrote in his after-action report: “I ordered my men to lie down and hold themselves in readiness to resist any attack, which they did, and remained in that position until ordered to fall back at about 5 p.m., holding the rebels in check and retaining every inch of ground it had gained in the morning, being all the time under a galling fire of canister, grape, and shell, which did considerable execution in our ranks, killing several of my men and wounding others. The regiment, when ordered, fell back in good order and passed through a most galling flank fire from the enemy.”

The ”hornets’ nest” – Prentiss’s troops and Hickenlooper’s battery repulsing Hardee’s troops. blcw 1:504

67

2nd Iowa Infantry

STOP G

2nd Iowa Infantry

Directions

Continue walking about 200 yards to a point where the Sunken Road widens between the National Park Service interpretive marker labeled “The Hornets’ Nest” and the monument to the 2nd Iowa Infantry, the rightmost regiment of Tuttle’s brigade. Face the open field to your left.

What Happened

You are looking toward the western half of Duncan Field. Along the far tree line, some 400 yards distant, was the grand battery of 53 cannon organized by Brig. Gen. Daniel Ruggles around 3: 30 p.m. (see East Stop 12). The field pieces that commemorate their location are largely hidden from view by a slight rise in the ground halfway across the field, but they are to the left of the “Ross Headquarters” pyramid, clearly visible in the distance. The Confederates, according to some accounts of the battle, launched numerous infantry assaults across Duncan Field. In reality only two major attacks occurred in this area, the first in the morning, the other in midafternoon. Neither succeeded in dislodging the Federals from their position. Nor did Ruggles’s battery, though its massive cannonade was certainly impressive. An officer of the 2nd Iowa wrote: “It seemed like a mighty hurricane sweeping everything before it. . . . The great storm of cannon balls made the forest in places fall before its sweep, . . . men and horses were dying, and a blaze of unearthly fire lit up the scene. [Yet] at this moment of horror, when our regiment was lying close to the ground to avoid the storm of balls, the little birds were singing in the green trees over our heads!” Ultimately resistance in the Hornets’ Nest was overcome, not by infantry or artillery attack, but rather by the retreat of Sherman and McClernand to the west and Hurlbut to the east. There is even some question as to how fiercely the Confederates contended for the Hornets’ Nest. As Park Historian Stacy D. Allen notes, although the Southern dead were buried where their bodies were most heavily concentrated, none of the battlefield’s known mass graves are located in this sector. The fame of the Hornets’ Nest, he speculates, may have been partly due to the perceptions of the defenders. “Let’s put ourselves in the heads of those Yankees,” Allen told journalist Tony Horwitz, author of the best-selling book Confederates in the Attic. “We’re in this thicket where we can’t see the rest of the battlefield. There’s rebels coming at us, in bits and pieces, all day long. Then suddenly we’re still here and everyone else has retreated. It seems like we fought the battle on our own.”

68

Stop G

Group solidarity and intentional massaging of the facts also played a role. After the war the surviving veterans formed the Hornets’ Nest Brigade, led by none other than Brig. Gen. Benjamin Prentiss. “He was eager to foster the impression that the Hornets’ Nest and his role there were crucial to the battle,” Allen continued. “He played it up big, especially later in his life.” This concludes the Hornets’ Nest Excursion. Retrace your steps to your vehicle.

Major-General B. M. Prentiss. blcw 1:477

69

The Collapse of the Union Left

East Stops 10 & 11 Union Fallback Line

Bloody Pond

East Stop 10

(re

East Stop 11

2:00 – 4:00 P.M. Collapse of the Union Left.

at Stu s at ar t 2: 15

son Jack

Bowen

Statham

tre

N

Chalmers

P.M

.)

Cla

nto

n

2:30 P.M. Johnston’s death.

EAST STOP 10

The Collapse of the Union Left, 2 : 00– 4 : 00 p.m.

Directions

Return to your vehicle. Exit the parking lot, turn right, and proceed 60 yards to the 41st Illinois Infantry monument next to the hamburg-savannah road. Stand in front of the monument and look south down the hamburg-savannah road.

Orientation

You are standing on the right flank of McArthur’s brigade from W. H. L. Wallace’s 2nd Division, which had deployed here around 11: 00 a.m. (“McArthur’s brigade” is a term of convenience: although McArthur was present here, three of his five regiments were actually deployed on the Union right thanks to a foul up during the approach march.) To your left (east) across the road you can see a monument commemorating Willard’s battery, which was in direct support of the 9th and 12th Illinois (of McArthur’s brigade) and the 50th Illinois (of Sweeny’s brigade). These units had picked up an additional 50 men from other commands. McArthur’s brigade continued about 300 yards in that direction, ending at the edge of a steep ravine. About 400 yards down the road ahead of you were the brigades of Bowen and Jackson. The 800-man remnant of Stuart’s brigade was about one-half mile east-

70

East Stop 10

southeast on the southern lip of the ravine just mentioned. Facing it was Chalmers’s Brigade. What Happened

While Statham attacked Pugh’s brigade, Bowen and Jackson charged against McArthur’s brigade. At almost the same moment, Chalmers struck Stuart’s brigade, while Col. James Clanton’s 1st Alabama Cavalry threatened Stuart’s left flank. The combined effect unhinged the Union position in the Peach Orchard sector. Hurlbut, McArthur, and Stuart grudgingly withdrew to the north, struggling to establish a new defensive line near the Bloody Pond. This fallback position held only until 4: 00 p.m., after which the entire force withdrew to “Grant’s Last Line” (see Stop 12).

Analysis

Johnston has been criticized for overcommitting strength to the Peach Orchard sector. But that area (including McArthur’s extension) was of crucial importance because it blocked the Hamburg-Savannah Road, the quickest access to Pittsburg Landing. Critics who maintain that Johnston should have bypassed the position overlook what by this time would have been obvious to him: The ground near the Tennessee River consisted of a series of deep ravines. A flanking column would have had to negotiate each of them (there were in fact four of them between Chalmers’s 2 : 00 p.m. position and the landing) with an intact Union division on the plateau above. Had Johnston tried this tactic, it would assuredly have failed. As noted previously, the real mistake was the midmorning decision to attack Stuart instead of hitting the Union center before the Federals were prepared.

71 Johnson’s Death

EAST STOP 11

Johnston’s Death, 2 :30 p.m.

Directions

Return to your vehicle and drive about 100 yards down hamburg-savannah road to the entrance to Stop 12 on the National Park Service tour route, “Death of General Johnston.” Exit your vehicle, pause to consider the location, then follow the trail marker into a sheltered ravine about 60 yards farther south.

Orientation

You are now about 100 yards east of Sarah Bell’s Old Cotton Field. The area is wooded today but would have been more open in 1862. Bowen’s Brigade crossed this ground as it moved to attack the Union line. Statham’s Brigade charged on Bowen’s left directly across the cotton field.

What Happened

Johnston went in with Statham’s Brigade during the 2 : 00 p.m. assault. When he saw that it was succeeding, he rode back to the south end of the cotton field and encountered Tennessee governor Isham G. Harris, who was serving on his staff as a volunteer aide. Pointing to a nick on his handsome riding boot, he remarked jovially, “Governor, they came very near putting me hors de combat in that charge.” Alarmed, Harris asked if Johnston were wounded. The general assured him he was not, and the governor went off to deliver a message to Statham. Minutes later other members of Johnston’s staff realized that their commander was indeed wounded. But he was fully alert and in good spirits, and the injury seemed minor. Harris returned, and soon afterward Johnston swayed in the saddle. The governor and another staff officer caught him, and Harris asked, “General, are you wounded?” “Yes, and I fear seriously,” Johnston replied. Harris led his commander’s horse into the ravine where you now stand, and Johnston was lowered onto the ground. Staff officers searched without success for the wound. But the general was clearly dying. Soon his brother-in-law, Col. William Preston, came up, propped Johnston’s head in his lap, and asked repeatedly, “Johnston, do you know me?” But the general died without a word. An artery in his leg had been cut, and he had bled to death. Everyone wept, Preston perhaps more than the rest. “Pardon me, gentlemen,” he said, “you all know how I loved him.” Then he took out his notebook and wrote Beauregard: “Ravine, 2:30 p.m. Gen. Johnston just fallen, mortally wounded, after a victorious attack on the left of the enemy. It now devolves on you to complete the victory.” Harris took the dispatch to Beauregard (by now at the so-called Crossroads headquarters north of Shiloh Church). Beauregard got the news at 3 : 00 p.m. John-

72

East Stop 11

ston’s body was wrapped in a blanket and furtively taken to the rear, with efforts made to keep the news from the troops lest it demoralize them. Analysis

After the battle it was said that if Johnston had lived, the Confederates would have won at Shiloh. In a postwar article Preston argued that despite the “seeming confusion,” there was really “the most perfect regularity in the development of the plan of battle” until the general died. Johnston had consistently turned the Union left flank and, “by a series of rapid and powerful blows, [had broken] the Federal army to pieces.” With Johnston’s death, however, disappeared the charismatic leadership that had brought his army to the verge of complete success. “There came a lull in the conflict on the right, lasting more than an hour. . . . The determinate purpose to capture Grant that day was lost sight of. The strong arm was withdrawn, and the bow remained unbent. Elsewhere there were bloody, desultory combats, but they tended to nothing.” Although Preston’s assessment was romantic and worshipful, it was certainly reasonable on his part to believe that Johnston would have maintained the momentum of the Confederate drive. What the outcome of that would have been, however, is much less certain. In all likelihood, if the Confederates did not reach Pittsburg Landing by 3 : 00 p.m., they never would. By that hour the creation of Grant’s final line was already well underway, and Buell’s troops were not far off. This concludes the eastern tour of the first day’s fighting. (Unlike the western route, it has no twelfth or thirteenth stop.) If you have already followed the western route, turn to page 108 (Stop 14). If you have not followed the western route and wish to do so, proceed to the next page (West Stop 6).

Scene of General Albert Sidney Johston’s death. From a photograph taken in 1884. blcw 1:563

Western Route, April 6 WEST STOP 6

Rea Field, 6: 00– 8 :00 a.m.

Directions

If coming from Stop 5, return to your vehicle. Proceed about 0.2 mile to the parking area for Rea Springs on the left.

Brigadier-General William T. Sherman, C.S.A. blcw 4:109

If coming from East Stop 11, return to your vehicle. Turn left from the parking area and proceed 0.1 mile to a fork in the road. Bear right and then turn right on hamburg-purdy road.

74

West Stop 6a

Ea

West Stop 6a

st Fo rk of Sh

ur ne Cleb

Rea Springs

ilo hB ra

n

h

MS

n

1st positio

nc

3rd positio

6th

53rd OH camp ion 2nd posit

West Stop 6

23rd TN

Shiloh

Branc

h

Rea Field

Wood

6:00 – 7:00 A.M.

N

Sherman’s Division is attacked.

West Stop 6a.

Sherman’s Division Is Attacked 6:00–

7 :00 a.m. Directions

Walk across the road to the cannon representing Waterhouse’s battery. Face in the direction the cannon is pointing (west).

Orientation

You are standing on a ridge that composed part of the first position of Sherman’s 5th Division during the opening phase of the battle. The Rea cabin stood just across the road on your

75

Sherman’s Division Is Attacked

right. Farther in that direction, in the ravine, are Rea Springs and the east fork of Shiloh Branch. Out of sight today on the ridge beyond that ravine (but quite visible in the thinner forest growth of the 1860s) is Shiloh Church, where Sherman made his headquarters. Along that ridge and the one on which you now stand, the regiments of Sherman’s division had their camps. At the foot of the long slope directly in front of you, woods and dense thickets mark the course of the main fork of Shiloh Branch, appearing much as they did in 1862. Along the open ridge to your left was the camp of the 53rd Ohio, the left-flank regiment of the division. In 1862 the open field extended farther in that direction (south). The far tree line was then about 900 yards from where you stand instead of the 200 yards today. Out of sight beyond the trees, then as well as now, Fraley Field (Stop 3) is distant about 1,500 yards to your left front. The right flank of the main defensive line of Prentiss’s 6th Division was about 800 yards to your left rear and extended farther in that same direction. What Happened

Still nervous about what he believed was contact with the enemy, Col. Jesse Appler, commanding the 53rd Ohio, established a small outpost Saturday evening, April 5, near what was then the south end of Rea Field, 900 yards to your left. Early on Sunday morning this patrol returned on the double, reporting Confederate troops on the Corinth Road, just beyond the field’s boundary, and heavy firing to the southwest, representing the fight in Fraley Field. A few minutes later a wounded fugitive of Peabody’s command brought eyewitness news of fighting on Prentiss’s front. Appler responded by ordering the 53rd into line of battle immediately in front of its camp, a line beginning near where you now stand and extending perhaps 200 yards directly to your left, facing as you now do. Then someone spotted Confederate troops moving across the southern end of Rea Field, advancing against Prentiss’s right flank. Appler therefore pivoted his line to face in that direction (that is, to your left) and moved forward just beyond his camp. Confederate skirmishers now appeared in the woods along Shiloh Branch, directly in front of you. Muttering “This is no place for us,” an increasingly flustered Appler responded again by pivoting his regiment back to face as you now do and withdrawing it behind you (and behind the regiment’s camp) into the edge of the woods. A section (two guns) of Waterhouse’s battery moved into position at the edge of the woods on Appler’s right, directly behind you. About this time, 7: 00 a.m., Sherman and his staff arrived on the scene. Skeptical to the last, the general had responded to Appler’s prompt notice of contact with the enemy that

76

West Stop 6a

morning by sneering to the 53rd’s courier, “You must be awfully scared over there.” Now Sherman and his entourage rode into Rea Field in front of Appler’s line, about 100 yards to your left. He peered intently southward, trying to make out the identity of troops (in fact Confederate) continuing to cross the south end of the field, several hundred yards farther to your left. Someone called out for him to look to his right. A line of Confederate skirmishers was emerging from the thickets along Shiloh Branch, directly in front of you. Sherman saw them just as they fired and threw up his hand in startled reaction. One bullet struck the upraised hand. Another struck the head of Sherman’s orderly, Sgt. Thomas D. Holliday, killing him instantly. The truth finally dawned on the Union general. “My God, we are attacked!” he exclaimed, then hastily rode back to Appler and told him “to hold his position; he [Sherman] would support him.” Sherman then rode off to direct the rest of his division. Analysis

Sherman had allowed his assessment of the strategic situation—an assumption of almost complete Confederate disorganization and demoralization following the defeats at Forts Henry and Donelson and the consequent deep withdrawals— to determine his interpretation of the information he found directly in front of his picket lines. Despite what in retrospect appears to have been ample evidence of the Confederate army’s approach, Sherman continued to interpret all data as indicating merely probes and skirmishing by light enemy forces, unsupported by any large body of troops. The moment of sudden realization here in Rea Field was in one sense the lowest ebb of Sherman’s career. Up to that point he seemed to have gotten every decision wrong, jeopardizing his command and nearly getting himself killed in the bargain. From this point forward that day, however, his performance was magnificent and virtually flawless.

77

The 53rd Ohio Fights and Retreats

Ea st

West Stop 6b

Fo rk of Sh ilo

Rea Springs

hB ra nc h

53rd OH

2 or ks sf up ttac gro l a Re tiona di ad

6th MS

West Stop 6

53rd OH camp

) TN ng rd pi 23 rou g (re

Shiloh

Branc

h

Rea Field

7:00 – 8:00 A.M.

N

The 53rd Ohio fights and retreats.

West Stop 6b. The 53rd Ohio Fights and Retreats 7:00–

8: 00 a.m. Directions

Turn around and walk back to the edge of the woods behind you. Then turn and face in the same direction (west) you were for West Stop 6a.

Orientation

You are now standing on the line of Appler’s 53rd Ohio, facing as his soldiers did in anticipation of the Confederate attack. Just to your right were two guns of Waterhouse’s bat-

78

West Stop 6b

tery. To your left along the tree line ran the rest of the 53rd’s battle line. In the open field to your left front were the large, conical Sibley tents and other impedimenta of the regiment’s encampment. What Happened

The situation developed quickly after Sherman’s departure. From the high ground across Shiloh Branch just over 800 yards to your left front, the 12 guns of Maj. Francis Shoup’s Arkansas Artillery Battalion opened fire on this and the division’s other positions to your right around Shiloh Church. After firing two rounds in reply, the section of Waterhouse’s battery, acting on orders from Sherman’s chief of artillery, Maj. Ezra Taylor, limbered up and moved to join the rest of the battery farther to your left, on the high ground on the other side of Rea Springs and the east fork of Shiloh Branch (visible in springtime from the Rea Springs parking area). Even as the guns took up their new position, large formations of Rebel infantry emerged from the thickets along the main fork of Shiloh Branch (in front of you) and charged toward the 53rd Ohio. Because of the obstructing crest and the tents of the camp, the 53rd held its fire until the Confederates had closed to 50 yards, then tore into them with a devastating volley. The attacking wave broke and fled back over the crest, only to reform and come again. A more sustained firefight now raged at the same murderous range, with even more devastating results to the Confederate attackers, who again fled in disorder, leaving the ground covered with their dead and wounded. The attacking 6th Mississippi of Brig. Gen. Patrick R. Cleburne’s Brigade lost 300 of its 425 men in this fight, while Union casualties were light. At this juncture, however, Appler broke. Shouting “Fall back and save yourselves,” he fled to the rear. The regiment followed in disorderly retreat.

Analysis

The lopsided initial victory of the 53rd Ohio over the 6th Mississippi had several causes. First, the defenders here were in the woods, while their attackers were in an open field. Second, the Confederates were significantly disorganized and came on in piecemeal fashion because they had been disrupted in passing through the Shiloh Branch bottoms (more on this at West Stop 7) as well as the tents and other camp equipage of the 53rd on the ridge crest itself. Finally, at least some companies of the 53rd were protected by hastily erected breastworks formed by throwing down the rails of the roughly five-foot-high snake rail fence that bordered the field here. Union soldiers also used bails of hay and perhaps a few logs to protect their position.

79

The 53rd Ohio Fights and Retreats

The untimely departure of the 53rd Ohio began a process akin to the falling of dominoes, starting here and running from left to right along Sherman’s line. The process would eventually force the division to abandon its initial position along these ridges. The roughly 600-yard gap between Appler’s left flank and the right of Prentiss’s division would probably have triggered the same process some time later that morning by allowing the Confederates to turn the Ohioans’ left flank. This threat may have been on Appler’s mind when he fled the fight, but it was not an immediate danger, for at that moment the attacking Confederate lines featured a corresponding gap. As it was, disarray in Southern ranks, coupled with the outstanding performance of Waterhouse’s and Barrett’s Illinois batteries, posted on the high ground near Shiloh Church and covering the field with their fire, served to delay the collapse of Sherman’s first position for about another two hours. By that time Prentiss’s division had broken, and Sherman would in any case have been ill advised to maintain his position here.

Major-General Patrick R. Cleburne, C.S.A. blcw 4:433

80

West Stop 7

6:00 – 8:00 A.M.

West Stop 7

N

Shiloh Branch.

Shiloh Spring

West Stop 7 Eas tF ork Shi of loh Bra nch

The Morass

Cl ur eb ne

6t

S Br hilo an h ch

Rea Field

h M S

53rd OH camp 23 rd TN

WEST STOP 7

Shiloh Branch, 6 :00– 8 : 00 a.m.

Directions

Return to your vehicle. From the parking area, turn right on peabody road and proceed 0.1 mile to corinth road. Turn right and proceed about 0.1 mile, crossing one small bridge but not the second that quickly follows. Pull to the side of the road and stop. Walk across the road and stand next to the marker for Cleburne’s Brigade. Turn around and face the road (east).

Orientation

The small bridge to your left spans the east fork of Shiloh Branch. The one to your right, over which you passed in your vehicle, crosses the main fork of Shiloh Branch. The two flow nearly parallel here and converge about 200 yards behind you. The ground in front of you and for 100 yards or so to your right front is a marshy area of dense thickets that Cleburne referred to as “an almost impassable morass.” Cleburne’s Brigade advanced across this ground— or tried to—facing just as you now do. Almost directly in front of you and not quite 600 yards away is the 53rd Ohio’s defensive position, where you stood at Stop 4b. Then as now the view in that direction was almost completely obstructed.

81

Shiloh Branch

What Happened

The experience of Cleburne’s Brigade illustrates the difficulties presented by the rough, broken, and wooded terrain of the Shiloh battlefield. It also helps explain the failure of the initial Confederate assaults in this sector. Cleburne’s was the left-flank brigade in Hardee’s first attack wave. On reaching this point Cleburne’s regiments found the morass to be, as he later reported, literally impassable for a line of troops. When the general tried to lead them through, his horse mired down, reared, and threw him on his back in the deep mud. The brigade then split, passing around both sides of the morass, and the two halves did not subsequently cooperate tactically. The 6th Mississippi and 23rd Tennessee passed to the right of the morass and advanced through Rea Field against the 53rd Ohio (Stop 4b). After the first repulse there, the 23rd Tennessee proved difficult to rally, and so the 6th Mississippi carried on the fight alone, with disastrous results. Meanwhile Cleburne’s other regiments—the 2nd Tennessee, 5th (later renumbered 35th) Tennessee, 24th Tennessee, and 15th Arkansas—passed to the left of the morass and veered farther in that direction, coming up against the rest of Sherman’s division (West Stops 8 and 9).

Analysis

Although the dense thickets along the bottomland of Shiloh Branch gave some cover to Confederate forces advancing to attack Sherman’s division, they also had the effect of disrupting and fragmenting the initial attacks so that they occurred in piecemeal fashion. It would have been very hard to launch any sort of coordinated assault across this difficult terrain, and the inexperience of both Cleburne and his troops made them particularly vulnerable to this disrupting factor. This was particularly the case here at the morass. The doughty Cleburne, extracting himself from the mire and regaining his horse, strove valiantly to direct his brigade’s assaults, galloping around the swamp to direct one half and then the other, but the effort was doomed from the outset. This incident also provides one of the many illustrations of the ill-conceived nature of the Confederate dispositions for the assault, with each corps stretched across the entire battlefield. In turn that meant that Cleburne’s Brigade could not be deployed any other way than it was—stretched out in a continuous line of battle nearly 1,500 yards long. By contrast, with three corps attacking side by side, as General Johnston had described in a letter to President Davis a few days before, Cleburne’s task could have been far easier. His brigade could have advanced on a much narrower front in battalion column (each regiment in line of battle, one behind the other) or with a couple of regiments deployed side by side in

82

West Stop 7

line of battle and each of the other four in a compact column behind, ready to be brought up and deployed as the situation warranted. Why the Confederates did not operate in the manner Johnston described to Davis has never been satisfactorily explained.

A shell at headquarters. blcw 4:247

83

Ridge near Shiloh Church

WEST STOP 8

Ridge near Shiloh Church

Directions

Return to your vehicle. Proceed approximately 0.2 miles farther. Pull to the side of the road and park just short of Shiloh Church.

84

West Stop 8a

8:30 – 10:00 A.M.

West Stop 8a

N

Buckland’s Brigade holds fast.

48th OH camp

Schwartz’s Battery

70th OH camp

Buckla 4

OH

nd

Barrett’s Battery

Shiloh Church

OH 8th

70th OH

77th OH camp Waterhouse’s Battery

West Stop 8a n ra

72nd

H

eb

O

ild

th

H

77

2nd TN

d

57

24th TN

th OH

Shiloh Spring 5th TN

Shiloh Branch

15th AR

Cleburne

Eas t Fo rk o Shi f loh Bra nch Rea Field

West Stop 8a. Buckland’s Brigade Holds Fast 8:30–

10 :00 a.m. Directions

Cross the road and walk across the field to a large monument surmounted by a statue of a soldier (the 2nd Tennessee monument). Face in the same direction as the stone soldier. Walk several steps forward to the edge of the woods, turn, and face back toward the monument.

Orientation

You are standing on the line of Sherman’s center brigade, commanded by Col. Ralph Buckland. It ran along the tree line here and the forward slope of the ridge to either side of you. The smaller monument at the edge of the woods to your left is that of the 70th Ohio. That regiment’s flank rested near Shiloh Church, farther to your left, and the monument marks its center. The other two regiments of Buckland’s brigade continued the line, curving forward (toward the Confederates) to conform to the contour of the ridge. The Confederates, including the 2nd Tennessee commemorated here, charged toward your position, directly up the slope.

85

Buckland’s Brigade Holds Fast

What Happened

The four regiments of Cleburne’s Brigade that passed to the left of the morass came up to attack Sherman’s center brigade here and along the ridge to your right. They suffered one bloody repulse after another. The 2nd Tennessee’s colonel, hard-driving William B. Bate, led his regiment in three separate charges, all of which were beaten back with casualties that totaled nearly a third of his men. Bate was trying to lead the regiment in a charge against Barrett’s battery near Shiloh Church (to your left, Stop 6b) when he himself was badly wounded in the lower leg. Cleburne’s other regiments fared little better as Sherman’s line here held firm. A similar fate awaited the troops of Brig. Gen. Bushrod R. Johnson’s Brigade of Bragg’s Corps (the second assault wave) as well as those of Brig. Gen. Patton Anderson’s Brigade of Polk’s Corps (the third wave), both of which came up in turn and suffered repulses along this line.

Analysis

Many of the reasons for the initial Confederate defeat in this sector are the same as those that prevailed in Rea Field (out of sight to your left). The rugged terrain and the faulty deployment of the Confederate army prevented the Southerners from launching large coordinated assaults. Their piecemeal attacks involved only a few regiments at a time and were readily beaten off by Buckland’s men. Additional factors were the strong defensive position held by Buckland’s brigade, with a fairly good field of fire in front of it, and the particularly resolute fight put up by these regiments. Although like the rest of Sherman’s troops they were completely unseasoned and undergoing their first experience of hostile fire, they nevertheless stood up to their work here for about two hours before being forced to retreat not by pressure from the front, but rather by the unraveling of the line south of Shiloh Church. Sherman was able to give his personal attention to the line along this ridge and beyond the Church as far as the east fork of Shiloh Branch, and the stand speaks well of his leadership.

86

West Stop 8b 48th OH camp

70th OH camp

48

th

OH

West Stop 8b

Barrett’s Battery

70th O

Shiloh Church

West Stop 8b

H 77th OH camp

77

57th OH camp

th O H

2nd TN

57

Waterhouse’s Battery

th OH

Shiloh Spring

ur ne

R , Cleb ping grou k) son c d, re John interminglerenew atta to ents cing (regim e advan som

rson Ande l usse

Shiloh Branch

Eas t Fo rk o Shil f oh B ranc h

oo W

d

6th

53rd OH camp

MS

Rea Field

Shoup’s Artillery Battalion (3 Batteries) Bankhead’s TN Battery Washington (LA) Art’y

23rd TN (regrouping)

N

8:00 – 10:00 A.M. Sherman’s Division fights and falls back.

West Stop 8b. Sherman’s Division Fights and Falls Back

8:00–10:00 a.m. Directions

Turn to your left and walk past the 70th Ohio monument, then bear left on the path through the woods. You will be walking just behind the position of Buckland’s firing line. The path emerges near Shiloh Church and the cannon commemorating Barrett’s battery, just opposite the church. Face in the same direction as the cannon.

87

Sherman’s Division Fights and Falls Back

Orientation

This position was held during the early morning hours of April 6 by Barrett’s battery, formally known as Battery B, 1st Illinois Light Artillery. It was part of the ridge position that Sherman’s division held for over two hours in the face of furious Confederate assaults. The concentration of Confederate artillery in this sector, 12 guns of Shoup’s Arkansas Artillery Battalion, was located about 1,100 yards directly in front of you. The north end of Rea Field, on the other side of the east fork of Shiloh Branch, is about 700 yards to your left front, and the open field in 1862 stretched 900 yards or so farther in that direction. Sherman had his headquarters here near the church. The left flank of Buckland’s brigade was just to your right, and the right flank of Col. Jesse Hildebrand’s brigade was just the other side of the road.

What Happened

Barrett’s gunners and those of Waterhouse’s battery (Battery E, 1st Illinois Light Artillery), on the other side of Shiloh Church, fired on Confederates advancing up the ridge in front of you as well as at Shoup’s artillery (and other guns that arrived later) on high ground on the other side of Shiloh Branch. From this position in 1862, it was possible to see into Rea Field to the south (your left front), and Sherman and his gunners could see Confederate infantry moving into and across the field. They brought these troops under fire very effectively and were able to cover Rea Field for some time after Appler’s 53rd Ohio fled the fight. Although they could delay the unraveling of Sherman’s left flank, they could not prevent it indefinitely. Confederate troops pressing up from Rea Field and across the east fork forced the collapse of the remaining two regiments of Hildebrand’s brigade, one after the other. Seeing that the position had become untenable, Sherman ordered what was left of his division—the artillery, Buckland’s brigade, some fragments of Hildebrand’s command, and the almost untouched brigade of Col. John D. McDowell farther north (out of sight to your right)—to fall back to the line of the Hamburg-Purdy Road, about 600 yards behind you. On Sherman’s orders Barrett’s battery pulled out first and made good its escape. Waterhouse’s guns also would have gotten away cleanly if not for the ill-timed combativeness of Sherman’s chief of artillery, Taylor. Seeing Waterhouse beginning to withdraw, Taylor rode up, asserting that every inch of ground must be contested and ordering the battery to unlimber and go into action again just 100 yards in rear of its previous position. Waterhouse obeyed, but it was a hopeless gesture in the face of what was rapidly becoming a

88

West Stop 8b

Rebel juggernaut. He and his first lieutenant were wounded, and three of the battery’s guns were lost. Analysis

Barrett’s and Waterhouse’s batteries, like the infantry of Buckland’s brigade, performed magnificently and made an important contribution to prolonging Sherman’s stand here. This is all the more remarkable considering the complete lack of experience of Waterhouse’s men. They had received their horses only ten days before the battle and had drilled with them only three times. The final collapse of the position from left to right was all but foreordained by the fact that Sherman’s division never tied in to Prentiss’s right flank, farther to the left. The several-hundred-yard-wide gap between them made the first day’s battle into two largely separate fights (represented by the two different routes in this guide book). That gap also allowed the Confederates to outflank repeatedly both wings of Union defenders. Still Sherman’s stubborn stand here paid important dividends to the Union cause. About two and a half miles directly in front of you, near the place where the Bark Road forks off from the main Corinth Road (beside which you stand), Beauregard had his headquarters. As second in command of the Confederate army at Shiloh, Beauregard was handling the business of feeding reserves into the fight while commanding general Johnston did his best to direct the battle from the front. According to Johnston’s battle plan of striking hardest on the Union left, prying Grant’s army away from Pittsburg Landing, and crushing it against the swamps in the Owl Creek bottoms, Beauregard should have been funneling the bulk of his reinforcements to the Confederate right. Instead he followed a policy of sending reinforcements toward the sound of the heaviest firing. By putting up a stiff fight here, this far forward, for a full hour after Prentiss’s division had collapsed and fallen back a mile from its initial position, Sherman’s men gave Beauregard plenty of heavy firing to hear. Consequently the Confederate general directed an undue proportion of his available reinforcements to this front rather than the Confederate right, where Johnston had wanted to push for a decision. Nevertheless, Sherman’s troops, and the four brigades of two additional divisions that joined them on their fighting retreat, were not immune from disaster. If they could not be cut off from Pittsburg Landing by a Confederate advance on this axis, they could certainly be driven through it and into the river. Thus the fighting would continue to be desperate.

89

On the Hamburg-Purdy Road

10:30 – 11:00 A.M.

West Stop 9

N

On the Hamburg-Purdy Road.

Co

Bu

ck la

rin

th

Ro

Ve a

nd

Behr’s Battery 43

ad

Woolf Field Water Oaks Pond

tch

Corinth Eastern Road

West Stop 9 rd

IL

Marsh 49th IL

Burrow’s Battery

20th IL

11th IL

Anderson Schwartz’s Battery

Ha Johnson

Russell

Stewart

m

bu

rg -

Pu

rd y

Ro

ad

17th IL camp

WEST STOP 9

On the Hamburg-Purdy Road, 10 : 30–11 : 00 a.m.

Directions

Return to your vehicle. Proceed 0.4 mile to the hamburgpurdy road. Just past the intersection and the prominent cannon-barrel monument on your right, pull to the side of the road and park. Walk over to the monument and look back toward the direction from which you have just been driving.

Orientation

This large monument commemorates Col. Julius Raith (pronounced “right”), commander of a brigade in Maj. Gen. John A. McClernand’s 1st Division. You are standing about where Raith’s battle line met the Confederate onslaught and facing about as his men did. The road in front of you is the Hamburg-Purdy Road, along which Sherman’s battered division formed up, farther to your right. The rest of McClernand’s division took up a line angling back to your left rear. The Confederate attack came toward you all along the line to your right and left.

What Happened

As Sherman’s troops fell back to a new position along the Hamburg-Purdy Road, McClernand’s division advanced from

90

West Stop 9

its camps in the Woolf Field vicinity (behind you) and moved into position on Sherman’s left. This gave the Federals a continuous line across the entire northern half of the battlefield, with five full brigades deployed as well as remnants of a sixth (the remains of Hildebrand’s shattered command). The Confederates, now a hodgepodge of regiments from various brigades of three different corps, followed up their victory in the Shiloh Church sector and swarmed forward to strike the new defensive line. Sherman, still energetically directing his division’s fight with conspicuous valor, had a horse shot out from under him near here about this time. It was his second of the day. The third horse, which an aide found and brought to him, was killed twenty minutes later. Capt. Frederick Behr and his 6th Indiana Battery came galloping up just to your right, and Sherman directed him to unlimber and open fire on the rapidly advancing Confederates. Behr had just given the order and the men had begun to obey when the captain fell dead with a Confederate bullet in him. The men of the battery fled in panic, abandoning five of their six guns. The fight was extremely intense, but McClernand’s division soon crumbled. Sherman’s had to follow, and their troops streamed northward (to your right rear) in retreat, abandoning the camps of McClernand’s division as those of Sherman’s had been given up scarcely an hour before. Colonel Raith, who had assumed command of one of McClernand’s brigades only a few hours before because its regular commander was sick, received a mortal wound here while trying to rally his troops. In response to a previous request from Sherman, Hurlbut had detached a brigade from his division and sent it to reinforce this position. That brigade, commanded by Col. James C. Veatch, moved up behind the front here (behind you) just as McClernand’s division was being driven back. Veatch’s brigade fought long enough to cover McClernand’s retreat before itself falling back in disorder. Analysis

At first glance the circumstances here might have seemed to favor a successful Union stand. The Federal position presented a long, continuous front, and more than half of the troops in it, McClernand’s division, were not only fresh to the fighting that day but also, unlike Sherman’s men, combat veterans of the heaviest fighting at Fort Donelson. Yet several important factors worked against the Federals here. This site, though it was a convenient line on which to rally, did not offer the terrain advantages that Sherman’s division had enjoyed in its previous position along the forward slope of the

91

On the Hamburg-Purdy Road

ridge near Shiloh Church. A soldier of Col. C. Carroll Marsh’s 2nd Brigade of McClernand’s division, trying to hold the line about 200 yards to your left, wrote: “We could not see them [the Rebels] as they crouched down behind a rise of ground, while we were entirely exposed and within easy range of their guns. . . . We had to load on our backs and fire on our knees to keep from all being killed, so our fire was not so rapid.” In addition, the Confederates, despite rampant confusion in their ranks, still held the advantage of momentum, as will be seen more fully at the next stop.

Major-General John A. McClernand. blcw 1:405

92

West Stop 10

10:30 – 11:00 A.M.

West Stop 10

N

Review Field.

Water Oaks Pond

Woolf Field

West Stop 10

Corinth Road

McAllister’s Battery 13th IA

45th IL

18th IL

48th IL

20th IL

4th TN

Shaver

Wood 17th IL camp

Ha

29th IL camp

mb

ur g-P

Review Field

12th TN

ur dy

43rd IL camp

Ro

ad Stanford’s MS Battery

WEST STOP 10

Review Field, 10: 30–11 : 00 a.m.

Directions

Return to your vehicle. Proceed along the corinth road. The road forks almost immediately. Bear right (the left fork is one way from the opposite direction). Proceed about 0.3 mile. Pull to the side and park. Through the trees to your right is an open field, on the edge of which are two cannon and a monument commemorating Capt. Edward McAllister’s Battery D, 1st Illinois Light Artillery. Walk to the cannon and stand next to them, facing in the direction they point.

Orientation

In front of you is a field that Grant’s soldiers called Review Field, for several units had used it for that purpose. You are standing on the defensive line of McClernand’s division, part of the position he took up in connection with Sherman’s along the Hamburg-Purdy Road (see West Stop 7). The Confederates advanced from the far side of the clearing and through the woods on either side. The road on the far side of the field is the Hamburg-Purdy Road. McAllister’s battery, consisting of four 24-pounder howitzers, was part of McClernand’s division. It took up a position here, where the open ground in front gave it a good field

93

Review Field

of fire. To your left was Col. Abraham M. Hare’s 1st Brigade of McClernand’s division, and to your right Marsh’s 2nd Brigade. What Happened

The Confederate attack here is a prime example of the confusion among the jumbled units of Johnston’s army, stemming in large part from Beauregard’s faulty initial deployment. The advancing units at this particular point of the field consisted of a regiment (the 4th Tennessee) of Brig. Gen. Alexander P. Stewart’s Brigade of Polk’s Corps and a regiment (the 12th Tennessee) of Col. Robert M. Russell’s Brigade of the same corps, both separated from their brigades. Coming up on the left of these regiments (your right) was Wood’s Brigade of Hardee’s Corps. The combined force was led by Brig. Gen. Thomas C. Hindman of Hardee’s Corps. The energetic Hindman, conspicuous in an oilcloth poncho, raced about trying to get the two Tennessee regiments in position for an attack against McAllister’s battery, “whooping like a Commanche, and with his horse on a dead run,” until a shot from one of the Federal cannon dismembered Hindman’s horse and tossed the general 10 feet through the air. Staggering to his feet, Hindman shouted, “Tennesseans, take that battery,” and then collapsed. McAllister’s guns also succeeded in silencing Capt. Thomas J. Stanford’s Mississippi Battery, which attempted to support the attack from the far side of the field. The two Tennessee regiments charged. The fire of McAllister’s guns induced one of them, the 4th, to swerve to its left (your right), into the cover of the forest, where Wood’s Brigade was also advancing. This brought a very heavy force to bear on the two Union regiments just to your right, the 45th Illinois and beyond it the 48th Illinois. In an extremely intense firefight, the Illinoisans, outnumbered by about three to one, suffered very high casualties, especially among officers. The 48th broke first, which meant that the 45th also had to retire. On the far side of the 48th, Lt. Jerome B. Burrow’s 14th Ohio Battery was completely overrun, losing all six guns. With the line falling to pieces, Hare’s brigade (on your left) and McAllister’s battery also had to fall back. Captain McAllister, though suffering four minor wounds, still managed to get three of his four guns away; too many horses had been shot to draw off the fourth.

Analysis

The Confederates, though disorganized, were highly motivated by their previous successes in overrunning several Union positions and camps. This momentum, along with the more or less accidental local superiority in numbers they achieved here, proved decisive in this fight.

94

West Stop 10

Vignette

Along the firing line of the 45th Illinois, in the woods to your right, Capt. Luther H. Cowan noticed the last words of those of his men who were killed in this fight. “Those who were wounded and died soon,” he explained in a letter to his wife, “seemed to care for nothing only for the safety of their comrades and victory; their last words being invariably cheering their brother soldiers and telling them never to give up. About the last words that Geo. Warner spoke were to thank God that he had been spared to fire (I think) 32 times with good aim at the enemy, surely a great consolation. Poor Nelson Blinberry was shot so fatally that he did not speak a word. He was shot near the heart under the left breast. He was in a stooping posture, when he was shot he rose up, put his hand on his breast, walked about ten steps and fell dead never uttering a groan. He was as good a soldier as ever left Jo Davies county and that is saying a good deal.” Lt. Nesbitt Baugher of the same regiment described in a letter to his father three days later his own experience of being shot during this action. “The first wound I received was in the right leg, below the knee, passing through the leg, but breaking no bones. This shot knocked me down, and I tried to crawl off the field, when another shot took me about two inches to the right of the rectum. I thought that was getting no better fast. So I got up the best I could and whilst hobbling along was hit in the right shoulder. I turned round and defiantly held up my sword, when a bullet split on its edge and entered my face at the cheek bone. Another bullet struck between two of my fingers cutting them slightly.”

95 McClernand’s Camps

WEST STOP 11

McClernand’s Camps

Directions

Return to your vehicle. Immediately upon starting, turn sharply left on mcclernand road, which should enter corinth–pittsburg landing road directly to the left of where you have been parked. Proceed just over 0.3 mile to a point at which the road bends sharply (more than 90 degrees) to the left. The broad paved area on the outside edge of this sharp bend gives ample room to park. Do so.

Capture of a Confiederate battery. blcw 1:527

96

West Stop 11a

Jones Field

West Stop 11a

Ta ylo

r’s

Gu

ns

11th IL camp

man

Sher

McAllister’s Battery

Road

Burrow’s Battery

20th IL camp

48th IL camp Cobb’s KY Battery Dis

org

West Stop 11a ani

zed

Co

nfe

der ate

uni

ts

Woolf Field

N

11:00 – 11:30 A.M. The Confederates advance.

45th IL camp

West Stop 11a. The Confederates Advance 11:00–

11: 30 a.m. Directions

Just on the left side of the road (that is, inside the bend) is a cannon commemorating Capt. Robert Cobb’s Kentucky Battery. Walk to the cannon and stand near it, facing in the direction it points.

Orientation

You are standing amid the camps of McClernand’s division, specifically those of Marsh’s brigade, which here lay along a

97

The Confederates Advance

more or less north-south line. The center of the 45th Illinois’s camp is about 250 yards behind you, and the center of the 48th Illinois’s camp is about 125 yards in front of you. You are facing in the same direction as McClernand’s fleeing troops as they strove to escape the debacle along the HamburgPurdy Road line. You are also facing as the pursuing Confederates did when they arrived. What Happened

As their troops streamed back through here in retreat, McClernand and Marsh attempted to rally the men for a stand nearby. Their efforts proved futile, for the men were badly confused and the Confederate pursuit was too close. The Union troops continued their flight through Marsh’s remaining camps until they reached Jones Field, campsite of another of McClernand’s brigades, about 750 yards in front of you. Entering Marsh’s camps, the pursuing Confederates paused, partially because they were winded and extremely disorganized and partially because they were eager to plunder the tents. This desire stemmed both from curiosity and from hunger since many of the Confederates had long since consumed the last of the rations issued in Corinth three days ago that were supposed to have lasted them until after the battle. The pause became prolonged, for many of the Confederate officers either could not or would not get their men moving again. Russell’s Brigade probed forward through the woods and had a bloody but inclusive clash with the 15th and 16th Iowa Regiments—recently arrived troops Grant had sent to bolster McClernand—near the south end of Jones Field. While the bulk of Confederate strength in this sector ransacked Marsh’s camps or otherwise milled around in disorder, Sherman’s and McClernand’s Federals regrouped in Jones Field. Major Taylor brought together nine guns— Barrett’s battery and fugitive guns from other batteries—and set them up on a rise in the south end of Jones Field. A fierce duel ensued between those guns and Confederate artillery situated at the north end of Woolf Field, particularly Cobb’s Kentucky Battery.

Vignette

Union artillery pounded Cobb’s Kentucky Battery and its supporting infantry. Confederate soldier Johnny Green of Kentucky saw three of the four men in the file next to his killed by a single shell. Another shell killed two of Cobb’s gunners and tore both hands off a third. Looking at the bloody stumps, the stunned artillerist gasped, “My Lord, that stops my fighting.”

98

West Stop 11b

West Stop 11b

11:30 A.M. – 1:00 P.M.

N

The Federals counterattack.

Pond

Jones Field th

IA 15

th

IA

She

rma

Clebur ne (−)

n R oa

d

16

Burrow’s Battery McAllister’s Battery

Trabue

Har McDowell (intee and R r min aith gled )

Russell

40th IL 13th MO 6th IA 46th OH

11th IL camp

48th IL camp

Ma

West Stop 11b

Cobb’s KY Battery (captured)

rsh 45 th

ers

IL

And

20th IL camp

on

Hodgson’s LA Battery

Jo

hn s (in on ter an mi d S ng te led wa ) rt Woolf Field

West Stop 11b.

The Federals Counterattack 11 : 30 a.m.–

1 :00 p.m. Directions

Turn to your left rear, cross the road, and walk about 40 yards to the tablet marking the position of the 11th Iowa, on the right-hand side of the road. Turn and face the tablet.

Orientation

You are standing roughly on the line that Union troops reached in their midday counterattack and held for about an

99

The Federals Counterattack

hour afterward. The Confederates advanced from your front directly toward your present position. What Happened

About 11: 30 a.m. McClernand and Sherman launched a counterattack from their positions around Jones Field back toward the camps of Marsh’s brigade in Woolf Field. McDowell’s brigade of Sherman’s division was still virtually fresh, having merely fallen back to keep pace with the rest of the division without having received a serious attack itself. It anchored the far right of the Union advance (to your right). Some Union regiments were out of ammunition, and others did not get the order, but in all about two-thirds of the two divisions joined in the assault. The disorganized Confederates were thrown back. McClernand’s men overran Cobb’s Kentucky Battery, capturing all six guns. Sherman and McClernand, however, simply did not have the manpower to hold this advanced position against the weight of numbers the Confederates could eventually deploy against it— once the Rebels sorted themselves out. The brigades of Russell, Stewart, and Johnson (all three from Polk’s Corps), Brig. Gen. Patton Anderson (of Bragg’s Corps), and Col. Robert P. Trabue (of Breckinridge’s Reserve Corps), along with other odds and ends of Confederate units in the area, all participated in pushing back the Federals. Still it proved to be no easy task. Capt. W. Irving Hodgson’s Louisiana Battery, the 5th Company of the New Orleans Washington Artillery, took up a position about 200 yards directly in front of you, hoping to use close-range artillery fire to blast McClernand’s men out of the position where you now stand, but accurate rifle fire from the Union infantrymen was soon exacting such a toll on cannoneers and horses that the battery was compelled to limber up and make a hasty retreat. It is important to remember that the woods in this area were far thinner than they are now. What finally broke the Federals loose from this position was the progressive crumbling of their right flank, McDowell’s brigade. The Union advance had slanted across the Confederate front, exposing McDowell’s flank to attack by the brigades of Trabue and Brig. Gen. Preston Pond (of Bragg’s Corps). McDowell’s brigade, previously all but untouched, was soon wrecked and driven back. The rest of the line, including Marsh’s brigade (extending from here to your left), fell back fighting to the vicinity of Jones Field by about 1:00 p.m.

Analysis

Although some critics have characterized Sherman and McClernand’s counterattack as wasted valor, it did serve to

100

West Stop 11b

throw the Confederates off balance, win another two hours of valuable time in the fighting retreat toward the river, and draw into the vortex of fighting here reinforcements (such as Trabue’s Brigade) that ought to have been directed to the Confederate right (or right center) if Johnston’s original attack plan was to have any chance of success. Vignette

The 45th Illinois, of Marsh’s brigade, advanced on your left. It had been raised in northwestern Illinois, an area known for its lead mines, and the principal town of the region, Grant’s adopted hometown of Galena, was even named for the mineral that was at the heart of the local economy. The 45th was therefore nicknamed “the Lead Mine Regiment.” As its major led the Illinoisans forward as part of the midday counterattack, he waved a “sabre longer than himself” and shouted encouragement to the men: “Go in boys. Give them some more Galena pills. They’ll think they have opened a new lead mine.” As the regimental surgeon described the action, “the fight was a fierce one. Our men fell short of ammunition and charged bayonets, the enemy retreating and running.”

Further Exploration

Sherman Road (gravel, closed to auto traffic) extends northward from the sharp bend of the road you are on. A hike of about 0.5 mile along this road will take you past the campsites of Marsh’s brigade (markers are located in the woods a few yards to the right of the road) and into the south end of Jones Field, where you will find, among others, the position marker for Barrett’s (Taylor’s) Battery B, 1st Illinois Light Artillery. Now is a good point in the tour to consider several important developments that were happening on other parts of the battlefield at about this time, events that would have significant influence on the fighting discussed in West Stop 12. Because these developments apply equally to the course of the battle addressed in both the East and West Tours, please turn to Appendix A (page 145) for a discussion (unless you have previously read that section as part of the eastern route).

101

Duncan Field

10:00 A.M. – 4:30 P.M.

West Stop 12

N

Duncan Field.

7t h

8th IL

Cr eek

8th IL

58

Br

iar

IL

C

nt ori

hR

oad

th IL 2n

West Stop 12

d IA

Co rn ste Ea

gles

ad

IA

Ro

Rug

th

en

12

nk

rin

Su

Duncan Field

th

IA

Ro

h

ad

7t

Duncan Farm Buildings

’s Ba tter y

Munch’s Battery

WEST STOP 12

Duncan Field, 10 :00 a.m.– 4 : 30 p.m.

Directions

Return to your vehicle. Proceed on mcclernand road about 0.4 mile to corinth–pittsburg landing road. Turn left and proceed 0.5 mile to Ruggles’s Battery. Park in the turnout on the left. Walk to the nearest cannon in the line that extends to the right of the road. Face in the direction the cannon are pointing. En route, at about the 0.1 mile point, where McClernand Road bends sharply to the right, you may notice the marker for the Washington Artillery on the right.

Orientation

The clearing in front of you is Duncan Field, which had been a cotton field prior to the battle, but by April 1862 it was overgrown with weeds, some of them as high as a man’s head. On the right-hand side of the Corinth–Pittsburg Landing Road, about 150 yards directly in front of you, stood the Joseph Duncan farmhouse and outbuildings, along with a stack of cotton bales. Beyond the farmstead, beginning on the righthand side of the Corinth–Pittsburg Landing Road and running along the tree line at the far side of the field, is the farm

102

West Stop 12

lane known as the Sunken Road. Farther to your right along the Sunken Road is the area of dense thickets known as the Hornets’ Nest, and beyond that the road passes between the Peach Orchard and Bloody Pond (see East Stops 9 and 17). What Happened

The Union divisions of Hurlbut and W. H. L. Wallace were camped close to Pittsburg Landing, farthest from the initial fighting of the morning. The two generals moved their troops up to support the hard-pressed divisions in front. Hurlbut sent one brigade, Veatch’s, to reinforce Sherman and took his other two brigades into line on the left (your right) of the remnants of Prentiss’s division forming up at the far end of the Sunken Road. That put Hurlbut’s men in the vicinity of the Peach Orchard. Wallace brought his division into line on Prentiss’s right, covering the entire length of the Sunken Road visible to you as well as an additional stretch out of sight in the woods and thickets beyond the right edge of the field (as you view it). Throughout the late morning and afternoon, several Confederate attacks hammered at the Sunken Road and Peach Orchard (see the Hornets’ Nest Excursion). Particularly after Sherman and McClernand fell back to Jones Field (to your left rear) about 1:00 p.m., more and more Confederate units turned south and southeastward toward this sector. The first Rebel troops began moving into position on this side of the field as early as 10:00 a.m., and Confederate artillery began dueling with Union guns across the clearing. At 10 : 30 the first assault was launched, traversing the far right side of the field and the woods beyond. Like the seven other assaults that followed (as some observers counted them), some of them out of sight to your right, it was a bloody failure. About 3:00 p.m. two regiments of Federals, the 7th and 58th Illinois, moved forward and took cover amid the buildings and cotton bales of the Duncan farmstead, directly in front of you, where you see several trees and a monument consisting of a pyramid of cannon balls. Confederates of the (Louisiana) Crescent Regiment and the 38th Tennessee, supported by two batteries of artillery, drove them out. At 3:30 another major Confederate assault crossed Duncan Field and again broke up amid appalling slaughter within a few yards of the Sunken Road. After the failed 3 :30 assault, several Confederate officers began energetically collecting artillery for use against the Union position. Brig. Gen. Daniel Ruggles, a division commander in Bragg’s Corps, was one of these officers, and history has called this concentration of guns “Ruggles’s Battery.” The long line of cannon stretching away to your right com-

103

Duncan Field

memorates some 53 guns that bombarded the Sunken Road during the late afternoon. The barrage reached a crescendo at about 4: 30 p.m. but quickly faded in intensity. The Union guns that had initially answered the Confederates with accurate fire now withdrew, as did much of the supporting infantry. But several thousand Union soldiers found themselves surrounded and were compelled to surrender. Analysis

The Sunken Road position became one of the keys to the first day’s fighting. In most places it was not anything like a “ready-made trench” because it was not deep enough. At few places it could provide more than minimal cover to a prone soldier. It was, however, a tangible line on which Wallace’s division and the remnants of Prentiss’s command could form up and defend. Confederate efforts against the Sunken Road were not impressive. The eight separate frontal assaults, each delivered by about a single brigade, were hardly an advertisement for the tactical skills of the Confederate officers in immediate command on this part of the field, chiefly Bragg. Doing better, however, would not have been easy. Beauregard’s defective initial alignment of the army—with the corps spread out one behind another—had led to substantial fragmentation of units of brigade size and larger. Hard fighting and rough terrain had contributed to this as well. As a result it would have been extremely difficult and time-consuming to mass troops for a larger-than-brigade-size assault. While outflanking the enemy always sounds good in the abstract, difficulties loomed in the form of rough terrain and unknown enemy strength and dispositions. Much time would have been lost in an attempted flanking movement, with results no general standing where you now stand on the afternoon of April 6, 1862, could have predicted. Bragg chose to bet that one more assault would carry the position. He bet wrong. What finally gave the Confederates the Sunken Road was their success in driving back McClernand, to the west of the sector, in the early afternoon (West Stop 11b) and their eventual success in driving back Hurlbut, to the east of it (East Stop 10). The retreat of the units on their flanks forced most of the Union troops in the Sunken Road at least to attempt withdrawal. Ironically the impressive collection of artillery here and to your right probably contributed little if anything to the Union retreat. Civil War artillery was notoriously ineffective against defending infantry, and in any event, the Federals were soon falling back due to other causes. Most important, however, the time the Confederates lost

104

West Stop 12

while stalled here in front of the Sunken Road may have been the difference between success and failure in their grand offensive of the first day. En route to the next stop, you may wish to pause and view the Sunken Road where it joins the Corinth Road— on the far side of the field on the right-hand side of the road. If you wish to study the Federal position in more depth, turn to page 101 for a walking excursion through this sector. In order to follow the stops in the excursion, walk along the Sunken Road to the far end (at the Peach Orchard), then turn around and walk back, reading and observing the stops.

Brigadier-General W. H. L. Wallace. blcw 1:478

105

Hell’s Hollow

4:00 – 5:00 P.M.

West Stop 13

N

Hell’s Hollow.

ad Co

3rd IA camp

Cloud Field

31st IN camp

oad

38th T

rin

N

th

Ro

TN

nnah R

Stacy Field

d

e

a rg-Sav

33r

Hambu

Tra bu

1st AL Cav.

MO

58th IL

22nd TN 23rd

IA

l l 8oth w

Easte rn Corin th Rd

.

Ho

32nd IL camp

n

W. H. L. Wallace is wounded

Prentiss surrenders

o Jacks

Crescent Reg’t

s

IA

ll’

West Stop 13

ers

5th TN

41st IL camp

14th

He

IA

Chalm

12th

28th IL camp

WEST STOP 13

Hell’s Hollow, 4: 00–5: 00 p.m.

Directions

Return to your vehicle. Proceed 0.5 mile. On your right is the Confederate Memorial. Park in the pullout on the right side of the road. Stand in the grassy area in front of the monument and face the direction in which you were driving. En route, approximately 0.3 miles from Stop 10, notice the large monument with an upended cannon barrel on your right. This commemorates where Brig. Gen. William H. L.

106

West Stop 13

Wallace fell, mortally wounded, during the Union retreat from the Hornets’ Nest. Orientation

You are in the part of the battlefield known as Hell’s Hollow. The Sunken Road is about 600 yards behind you. Grant’s final defensive line around Pittsburg Landing is just over a mile in front of you. Much closer, about 180 yards to your right rear beyond the woods, is Stacy Field, site of the camp of the 3rd Iowa. At the time of the Civil War, the woods on your left stopped—and Cloud Field started—about 50 yards to your left. There, on the near edge of Cloud Field, was the camp of the 41st Illinois and, beyond it, those of several other Union regiments, all of Hurlbut’s division. You are facing in much the same direction as the Union soldiers as they retreated from the Sunken Road sector.

What Happened

Shortly after 4:00 p.m. it was becoming apparent that the Sunken Road position would not hold much longer. With his right-flank brigade, Sweeny’s, beginning to crumble and Confederate troops streaming unimpeded around his right flank, W. H. L. Wallace knew he had to get his division out quickly if it was going to get out at all. He ordered an immediate retreat, but as he was overseeing the operation about 300 yards behind you (where you saw the cannon-barrel monument en route from the last stop), he was shot through the head. With Confederate troops closing in rapidly from behind and both sides, his staff officers reluctantly left him for dead. At about 4: 15 p.m. the 2nd and 7th Iowa, some of the first troops to march through Hell’s Hollow in the retreat from the Sunken Road, found Confederate troops in possession of the 3rd Iowa’s camp in Stacy Field, to your left front. The 2nd and 7th deployed into line of battle, pushed the Confederates back, and broke through to Pittsburg Landing. A member of the 7th later explained, “If we had not left when we did, we would all have been taken prisoners.” Other Union troops retreated through this area in rapid succession, until by 4 : 45 p.m. eleven of the fifteen regiments in Wallace’s division had successfully withdrawn, along with all the artillery in the division’s sector. Among the units that did not get out was the 58th Illinois. Having held the front just north of the Sunken Road and briefly taken the Duncan farm buildings (near West Stop 12), the 58th attempted to retreat through Hell’s Hollow around 4 : 45 only to find its route hopelessly blocked by the ever-growing Confederate presence in this area. Most of the regiment’s 300 surviving members surrendered in and behind the area where you are now standing. Most or all of 8th Iowa and the 23rd Missouri also surrendered nearby at about this time. The 12th Iowa ran out

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Hell’s Hollow

of time and space and laid down its arms in the abandoned camp of the 41st Illinois, about 50 yards to your right front, and exultant Confederate cavalrymen dragged the regiment’s flag back and forth through a mud puddle. Analysis

Once Sherman’s and McClernand’s divisions were driven back from their positions in Woolf Field (West Stop 11), the collapse of the Sunken Road position was only a matter of time. Confederate forces began to flow around both the left and right flanks of the defenders. For example, Trabue’s Kentucky brigade, which had been fighting McClernand’s men in Woolf Field, moved southeastward and eventually took up a position facing you about 100 yards directly ahead, blocking the escape of the Union regiments still in this sector. Other Confederate units made similar moves. Nevertheless, the six hours during which Wallace’s division, along with Hurlbut’s and the remnants of Prentiss’s, stalled the Confederate advance were probably decisive in defeating Johnston’s plans and saving Grant’s army.

Vignette

Contrary to the expectations of his staff officers, W. H. L. Wallace did not immediately die as a result of his head wound. He lay on the battlefield throughout the stormy night of April 6, and the following day, when Union troops retook this ground, they found the general clinging to life. Early on the morning of the sixth, Wallace’s wife, Ann, had arrived by steamboat at Pittsburg Landing to pay her husband a surprise visit. The outbreak of the battle prevented her from going to his camp, and she spent the day helping tend the wounded who were brought aboard her steamboat as well as the others at the landing. That evening she received the report that her husband was dead and his body left to the pursuing Rebels. “God gave me strength,” she later recalled, and she went on tending the wounded through most of the night. The next day Ann was overjoyed when her beloved Will was brought in from the field, badly wounded but conscious and able to recognize her voice and speak to her. Taken to the Cherry Mansion in Savannah, Grant’s prebattle headquarters, Wallace lived until April 10, frequently conversing with his wife. Ann and his friends began to hope that he might recover. That day, however, an infection set in, and he failed rapidly. His last words, spoken to Ann, were, “We meet in Heaven.” This concludes the western tour. If you have not yet taken the eastern tour and wish to do so, turn to page 33 (East Stop 6). If you have completed both tours and are ready to proceed to the completion of the first day’s fighting, continue to the next page.

108

Stop 14

5:00 – 6:30 P.M.

Stop 14

N

ry

ve rsp ore Po ’s B we att ll’s er y Ba tte ry

er y

tte

att ’s B

Ba r’s

ne Sto

se es Dr

Sil

Hic ke n Ba loop tte er r y ’s

Stop 14

Tennessee River

We lke Sc r’s B hw a Ric ar tz tter y ’s B ha sie rds ge on atter gu ’s B y Ma ns at ter nn y ’s B att er y

Grant’s last line.

Pittsburg Landing

McAllister’s Battery

Munch’s Battery Markgraf’s Battery

Dill

Jackson

Chalmers

ch

Peas (−)

Bran

Anderson

USS Tyler

USS Lexington

STOP 14

Grant’s Last Line, 5:00– 6:30 p.m.

Directions

If coming from East Stop 11, on exiting the parking area, turn right on hamburg-savannah road and proceed 0.9 mile to corinth–pittsburg landing road. Turn right and proceed 0.5 mile to a T intersection. Turn right on pittsburg landing road. Proceed 0.2 mile and park in the turnout on the righthand side of the road, opposite the large white column of the Iowa monument. Walk to the cannon commemorating Battery C, 1st Missouri Light Artillery (Mann’s battery). Face in the direction the cannon are pointing. If coming from West Stop 13, return to your vehicle. Proceed in the same direction you were last driving 0.8 mile to a T intersection. Turn right on pittsburg landing road. Proceed 0.2 mile and park in the turnout on the right-hand side of the road, opposite the large white column of the Iowa monument. Walk to the cannon commemorating Battery C, 1st Missouri Light Artillery (Mann’s battery). Face in the direction the cannon are pointing.

109 Grant’s Last Line Orientation

You are standing at the last line of defense taken up by Grant’s troops on the evening of April 6. Pittsburg Landing and the Tennessee River are about 650 yards to your left. The Union line extended from near the landing, through where you now stand and about another 1,200 yards to your right, then curved somewhat to your right rear to a point about a mile from where you are. The ground in front of you descends gradually at first and then very steeply into the ravine of Dill’s Branch, a tributary of the Tennessee. A side ravine of the main Dill’s Branch ravine begins just to your left front. The rim of the main Dill’s Branch ravine is a little more than 600 yards in front of you. The bottom of the ravine is about 80 feet below the level on which you are now standing.

What Happened

Making full use of the time for which the troops of Wallace, Prentiss, and Hurlbut were fighting around the Hornets’ Nest and Sunken Road, Grant prepared to make a final stand along this line. He had his chief of staff, Col. Joseph D. Webster, collect all the artillery he could find. Webster brought the army’s siege guns into position on this line, along with two as yet uncommitted batteries, and then added to his artillery force as batteries fled from the crumbling positions farther south and west. By 6 : 00 p.m. he had 41 guns along this line, 10 of them positioned on a ridge jutting forward near the river so that they could fire right up the length of Dill’s Branch ravine. Also firing up the length of that valley from their positions on the Tennessee River were the gunboats uss Tyler and uss Lexington, both armed with cannon far larger than any of the field or even siege guns in Grant’s army. Supporting the artillery on this line were some 18,000 infantry, the whole remaining combat strength of the Army of the Tennessee, including Sherman’s and McClernand’s divisions, which moved back to form the right end of the line. On the far left end of the line, Grant’s soldiers were joined by about 550 fresh troops of Brig. Gen. William “Bull” Nelson’s 4th Division of Don Carlos Buell’s Army of the Ohio, just then arriving on the battlefield from the other side of the river after marching up the east bank from Savannah that afternoon. The rest of Buell’s army was approaching the opposite bank and awaiting ferrying across the river. At about 6: 00 p.m., several hundred yards to the south (in front) of where you now stand, Bragg marshaled about 4,000 Confederate troops and sent them forward to attack this last line. “One more charge, my men, and we shall capture them all,” he exhorted. But the attack failed before the firepower of Webster’s massed artillery, and the Confederates fell back

110

Stop 14

just as the sun was setting. As Bragg and his division commander Jones M. Withers struggled to get additional troops into line and prepare a larger assault, orders came from Beauregard, now far to the rear in the vicinity of Shiloh Church, to halt the attack and pull the troops back. “The victory,” read Beauregard’s message to Bragg, “is sufficiently complete.” “My God,” exclaimed Bragg, “Was a victory ever sufficiently complete?” He considered suspending execution of the order, but other units were already withdrawing, and no time remained to reverse their course and stage a final assault before complete darkness fell. Analysis

Both armies were battered, depleted, and all but exhausted. Beauregard, from his headquarters in the rear, was ill positioned to know the situation at the front. Around him was the debris common to the rear areas of all Civil War armies engaged in battle—wounded men, skulkers, and other stragglers who had become separated from their regiments. Such scenes always conveyed the impression that the army was suffering severely. Also, much of the fire of the Union gunboats was passing over its intended targets near the front and landing closer to Beauregard. The new Confederate commander had received faulty intelligence to the effect that Buell’s army would not join Grant for several more days, and he probably believed he had Grant’s army at his mercy and could destroy it at leisure in the morning. Beauregard therefore canceled the attack with probably about an hour of at least partial daylight remaining. What did that order mean for the course of the battle? Of the positions the Confederates had taken thus far during the day, Shiloh ridge and the Hornet’s Nest had held for hours, while the Hamburg-Purdy Road line had gone to pieces in less than an hour. Grant’s final position was stronger than any of these. Would it have held, or would it have gone to pieces like the Hamburg-Purdy Road line? Along with such factors are the intangibles, the questions as to how much continued willingness to face battle was left in the soldiers of the opposing armies. If the Confederates had been able to break this line, it seems almost impossible that Grant could have formed another between here and the landing, and the result would have been the capture of most of his army. Could one final massed Rebel assault have broken this line? Probably not. Yet the Confederates had come a very long way and had paid an extremely high price to get here—too far and too high to justify giving up while any hope still remained of achieving a truly complete victory.

111 Grant’s Last Line

N

Dill Branch Excursion

Union Line

ill D

Anderson

e Ri

ad

esse ver

Ro

BRECKINRIDGE

Co

rin

Cloud Field

n Ten

urgHamb d ah Roa

Savann

th

Gladden

10th MS

th

nd

rin

Jackson Chalmers

nch

La

Bra

Co

Pittsburg Landing

in

–P itt g R sbu oa rg d

Stone’s Battery

Dill Branch Excursion Directions

If you wish to examine the terrain over which the Confederates made their final sunset attack, walk from the Visitor Center parking area to the right of the flagpole to four artillery pieces on a knoll, representing Stone’s battery. (It is also the next battery east of Mann’s battery [Stop 14]). To the right of Stone’s battery, just beyond a split-rail fence, is a small path leading south. Follow it for about 350 yards. You will find a Confederate tablet indicating the farthest advance of Chalmers’s skirmishers as they made the attack in this sector. About 10 yards to the left of the tablet, Dill Branch ravine drops off precipitately. Approximately 90 feet deep, the ravine empties into the Tennessee River. When the river is high, backwater inundates the narrow valley, making the mouth of Dill Branch impassable and rendering its bottom soggy even a half-mile inland. By 5: 30 p.m. on April 6, Union artillery supported by infantry covered the ravine, as did to a limited extent the Union gun-

112

Stop 14

boats prowling the river. The artillery was not just in the area of the Visitor Center. Two batteries controlled a spur that jutted out about 200 yards in advance of the main line, thereby subjecting any attacking force to a crossfire. Small wonder the Confederates got no farther than this point.

Brigadier-General Ulysses S. Grant. blcw 1:464

Overview of the Second Day, April 7, 1862 Morning had no sooner broken on Monday, April 7, than Grant made good his decision to counterattack. Buell’s fresh and unbloodied Army of the Ohio (about 13,000 effectives) would take the left side of the Union line. Grant’s own badly bloodied Army of the Tennessee, or what was left of it (about 25,000 effectives, including the 7,300 men of Maj. Gen. Lew Wallace’s fresh division), would take the right. Grant’s orders were simple: drive southwest and retake the ground lost on April 6. At first Buell’s troops encountered little or no resistance, as Beauregard had pulled his army back some distance the evening of the sixth. But as the Federals neared the scene of some of the previous day’s hardest fighting, they encountered solid Confederate battle lines, and a furious combat erupted and continued with little intermission until midafternoon. The Sunken Road, Peach Orchard, Sarah Bell’s Old Cotton Field, and the nearby Davis Wheat Field once again saw desperate fighting. Several times the Confederates counterattacked, sometimes with considerable local success, but each time their success was short-lived, for the steady Union pressure drove the scene of the fighting relentlessly southwestward. On the Union right advanced the Army of the Tennessee. It was a wonder, of sorts, that several thousand men of Sherman’s, McClernand’s, and Hurlbut’s traumatized divisions could be gotten into line and marched forward into battle at all, after what they had seen in the past twenty-four hours. But advance they did, finding the Confederate defenders initially at a disadvantage in this sector. Lew Wallace’s division, advancing on the extreme Union right, outflanked the Confederate line and repeatedly forced it to retire. Had Wallace been more aggressive, the results might have been even more spectacular. Hemming the battlefield on the north was Owl Creek, with its adjoining bottomlands. Owl Creek does not, however, flow on a straight east-west line. Rather it slants from southwest to northeast as it makes its way to Snake Creek shortly before the latter joins the Tennessee River. The Army of the Tennessee, driving westward along Owl Creek’s south bank, slanted farther and farther south due to the course of the creek. This not only brought it closer to Buell’s Army of the Ohio but also effectively gave the Confederates a shorter front to defend. That fact, coupled with Wallace’s extreme caution, allowed Bragg to cobble together a defensive line more or less along the axis of the Hamburg-Purdy Road,

114

Overview of the Second Day

Major-General Don Carlos Buell. blcw 1:384

roughly the same place (but facing the opposite direction) as Sherman and McClernand’s short-lived position of the previous day. Fierce fighting raged along this line for two hours, especially in the vicinity of Water Oaks Pond. By midafternoon, however, Confederate commanders had become convinced—rightly so—that their army was on the verge of collapse and could take little more punishment. On Beauregard’s order, the Army of the Mississippi disengaged and began the march back to Corinth. The exhausted Federals made little pursuit.

115

Eastern Route

Eastern Route, April 7 EAST STOP 15

The Line of Departure, 5 : 00 a.m.

Directions

From the Visitor Center, exit the parking lot, turn right, and proceed about 50 yards west on the corinth–pittsburg landing road until you see two gold tablets on the left side of the road. The tablets note the participation of two divisions of Buell’s Army of the Ohio. Pull over to the side. You need not leave your vehicle, but pause to consider the location. From West Stop 19, return to your vehicle. Proceed 1.8 miles to the Visitor Center and use the parking lot there to turn around. From there turn right and proceed about 50 yards west on the corinth–pittsburg landing road until you see two gold tablets on the left side of the road. The tablets note the participation of two divisions of Buell’s Army of the Ohio. Pull over to the side. You need not leave your vehicle, but pause to consider the location.

Orientation

You are presently in the assembly area of Nelson’s division on the evening of April 6. “Grant’s Last Line” stretched off to both the east and west. Dill Branch lies about 450 yards beyond (south of ) the two tablets.

What Happened

At least some elements (possibly only the 36th Indiana) of Col. Jacob Ammen’s 10th Brigade, of Nelson’s division, arrived in time to help repel the last Confederate attack on the first day’s battle. The rest of Nelson’s division arrived by 9 : 00 p.m., followed within two hours by the First Division, under Brig. Gen. Thomas L. Crittenden. The Sixth Division, under Brig. Gen. Thomas J. Wood, arrived the afternoon of April 7, albeit too late to play a significant role in the fighting. For all practical purposes, Buell brought 13,000 men into the second day’s battle. Although Grant and Buell encountered each other as early as 1: 00 p.m. on April 6, they never made plans for a coordinated counterattack. Their loose arrangement called for Buell’s troops to attack east of the Corinth Road, while Grant’s troops advanced west of it.

Vignette

In his after-action report, Crittenden noted: “We had great difficulty in landing our troops. The bank of the river at the landing was covered with from 6,000 to 10,000 entirely demoralized soldiery. I was so disgusted, that I asked General Buell to permit me to land a regiment and drive them away. I did not wish my troops to come in contact with them. [Buell declined.] We landed, however, forcing our way through this

116

East Stop 15

Major-General Thomas L. Crittenden. blcw 1:526

mob, and stood to our arms all night on the road, half a mile from the landing, at the place designated by General Buell. At about 5 a.m. we were conducted to our position by General Buell in person. My division took its position on the right of General Nelson. When General [Alexander McD.] McCook came upon the field he took his position (directed by General Buell, as I am informed) on my right, which placed me in the center of our army.”

117

Wicker Field

5:00 – 10:00 A.M.

East Stop 16

N

Br

Dill

an

ch

nd

in

Pittsburg Landing

La

Co

rin

th

–P itt g R sbu oa rg d

Wicker Field.

Rousseau (McCook’s Div.)

Ammen

rin

th

ver

Ro

Bruce

e Ri

ad

NELSON

esse

Hazen

Confederate skirmishers encountered at 8:30 a.m. Cloud Field

n Ten

urgHamb d ah Roa

Savann

Stacy Field

Co

Wicker Field

Bloody Pond

East Stop 16 Sporadic fighting in this area, 9:00–10:00 a.m.

EAST STOP 16

Wicker Field, 5 :00–10 : 00 a.m.

Directions

Continue 0.3 mile and turn left on the corinth–pittsburg landing road. Proceed 0.6 mile to a fork in the road. Bear left, which will place you on the hamburg-savannah road. Reset your odometer. Proceed 0.5 mile to a blue tablet commemorating the 11th Iowa. (This landmark is used only for convenience; the 11th Iowa took no part in the fighting on April 7.) You will find it on the right side of the road, a few yards beyond the Missouri monument on the left. Pull over. You need not exit your vehicle, but face the open field to your right front. En route you will pass Cloud Field, a large open area to the left front (southeast) of the fork in the road. Near the site of “Hurlbut’s Headquarters” pyramid, a line of Confederate pickets spotted Nelson’s advancing troops, fired a single volley, and then fell back “just as fast as their legs could carry them.”

Orientation

You are currently at the northeast edge of Wicker Field.

118

East Stop 16

What Happened

Major-General William Nelson. blcw 1:376

Advancing south across the Dill Branch ravine and through Cloud Field, Nelson’s men reached this point around 8 : 00 a.m. Here Crittenden’s division arrived to support their right flank. In this area the Federals encountered their first significant resistance, from Confederate infantry supported by artillery. Col. William B. Hazen’s 19th Brigade, advancing through Wicker Field, bore the brunt of their fire. A sporadic 90-minute contest erupted, prolonged in part because Nelson’s own artillery had yet to reach the field. To make up the deficit, Buell loaned Nelson a battery of rifled guns under Capt. John Mendenhall, which belonged to Crittenden’s division. The battery initially unlimbered in the center of Wicker Field, but enemy sniper fire forced it to redeploy some 350 yards to the south—your next stop.

119

Bloody Pond Hamb

10:00 – 11:00 A.M.

N

East Stop 17

urg-Sa

Bloody Pond.

vanna h Roa

CRITTENDON

d

Ro

ad

Duncan Field

East Stop 17

rn

Co

rin

th

Wicker Field

ste

Hazen

Ea

Ha

mb

urg

Ro

-Pu

ad

rdy

Barnes Field

Mendenhall’s Battery

Su

Terril’s Battery

Ammen

Bruce nk

en

Bloody Pond

Ro

ad O Pea rc c W. Manse George ha h cabin Davis rd Wheat Field Washington (LA) Art’y

Sarah Bell’s Old Cotton Field

Martin (formerly Bowen) (Moore)

Chalmers

EAST STOP 17

Bloody Pond, 10 :00–11: 00 a.m.

Directions

Continue 0.1 mile to a turnout just short of Bloody Pond, which is visible to your right. Leave your vehicle. Stand behind the cannon on the left (east) side of the road. Face in the same direction as the cannon.

Orientation

You are currently a few dozen yards north of the Sunken Road and Peach Orchard sectors.

What Happened

Surprised by the arrival of fresh Union troops on the field, and equally surprised by the disorganization of their own army, it took time for Beauregard and his corps commanders to establish a coherent line of defense. By 10 : 00 a.m., however, such a line had emerged. Hardee and Breckinridge led the Confederates in this sector: five badly depleted infantry brigades and four artillery batteries. Although so ill organized that Confederate dispositions are difficult to establish with certainty, it appears that Hardee controlled Confederate forces from the southwest end of Sarah Bell’s Old Cotton Field to the site of Stuart’s abandoned Union camp to your left (east). Breckinridge’s line followed the tree line at the

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East Stop 17

western edge of the cotton field, then paralleled the Sunken Road about as far as the Eastern Corinth Road. Arriving where you presently stand, Mendenhall’s battery (on the right side of the road) and Capt. William R. Terrill’s recently arrived battery of mostly smoothbore Napoleons ( just in front of you) came under a well-directed fire from a hidden Confederate battery somewhere near the W. Manse George cabin. They could counter it only by observing the puffs of smoke rising above the trees after each discharge. Making matters worse, the Union cannoneers also came under enfilading fire from a second Confederate battery off to the right. Both Mendenhall and Terrill had to shift facing and spread out their guns in order to hold their ground. Around 10: 00 a.m. Beauregard ordered Hardee “to charge the enemy in conjunction with General Breckinridge.” Although theoretically coordinated, in reality the two corps commanders had no time to consult before their attacks began. Jumping off from the Davis Wheat Field, Hardee’s assault angled toward what would become known as the Bloody Pond, struck the brigades of Col. Sanders D. Bruce and Hazen, and briefly threatened to overrun Mendenhall’s battery. The Federal cannoneers used a combination of case shot and canister against the onrushing troops, while Hazen personally led a bayonet charge by the 6th Kentucky. Between them, the gunners and infantry managed to repel the Confederates. “They run!” cried some of Bruce’s men, and the shout echoed up and down the Union line. Vignette

Two days after the battle, Mendenhall ordered a lieutenant to inspect the effectiveness of his batteries’ fire. The lieutenant duly reported: In the skirts of wood upon which our direct fire was first opened there were posted six bronze field pieces, supported by a formidable body of infantry. Of the effective nature of our fire upon this point I was enabled to judge from the appearance of trees shattered by case shot at very low range; of carriage wheels strewn over the ground; of one caisson completely disabled and abandoned; of dead horses, four of which were left here, and of the enemy’s dead, nine of whom still remain, besides those already buried. To the rear of this point I found one gun abandoned, behind which were 5 dead horses, and around which the trees were again shattered at so low range as to show that the enemy must have been driven from this position with great loss, although from the fact that the dead had been buried I could not determine the number. I am satisfied that the cannonading from the right of this point, to which we afterwards replied, was from guns of the same battery, which was abandoned near the spot. Along the

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Bloody Pond

Lieutenant-General John C. Breckinridge, C.S.A. blcw 1:576

skirts of the wood enfiladed by our fire the underbrush was completely cut up, but I found only 2 dead horses to give evidence of the enemy’s presence there. Proceeding through the thicket from which the enemy emerged later in the day I found the bushes broken down by our canister and the ground thickly strewn with their dead. From the fact that our burying parties were already engaged in covering the dead I found it impracticable, without erring upon one extreme, to determine the number killed by our own fire; but I venture to mention the fact that within the narrow area where I stood more than 100 dead were still to be counted. The position occupied by the enemy’s battery silenced by our own contained 27 dead horses and 7 dead still unburied. I was assured by a soldier that large numbers of the enemy’s dead had already been removed from the thicket showered by our canister.

122

East Stop 18

EAST STOP 18

Davis Wheat Field

Directions

Proceed 0.3 mile to a fork in the road. Bear right, then turn right on hamburg-purdy road. Continue 0.4 mile until you reach the red oval tablet that marks the position of the Washington (Louisiana) Artillery. Pull over to the right shoulder and stop. En route note the now-familiar landmarks of the Peach Orchard and Sarah Bell’s Old Cotton Field. Just after your right turn, you will pass a succession of oval tablets, beginning with a gold one marking the position of Ammen’s brigade at the end of the second day. The proliferation of oval tablets illustrates how the Hamburg-Purdy Road became, after 11 :00 a.m., the main Confederate line of resistance.

Wounded and stragglers on the way to the landing, and ammunition-wagons going to the front. blcw 1:484

123

The Federals Attack Hamb

10:30 – 11:30 A.M.

N

inth Eas

Roa

d

d

Cor

h Roa

tern

Note: Only brigade-sized Confederate formations are labeled; Moore’s brigade was an ad hoc, not regularly organized, formation.

vanna

CRITTENDEN

Duncan Field

East Stop 18a

urg-Sa

The Federals attack.

Wicker Field

W. S. Smith (CRITTENDEN) Ha

Hazen

Mendenhall’s Battery

Terril’s Battery

Ammen

Bruce mb

urg

Ro

-Pu

ad

rdy

Davis Wheat Field

Barnes Field

Bloody Pond

Su Ro nke ad n

Washington (LA) Art’y

East Stop 18a Martin (formerly Bowen)

East Stop 18a

O Pea rc c ha h rd

Sarah Bell’s Old Cotton Field

McClung’s (TN) Battery

(Moore)

Chalmers

The Federals Attack 10:30–11:30 a.m.

Directions

Exit your vehicle and face the open field.

Orientation

You are facing north, into Daniel Davis’s wheat field, which was significantly larger in 1862 than it is today. The Bloody Pond is beyond the woods about a half mile to your right front. The Sunken Road is about a quarter mile directly ahead. The Hamburg-Purdy and Eastern Corinth Roads intersect about 70 yards to the west.

What Happened

Some of the worst fighting on April 7 occurred here and in the area immediately to the east. At 10 : 30 a.m., having thrown back Hardee’s spoiler attack, Nelson’s division advanced across Sarah Bell’s Old Cotton Field only to meet a severe fire from Confederate infantry hidden just south of the Hamburg-Purdy Road. The brigades of Ammen and Bruce were badly hurt, not just by the heavy musket volleys but also by an enfilading fire from the Washington (Louisiana) Artillery and McClung’s Tennessee Battery, both posted in Davis Wheat Field. Emboldened by this success, Hardee ordered a

124

East Stop 18a

counterattack but got only as far as the W. Manse George cabin before Hazen’s brigade stopped them. Then in turn Hazen attacked, supported by Col. William Sooy Smith’s 11th Brigade of Crittenden’s neighboring division. Together they shoved the Confederate infantry back to the Hamburg-Purdy Road, stormed the Washington Artillery, and briefly captured three guns before a counterattack by the (Louisiana) Crescent Regiment and 19th Louisiana recovered them, though not before the Federals managed to spike the cannon with mud.

On the Union picket line–relieving pickets. blcw 4:1

125

The Confederates Counterattack Hamb

11:30 A.M. – 12:00 noon

N

East Stop 18b

urg-Sa

The Confederates counterattack.

vanna

d Roa

Eas

tern

d

Cor

inth

h Roa

Duncan Field

Note: Only brigade-sized Confederate formations are labeled; Moore’s brigade was an ad hoc, not regularly organized, formation.

Wicker Field

W. S. Smith (CRITTENDEN) Ha

Hazen Bruce

mb

urg

Ro

-Pu

ad

rdy

Barnes Field

Ammen

Bloody Pond Sunk en Roa P O d rc eac ha h Davis W. Manse George rd cabin Wheat Washington Field (LA) Art’y

Sarah Bell’s Old Cotton Field

East Stop 18b Martin (formerly Bowen)

East Stop 18b

(Maney) (Moore)

Chalmers

The Confederates Counterattack

11 :30 a.m.–12 :00 noon Directions

Remain in place.

What Happened

The Louisianans’ success endangered the right flank of Nelson’s division. Meanwhile a second Confederate counterattack endangered Nelson’s left. Initially made with just two regiments, this second strike soon involved two improvised brigades under Col. R. A. Smith and Maney, each composed of perhaps 400 men, plus the 10th Mississippi. With more experience the Federals could have redeployed so as to fend off these threats. But they were new to combat, and the Confederate counterattack, though weak in numbers, sufficiently alarmed Nelson that he ordered a general withdrawal to the Sunken Road, Bloody Pond, and southern end of Wicker Field. There, protected by artillery, the division remained until it became apparent that the Confederate army was in retreat toward Corinth (see West Stop 19). This completes the eastern tour of the action on April 7. If you have not yet taken the western tour and wish to do so, continue on to the next page.

12:00 noon – 7:15 P.M.

West Stop 15

N

Lew Wallace’s approach, April 6.

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Grant’s Last Line Pittsburg Landing

Western Route, April 7 WEST STOP 15

Lew Wallace’s Approach, April 6, 12 : 00 noon–7 : 15 p.m.

Directions

From Stop 14, turn around and proceed 0.8 mile on pittsburg landing road. Pull to the side of the road and park in the turnout on the left before you reach the intersection with state highway 22. You may remain in your vehicle for this stop or stand beside it. From East Stop 18, proceed 0.2 mile to eastern corinth road. Turn right and proceed 0.6 mile ( joining the corinth– pittsburg landing road en route) to a T intersection. Turn left on pittsburg landing road and proceed 0.5 mile. Pull to the side of the road and park in the turnout on the left before you reach the intersection with state highway 22. You may remain in your vehicle for this stop or stand beside it.

Orientation

You are near the extreme right flank of Grant’s final line. The road beside you is the one finally used by Lew Wallace in bringing his division to the field.

127 Lew Wallace’s Approach What Happened

Wallace made contact with the rest of Grant’s army near here at about 7: 15 p.m., fully seven hours later than Grant had expected him. Posted at Crump’s Landing, five miles downriver from the rest of the army, Lew Wallace’s 3rd Division had been considered the most likely target for a Confederate surprise attack. Several days earlier Grant had ordered him to confer with fellow division commander W. H. L. Wallace (no relation) on the best means for moving troops from Pittsburg Landing to reinforce the 3rd Division in that event. On the morning of April 6, however, the Confederates struck the main army rather than the isolated division. Hearing the firing, Lew Wallace got his men under arms and had them concentrate near the camp of his center brigade at Stoney Lonesome, two and a half miles inland from Crump’s Landing. Wallace himself was still at Crump’s when Grant’s steamboat passed by while taking the commander from his headquarters at Savannah to Pittsburg Landing. Grant had the vessel halt at Crump’s, where he and Wallace held a brief conversation. He told Wallace to have his division ready to march immediately upon receipt of orders. That was about 8: 30 a.m. Arriving at Pittsburg Landing, Grant quickly realized that he faced a serious attack and lost no time directing his adjutant general, Capt. John A. Rawlins, to order the 3rd Division to come up at once. Rawlins in turn repeated the command to a staff officer who was to ride to Wallace. The messenger requested the order in writing, and Rawlins hastily scrawled something on a piece of paper and gave it to him. After the battle that piece of paper was lost, and its contents became the heart of a controversy that ruined Lew Wallace’s career. Rawlins said the order directed Wallace to march via the road closest to the river (this one, the Hamburg-Savannah Road). The general claimed it said nothing of the sort. In any event, Wallace marched his division via the Shunpike, a road that led from Stoney Lonesome, where he had his three brigades concentrated, to the north end of the camps of Sherman’s division, north of Shiloh Church. Exacerbating the situation was Lew Wallace’s apparent impression that the situation at Pittsburg Landing was not very serious. He took until noon to put his division in motion. Grant expected him on the battlefield by that time. Then Wallace marched his men on the Shunpike most of the way to Sherman’s old camps before learning (from one of several staff officers Grant dispatched to him that day with increasingly urgent demands for Wallace to make haste) that Sher-

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West Stop 15

man and the rest of the army had been driven back and that he could not possibly make contact via the Shunpike. He would have to countermarch, but instead of simply aboutfacing his division, Wallace insisted on turning the brigades in order from the head of the column, keeping his favorite brigade in the lead but wasting valuable time while that unit marched back along the entire length of the column. Grant’s staff officers, including by now Rawlins himself, stayed with Wallace but could not infuse him with their own sense of urgency. Despite the very respectable 2.5-mile-per-hour pace the division maintained once it turned about, Grant’s staff officers fumed at the frequency and length of the rest halts Wallace called and at his unwillingness to leave his artillery behind or otherwise sacrifice march order for the sake of speed. Rawlins even considered placing the general under arrest. His fulminations proved of no avail, however, and the 3rd Division missed all of the first day’s fighting. Grant never forgave Lew Wallace for (as Grant saw it) letting him down in his hour of need. In vain Wallace spent months appealing to every authority he could reach in hopes of proving he had acted rightly at Shiloh and reviving a completely stalled military career. The stubborn fact remained that at a moment of life-and-death importance to the Army of the Tennessee, Wallace had made the wrong judgment and failed to sense and therefore fulfill the pressing need of his commander. Vignette

Johann Stuber, a German-speaking soldier in the 58th Ohio, of Lew Wallace’s Division, wrote in his diary an account of the day’s march and the uneasy night that followed: Midday we received orders to get ready, strike the tents, and take rations for 10 days. About one o’clock we marched with our heavy packs on our backs . . . toward Pittsburg Landing. It was terribly hot; the soldiers of the other regiments threw their blankets and overcoats away, so that on both sides of the road for a short distance, where halts were made, whole heaps of clothing lay. After marching about seven miles we came again to an open place about a mile from our camp, and threw our packs in a heap, from which they were to be taken to the boat. Thus relieved we went forward again, but on a road leading more to the left. I was very exhausted and fell somewhat behind and had to go twice as fast afterward to catch up with the regiment. It was already almost dark when I caught up with the regiment in a dark forest at the edge of a swamp on a road with foot-deep mud. . . . After a[nother] mile of difficult marching we came to a clearing and immediately thereafter to the camp of a Union regiment, where badly wounded soldiers lay in many tents. In an open forest with large oak trees we halted and lay down in ranks to rest, which

129 Lew Wallac’s Approach

we very much needed. Despite the continuing cannonade of the gunboats we went immediately to sleep. At one o’clock [in the morning] a thunderstorm broke loose and a heavy rain soaked us to the skin. The poor wounded on the nearby battlefield were awakened by this rain and cried out in such heartrending tones for help that one could hear them for miles. It was highly painful for everyone to hear these, for we could bring them no help. Between them and us stood the pickets; we dared not leave our places without running the danger of being shot down by the Rebel pickets. Several times during the night the pickets fired so heavily at each other that one had to believe the battle was beginning again already. It was a hard time for the poor soldiers. Each could imagine that by the next evening he might no longer be alive or might be a cripple who for the rest of his life would depend on the charity of his fellow men.

Union gun-boats at Shiloh on the evening of the first day, detail. blcw 1:592

130

West Stop 16

6:30 – 9:00 A.M.

West Stop 16

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Tilghman Branch.

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Russian Tenant Field

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9th IN Battery

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WEST STOP 16

Tilghman Branch, 6: 30–9 : 00 a.m.

Directions

From West Stop 15, walk 130 yards to your left front to the guns and monument commemorating the 9th Indiana Battery. Face in the direction the guns are pointing.

Orientation

You are standing on the line of Lew Wallace’s division, facing as his soldiers did as they prepared to begin their attack on the morning of April 7. Stretching out to your left was the brigade of Col. Morgan L. Smith, to your right was that of Col. John M. Thayer, and beyond Thayer’s brigade was that of Col. Charles Whittlesey. In front of you is the valley of Tilghman (or Glover) Branch. The bluffs about 350 yards in front of you represent the far side of the valley. The cut and embankment that carry State Highway 22 over the valley directly in front of you was of course not present in 1862.

What Happened

Early on the morning of April 7, Lew Wallace and Grant met in a field behind Smith’s brigade, to your left. Grant simply ordered Wallace to advance due west. That meant crossing the valley of Tilghman Branch, ahead of you. Confederate ar-

131

Tilghman Branch

tillery, Capt. William H. Ketchum’s Alabama Battery, held the high ground on the far side of Tilghman Branch (to your left front), supported by Pond’s brigade, which had just moved up into line along the top of the bluffs. Pond somehow had not been notified when the rest of the Confederate army pulled back to go into bivouac the previous evening, and his was the most advanced Rebel unit that morning. Wallace decided not to send his infantry across Tilghman Branch until his artillery could silence or drive off the Confederate guns. He ordered up Capt. N. S. Thompson’s 9th Indiana Battery and Lt. Charles H. Thurber’s Battery I, 1st Missouri Light Artillery, which engaged in a half-hour-long artillery duel with Ketchum. Silas Grisamore, an officer in the 18th Louisiana in Ponds’s Brigade, said the Yankees were “sending their shot through the trees over our heads.” Thomas’s gunners did, however, succeed in dismounting one of Ketchum’s guns, and Pond gave orders to fall back. The Confederate artillery and infantry withdrew to the south end of Jones Field, about 1,200 yards to your left front. Wallace’s troops then crossed the valley of Tilghman Branch and ascended the bluffs on the far side without opposition. Analysis

Grant wanted an aggressive attack on the morning of April 7, but Lew Wallace, who had the only fresh division in the Army of the Tennessee as well as the key position on the far north end of the battlefield, delivered a cautious and circumspect advance, as evidenced in his delay in crossing Tilghman Branch. In this case Wallace did have some reason for his caution. Although he had at least a five-to-one advantage over Pond in infantry, the terrain in the Tilghman Branch valley was a major obstacle, to which several members of the division alluded in their accounts of the battle. “A swamp lay between us and the enemy,” recalled one soldier, “and we were ordered to cross it. Some of our men mired up to their knees and had to be pulled out by their comrades, but pressed on and gained the other side.” The 76th Ohio’s Capt. S. M. Emmons summed it up: “The ball opened, and we marched, . . . through swamps knee deep, through brush, over hills and across hollows.”

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West Stop 17

West Stop 17

9:00 A.M. – 12:00 noon

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Jones Field. Wh

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West Stop 17

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Jones Field, 9 :00 a.m.–12 : 00 noon

Directions

Return to your vehicle. Turn left on state highway 22 and proceed 0.9 mile to the picnic area on your right. Turn into the picnic area and use it to turn around. Leaving the picnic area, turn left on state highway 22. Proceed about 0.2 mile and park in the turnout on the right near the cannonball-pyramid monument denoting the headquarters of Hare’s brigade of McClernand’s division. Walk to the monument and stand next to it. Face toward the nearby cannon and thus in the same direction those guns are pointing.

Orientation

Once again you are standing on the line of Lew Wallace’s division, facing as his soldiers did as they made a second and longer pause in their April 7 attack. As before, you are approximately at the junction of Smith’s (on your left) and Thayer’s (on your right) brigades; Whittlesey’s brigade was still farther to the right. In front of you and angling off to your left front is Jones Field. The Confederates were at the south end of the field and in the far tree line to your left front, from 500 to 650 yards distant.

133

Jones Field

What Happened

After taking the bluffs on the west side of Tilghman Branch, Wallace found that he faced virtually no Confederate opposition and that he was on the northern (that is to say, left) flank of the Rebel army. Correctly calculating that the swamps along the Owl Creek bottoms (the bottoms start about a quarter mile to your right; the creek is that far again in the same direction) would protect his own right flank, Wallace decided to attack the Confederate flank by wheeling his division to the left, changing its direction of advance from west to southwest and then south. Where you now stand, the division was already partially through that maneuver and was facing southwest. Here, however, Wallace called a halt to his advance because Sherman’s division had not yet moved up on his left flank. Despite the fact that he was in a position to devastate the Confederate army and possessed an overwhelming advantage in numbers in this sector, Wallace waited. The opportunity before him was enhanced by the fact that General Ruggles had unwisely ordered Pond’s Brigade to another part of the field, leaving only a more or less ad-hoc collection of troops under Ruggles and Wood to dispute any advance the Federals might have cared to make. Wallace detected Pond’s departure and had his artillery shell the marching column, drawing return fire from a Confederate battery at the south end of the field. In Wallace’s words, “A fine artillery duel ensued.” Confederate cavalry and infantry counterattacked the Union artillery, just in front of you. Louisiana and Arkansas troops of Gibson’s Brigade succeeded in getting in among Thurber’s guns before the Union infantry of Smith’s brigade drove them off, saving the cannon. Wallace’s infantry suffered few casualties from the shelling because most of them were sheltered in the woods and by the lower ground slightly behind and on either side of you. The general took all the advantage he could of the uneven terrain to shelter his troops as much as possible. Captain Emmons was appreciative, writing of “the skill of our commander” in “taking advantage of the hills and causing us to lie down, shells and cannon balls flying close over our heads.” Finally Sherman’s division swept into the field on your far left, the brigades that had fought desperately on the Shiloh Church ridge the day before now forming a splendid—but short—line of battle. Reassured, Wallace renewed his own advance, continuing to wheel to the left with his three brigades in echelon, Smith leading on the left, Thayer a bit behind him in the center, and Whittlesey bringing up the rear on the

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West Stop 17

right. Smith’s and Thayer’s brigades were both out in the open field at the same time and made quite a sight, with neat ranks and waving colors. The Confederates on the far side of the field put up some resistance but were soon driven off, and the Union advance continued. Analysis

Major-General Lew Wallace. blcw 1:27

All day long Lew Wallace showed an exaggerated sensitivity to getting separated from the rest of the army as well as an excessive caution. Such concerns are proper within reason, but Wallace carried them too far and thus did not take advantage of the opportunity that lay before him here. A more aggressive advance on this flank might have spared some of the hard fighting farther south (out of sight to your left). One thing, though, can be said for the general’s caution: it kept his casualty rate low. Of the 7,337 men in his division, Wallace would this day lose only 491 casualties.

135

Sowell Field

West Stop 18

12:00 noon

N

Sowell Field.

West Stop 18 Thaye

M. L. Smit

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23rd IN Sowell Field

Wharton’s Texas Rangers

Crescent Field

WEST STOP 18

Sowell Field, 12 :00 noon

Directions

Return to your vehicle. Although your next destination lies south, for safety’s sake please proceed 0.6 mile to the park entrance (marked by a large sign with the words “Visitors Center”), and turn right on pittsburg landing road. About 50 yards farther use the pullout where you parked for West Stop 15 in order to turn around. Return to state highway 22 and turn left. Proceed 0.9 mile to the picnic area on your right. Turn right into the picnic area. Proceed 0.2 mile. Park by the side of the road and face the open field to your left.

Orientation

You are standing at about the center of the line of Thayer’s brigade, facing as his soldiers did as they continued their advance from Jones Field. Smith’s brigade (on your left) continued this line farther to your left, while Whittlesey’s brigade was to the right and rear, struggling to keep up on the outside of the 3rd Division’s left-wheel maneuver. The long, narrow cleared area in which you are standing represents wartime Sowell Field, but the field was more than twice as wide, though of about the same length. The wartime tree line

136

West Stop 18

in front of you was about 100 yards away and 30 feet below the spot on which you now stand. What Happened

After clearing the southern and western edges of Jones Field, Wallace’s division continued its left wheel until, by the time it moved up onto the ridge on which you are now standing, it was facing due south, just as you now are. Thayer now effectively formed the extreme right flank of the Union line, since Whittlesey, due to the terrain and his difficult position on the outside of the wheeling maneuver, had been unable to keep up. While Thayer was still engaging the retiring Confederate infantry to his front (and yours), he noticed a body of Confederate cavalry advancing as if to pass his right flank. This was Col. John A. Wharton’s regiment of Texas Rangers. Beauregard had ordered Wharton to ride around the Union flank and strike the Federal line from the rear. Seeing the Texans coming, Thayer ordered his right-flank regiment, the 23rd Indiana, to shift its line 110 yards farther right, putting the unit directly in their path. The Texans were moving up single file because of the difficult terrain, and they never stood a chance. Wharton and the other men at the head of the line opened up with their carbines, hoping the tail of the column could get up and help them before they were all slaughtered, but it was no use. Wharton’s own horse went down, and so did many of his rangers. “I was sacrificing the lives of my men,” Wharton later explained, “fighting 30 men against at least a regiment, with the advantage of position, and with no prospect but that the men would all be killed as they came in view, as they could only advance by file.” So he pulled them back, had them dismount, and then go at the Yankees in a proper skirmish line on foot. That failed too. The Texans were getting the worse of the exchange when orders came from Beauregard to pull back and cover the retirement of other forces on the Confederate left. After a brief pause, during which Whittlesey caught up and came into line, Wallace’s division pressed on.

Analysis

Mounted cavalry was singularly ineffective on the battlefield of Shiloh, but this was only a more extreme example of what was true on virtually all the major battlefields of the Civil War. This was partially because the rifled musket, or rifle, with which most Civil War soldiers were armed, allowed infantrymen to shoot down cavalry and break up their charges at a relatively safe distance. In part as well, it was a factor of the rough terrain, which broke up cavalry formations and slowed its movements. Rough terrain made Shiloh especially difficult for the cav-

137

Sowell Field

alry, as demonstrated in this case. Wharton’s Texas Rangers, some of the toughest and most experienced volunteer horse soldiers on either side, scarcely made a dent when they ran up against a Union infantry regiment. The Hoosiers of the 23rd Indiana were determined and had gained combat experience at Fort Donelson. The ground here in front of Sowell Field prevented the Texans from assuming any mounted formation that gave even a remote chance of success, and even when dismounted they were still handicapped by the shorter range of their carbines. Other things being equal, carbines were never a match for rifles, and other things were certainly no better than equal for Wharton’s men this day.

Major-General Martin L. Smith, C.S.A. blcw 3:476

138

West Stop 19

West Stop 19

N

12:00 noon – 2:00 P.M. Water Oaks Pond.

SHER

LEW WALLACE

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Woolf Field

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Water Oaks Pond

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WEST STOP 19

Water Oaks Pond, 12: 00 noon–2 : 00 p.m.

Directions

Return to your vehicle. Proceed in the direction you have been traveling, continuing around the loop in Sowell Field (the picnic area) and back the way you came, a total of about 0.4 mile, to state highway 22. Turn right and proceed 0.9 mile to hamburg-purdy road. Turn left and proceed approximately another 0.4 mile to corinth road. Turn left. About 50 yards beyond the intersection, the road forks. Bear right. Just beyond the intersection you will see two cannons on the left side of the road representing Rutledge’s Tennessee Battery. Pull to the side of the road and park. Walk to the cannons. Stand next to them and face in the direction they are pointing.

Orientation

About 80 yards in front of you is Water Oaks Pond. The need to follow modern automobile roads has made the trip here from Sowell Field (West Stop 18) seem unnaturally long. In fact Sowell Field is slightly less than three-quarters of a mile away to your left front. The Corinth Road, on which you were just driving, leads off to your right front toward Pittsburg Landing, about 2.3 miles away. You are facing in the same di-

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Water Oaks Pond

rection as the Confederate defenders during the early afternoon of April 7. What Happened

The area around you witnessed some of the most intense fighting on April 7. While Lew Wallace’s division and other troops of the Army of the Tennessee were pressing their way closer to this spot from the direction of Sowell and Jones Fields, to your front and left front, the Union troops of the Army of the Ohio were battling their way westward from Pittsburg Landing along the Corinth Road and south of it, to your right and right front. Meanwhile Bragg made a concerted effort to cobble together here a defensive line that he hoped would finally halt the Union advance. After the triumph over the Rebel cavalry in Sowell Field and the general retirement of the Confederate left, Wallace feared that if he pursued the enemy any farther in this direction, he would become entangled with the neighboring divisions of Sherman and McClernand. He therefore halted his command and began the cumbersome process of wheeling its line back to the right in order to march some distance farther west before turning south again to flank the Confederates once more. This maneuver was of great benefit to Bragg, for it kept Wallace’s division, which by then lay directly to your left and left front, from coming in on his flank and crumbling his line before it could form. With his flank safe for now, Bragg put up a stiff fight against Union troops advancing from your front and right front. Early in the afternoon Bragg launched a counterattack. Wood’s Brigade, now numbering less than 650 men, advanced over the ground where you now stand, its soldiers facing as you do. They charged right through Water Oaks Pond (in front of you), waist deep in some places, then pressed on across Woolf Field beyond. The Confederate counterattack drove Sherman’s and McClernand’s divisions back. Wallace, who was in a position to crush the Confederates’ left flank, nevertheless went over to the defensive and for a time even considered retreating. Still the Confederates’ inability to dislodge Wallace (his right-flank regiment, the 11th Indiana, did some very hard fighting to maintain its position) helped stall their attack. At this point, troops of McCook’s division (particularly Brig. Gen. Lovell H. Rousseau’s brigade) of the Army of the Ohio moved up the Corinth Road to strike the right flank of the Confederates in Woolf Field. Charge and countercharge surged back and forth across the ground where you now stand. Sherman described the area as “a point of water-oaks

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West Stop 19

and thickets” and a “green point of timber” where arose “the severest musketry fire I ever heard.” Rutledge’s Tennessee Battery came up to support the Rebel line here and fired for some 30 minutes. But Confederate officers in this and other sectors of the line recognized by this time that their army was nearing the point of collapse. Beauregard came to realize this as well and about 2 : 00 p.m. ordered a general withdrawal of the army toward Corinth. Union troops pursued only as far as their camps of the previous morning. The battle of Shiloh was over. Vignette

In the heat of battle, there was a certain irrationality about men’s perceptions. A strange logic seemed to decide which events of carnage each passed over as a matter of course and which struck horror into their hearts even as they watched them. An example of this is an account written by Capt. George Rogers of the 20th Ohio five days after the battle referring to this phase of the fight: I will not attempt to entertain you by descriptions of the horrors . . . , but . . . I can assure you of one thing, however, and that is those things don’t affect one very much while he is engaged in fighting. What moved me more than anything during the engagement was the effort of a field officer to dispatch the noble animal that had carried him safely across a great field, over which the fight was raging furiously. In crossing, the horse had received a shot in his lower jaw—the officer seeing the animal could not be saved, mounted his lead horse, and riding several times around the wounded brute, discharged six balls from his pistol into the horse’s body—bringing him with the last shot, to the ground—the man the while weeping like a child. But in a moment the scene was changed—the tears were dried and that humane rider plunging his rowels into the side of his fresh horse, flew across the plains. . . . That scene . . . remains the most vividly planted in my memory of all those I saw on that memorable day. This completes the western tour of the fighting on April 7. If you have not yet taken the eastern tour and wish to do so, turn to page 115 (East Stop 15).

Afterword The Corinth Campaign, April 8 –May 30, 1862

The battle of Shiloh marked the Confederacy’s supreme effort to reverse the early tide of Union success that had begun at Forts Henry and Donelson the preceding February. It nearly succeeded. Grant never again came as close to disaster as he did on April 6, 1862. Shiloh led some Northerners to lose faith in Grant. Its horrific death toll shocked America. The casualties there exceeded the combined casualties of all of America’s previous wars combined. Amid the anguish of this loss, many blamed Grant, whose failure to anticipate the Confederate surprise attack had, they argued, run up the butcher’s bill. There were even false reports that Grant had been drunk before or during the battle. Grant’s commanding officer, Halleck, moved quickly to sideline him. Four days after the battle, Halleck arrived at Pittsburg Landing to take personal command of the combined forces there, the armies of Grant and Buell, previously commanded by Grant. Halleck then summoned the army of Maj. Gen. John Pope, which had taken Island Number Ten and New Madrid on the Mississippi River the day after Shiloh ended. With these three armies, numbering over 100,000 men, Halleck proposed to march on Corinth. Rather than leave Grant in command of the largest single component of this force, Halleck named him to the meaningless post of second in command and gave the Army of the Tennessee, Grant’s army, to Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas. Grant considered resigning his commission, but Sherman, who was rapidly becoming his best friend, talked him out of it. In describing the advance of this enormous force from Pittsburg Landing to Corinth during the weeks that followed, historians have tended to use terms ordinarily reserved for the study of geology—“glacial” being the one most often applied. The adjective fits. Halleck’s advance got started in earnest three weeks after the battle and averaged about twothirds of a mile per day for the next month. Each night the general had his troops entrench massively—no one was going to catch Henry W. Halleck with a surprise attack. Yet the long delay entailed by this slow advance could have amounted to another virtual engraved invitation for the Confederates to take back the initiative, as they had already done at Shiloh. What was required for this to happen was a sufficiently daring and resourceful Confederate commander, but such a man was lacking. After Johnston’s death on April 6, command

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Afterword

of Confederate forces in the West passed to Beauregard. An officer who could sometimes show great, even excessive, imagination, Beauregard tended to choke under pressure and heavy responsibility. In fairness the task that faced him was no easy one. His army was badly outnumbered, even after the addition of a smaller force from the trans-Mississippi under Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn. The Confederates would have to overcome serious problems of supply and transportation in order to carry out the kind of successful turning movement that Bragg achieved later that summer. Perhaps no general could have surmounted the difficulties Beauregard faced. At any rate Beauregard did not. On May 29 he came to the conclusion that Corinth could not be held any longer without the danger of his army being trapped and captured. That night he carried out a skillful evacuation, detailing troops to cheer when trains puffed into the Corinth railroad station to create the impression that reinforcements were arriving rather than (as was in fact the case) supplies and equipment going out. The next morning the Federals advanced to find the vital railroad town empty. Beauregard took up a position at Tupelo, Mississippi, a couple of days’ march south of Corinth. The slow pace of Halleck’s advance and the failure to bag any part of the Confederate army marred the luster of his achievement. Still, at a time when affairs in Virginia were not going much to the liking of the Lincoln administration, Halleck’s solid if unspectacular success sufficed to win him promotion to general in chief of all Union armies. He took up his post in Washington but proved as ineffective there as he had in the West. At least he was out of Grant’s way. On the Confederate side, Beauregard had even worse problems with his government. Although he wrote of his withdrawal from Corinth in glowing terms and claimed that it should be counted as equal to a great victory, President Davis was not impressed. The president had never really forgiven the Louisiana general for failing to complete the victory that he believed his old West Point friend, Johnston, had had within his grasp when the general died on the afternoon of the first day at Shiloh. Abandoning Corinth without a major battle confirmed his low regard for the accidental top western general. When Beauregard took an unauthorized sick leave a fortnight later, Davis promptly replaced him with the recently promoted Bragg. With that the scene was set for the further course of the war in the West, as the Union and Confederate soldiers who had fought at Shiloh were in coming months and years to confront each other on such battlefields as Perryville, Stone’s River, Champion’s Hill, Vicksburg, and Chickamauga. On

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The Corinth Campaign

these and other fields in the West the Union rarely lost the strategic initiative, while the Confederacy strove in vain to hold on to what it still had or to win back some of what it had lost almost at the outset. But never again would Southern arms come as close to complete victory as they had in the second springtime of the war, in the woods and fields between Shiloh Church and Pittsburg Landing.

Major-General Henry W. Halleck. blcw 1:276

Crump’s Landing. From a photograph taken in 1884. blcw 1:467

Appendix A: The Union and Confederate Commands on April 6, 1862 It is impossible to understand the afternoon phase of the battle of Shiloh without a discussion of three command-andcontrol developments that shaped the overall fighting. Grant Reaches the Battlefield, 7:00 –11:30 A.M.

Sunday morning found the Union commander at his headquarters in the handsome William H. Cherry mansion atop a bluff overlooking the Tennessee River just west of Savannah. He had two things on his mind: the impending arrival of Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell’s Army of the Ohio, whose lead division had just reached town, and the imperative need to transfer his headquarters permanently to Pittsburg Landing, not because he feared a Confederate attack but rather because he had just learned of John McClernand’s promotion to major general, which meant that the Illinois politician now outranked Sherman, the only man Grant trusted to supervise the encampment in his absence. To forestall McClernand’s inevitable bid to assert his new rank, Grant would thenceforth have to be personally present at the landing. Around 7: 00 a.m., as he and his staff sat down to breakfast, they heard a vague rumble upstream (south). “That’s firing,” remarked Col. Joseph D. Webster, Grant’s fifty-one-year-old chief of staff. The words scarcely left his mouth when an orderly confirmed the sound of artillery coming from upriver. Walking outside, Grant and his staff recognized that an engagement had indeed begun somewhere. “Where is it, at Crump’s, or Pittsburg Landing?” asked Webster. “I think it’s at Pittsburg,” Grant replied, and in short order commander, staff, orderlies, and clerks piled aboard the steamer Tigress for the trip south. Before casting off, Grant scribbled two messages: one to Brig. Gen. William Nelson, commanding Buell’s lead division, instructing that officer to locate a guide and march along the east bank to a point opposite Pittsburg Landing; the other a note to Buell explaining about the apparent engagement upstream and his directive to Nelson. The Tigress stopped first at Crump’s Landing, where Grant found Maj. Gen. Lew Wallace apparently waiting for him on the hurricane deck of the steamer Jesse K. Bell. The Tigress warped in close enough for the two generals to have a brief, shouted conference. Grant instructed Wallace to have his division ready to march at a moment’s notice. Wallace replied that his three brigades were already concentrated at Stoney Lonesome and prepared to move. Grant nodded approvingly,

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the Tigress pulled away, and the vessel continued at top speed to Pittsburg Landing. Just after leaving Crump’s, the Tigress encountered the steamer John Warner racing downstream. The two vessels drew alongside one another, a board was placed across the two decks, and a lieutenant from Brig. Gen. W. H. L. Wallace’s staff clambered over with word that the army was under general attack and that its right and center had been forced back. He added that the enemy force was large. Grant seemed unperturbed by the news. He did not even rise from his deck chair, just muttered a piece of bravado about surrounding the enemy when he reached the battlefield. If Grant seriously believed such a thing, he undoubtedly reconsidered his view when the Tigress reached Pittsburg Landing at 9 :00 a.m. By that hour Sherman’s division had been pummeled, Prentiss crushed, and at least 3,000 demoralized soldiers were already cowering along the bluff. Grant hobbled ashore (he had been injured when, two days previously, his horse had slipped in the mud), threaded his way to the top of the bluff, and promptly issued three directives. First, he ordered an ammunition train sent forward to the firing line. Second, he established a straggler line comprising two recently arrived and as yet unassigned regiments, the 15th and 16th Iowa, buttressed by Battery I, 2nd Illinois Light Artillery. Finally, he dispatched a third regiment, the 23rd Missouri, to join what remained of Prentiss’s division. That done, Grant and his staff rode off toward the front. A half mile down the Corinth Road they encountered W. H. L. Wallace, whose division had been farthest to the rear and was then making its way toward the fighting. Wallace made a brief report to Grant, who for the first time realized both that the enemy was making a full-scale assault on the Pittsburg Landing camps (he had previously thought it might simply be a gambit to distract attention from a thrust upon Crump’s Landing) and that the situation was dire. At that point Grant dispatched a staff officer with orders for Lew Wallace’s division to march to Pittsburg Landing as soon as possible. He also composed another dispatch to Nelson: “The attack on my forces has been very spirited from early this morning. The appearance of fresh troops on the field now would have a powerful effect, both by inspiring our men and disheartening the enemy. If you will get upon the field, leaving all your baggage on the east bank of the river, it will be a move to our advantage, and possibly save the day to us. The rebel forces are estimated at over 100,000 men. My headquarters will be in the log building on the top of the hill,

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Union and Confederate Commands

where you will be furnished a staff officer to guide you to your place on the field.” After Wallace’s briefing, Grant then visited the remaining four division commanders on the battlefield, beginning with Sherman, on the Union right, and working his way over to Prentiss on the left. Sherman seemed thoroughly the master of the situation on his front, but McClernand seemed “fussy and flurried,” and indeed affairs in his sector looked bad enough that Grant ordered up his only immediate reserve, the 15th and 16th Iowa, to McClernand’s assistance. For the most part Grant cultivated an air of complete calm, almost as if he were simply on a routine inspection tour. Only when he and his staff came under artillery fire while crossing Duncan Field did he declare, “We must ride fast here!” Both he and his staff ran the gauntlet without harm, except that one shell fragment wounded the horse of his engineer, Capt. James B. McPherson (who two years later would command the Army of the Tennessee), while another struck Grant’s scabbard, throwing his sword to ground. It was probably 11 : 15 a.m. or 11 : 30 a.m. when Grant reached Prentiss, by now well established along the Sunken Road. Appreciating the position’s superior field of fire and the way in which it protected the Hamburg-Savannah Road, the enemy’s most direct route to Pittsburg Landing, Grant instructed Prentiss to hold the Sunken Road “at all hazards.” He then rode off to establish a coherent defensive line farther to rear. Confederate Command and Control, 5:30 A.M.–12:00 noon

Confederate command arrangements at Shiloh were among the most peculiar of any major battle in American history. With the partial and largely ineffectual exception of Beauregard, none of the senior leadership—Johnston, Hardee, Bragg, Polk, or Breckinridge—made any serious attempt to exercise overall control of the forces nominally in their charge. Nor can one point to any division commanders who handled (or were allowed to handle) their brigades in a unified, coordinated manner. For all practical purposes, the Confederate side of the battle was fought by pick-up teams of brigades summoned to one task or another by anyone from a staff officer to Johnston himself. In theory the Confederate command arrangements were rational if unorthodox. Hardee and Bragg would control the initial attack, with the latter commander handling his troops so as to support and reinforce the former. Johnston would oversee the battle from the front, exploiting his considerable

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personal presence to rally or inspire the largely green soldiers who composed the Army of the Mississippi. Polk and Breckinridge would remain in reserve until needed, at which point Beauregard would dispatch them to the sector where their brigades could be used to best advantage. Beauregard performed his function from a succession of temporary headquarters, the first at the intersection of the Corinth and Bark Roads, the second established around 9 :20 a.m. in the northern part of Fraley Field. Although occasionally issuing direct orders affecting troop movements— it was he, for example, who dispatched two brigades from Breckinridge’s Reserve Corps to attack the supposed Union division on the right (Col. David Stuart’s brigade of Sherman’s 5th Division; see East Stops 6d and 7)—for the most part Beauregard’s instructions were for Polk and Breckinridge to follow Bragg and go in wherever they were called upon to help. By midmorning if not sooner, Beauregard had largely lost control of the reinforcement process. The real commanding general, for all practical purposes, became his chief of staff, Col. Thomas Jordan. Riding about the rear area, Jordan repeatedly came upon units standing idle for lack of instructions. “In all such cases,” he wrote, “assuming the authority of my position, I gave orders in the name of General Johnston.” Presently Jordan collected the chiefs of staff of Polk, Bragg, and Hardee, as well as the chief aides-de-camp of Bragg and Johnston, “all of whom I employed in assisting to press the Confederate troops toward the heaviest firing, and to keep the batteries advancing.” Jordan’s tactical philosophy echoed Beauregard’s, which derived in turn from a defective understanding of Napoleon’s operational art. Beauregard had somewhere read that the emperor advised subordinates, when in doubt, to march to the sound of the heaviest firing. Although martial in tone, such counsel virtually guaranteed that units would strike the enemy where he was strongest, thus often enough reinforcing failure. Even worse, if possible, it converted the Confederate offensive into little more than a shoving match. By 11:00 a.m. it became obvious to Bragg and Polk that the brigades from the various corps had become hopelessly intermingled and the existing command arrangement was unworkable. “If you will take care of the center, I will take care of the right,” Bragg told Polk. Hardee, they further agreed, would handle the left, Breckinridge the reserve, and they dispatched staff officers to communicate this revised system to the other corps commanders. Even this new arrangement failed to work, however. By that hour Breckinridge was no longer in reserve. Bragg got only

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as far as Barnes Field, where he halted to supervise attacks on the Sunken Road position. The commander on the right (to the extent that he actually exerted command) was Johnston. Union Reinforcements Arrive, Afternoon and Evening

Grant had three reservoirs of reinforcements: a limited supply of regiments immediately available near Pittsburg Landing; Lew Wallace’s 3rd Division, stationed at Crump’s Landing; and Buell’s approaching army. As we have seen, Grant committed the first group of reinforcements as soon as he reached the field. Wallace’s division, for its part, took much longer to join the fighting than Grant anticipated (see West Stop 15). That left the Army of the Ohio. Slowed by heavy rains, high water, and a succession of destroyed bridges, Buell had been advancing from Nashville toward Pittsburg Landing since March 15. Only about half of his 70,000-man army actually made the march. The rest were widely scattered: Some units garrisoned Nashville. One division marched into northern Alabama. Other troops held the mountainous region of eastern Kentucky. Buell’s most serious delay occurred at Columbia, Tennessee. His army reached the town on March 25 but required four days to construct a bridge across the Duck River. Far from asking Buell to make haste, however, Grant encouraged him to march “by easy stages” so that his troops would be fully rested when they reached Pittsburg Landing. Grant repeated his doubts that the Confederates would attack. If they did, he vowed, he could beat them more easily than at Fort Donelson. Of course, events completely belied Grant’s facile optimism. Fortunately for him, Buell’s lead division, under Nelson, reached Savannah on April 5. When the battle erupted the next morning, Grant could therefore order it to march at once to a point opposite Pittsburg Landing. Nelson’s men got underway about 1: 30 p.m. Thanks to the wretched state of the route, some of it little more than “a black mud swamp,” Nelson’s first brigade, under Col. Jacob Ammen, required three and a half hours to cover the seven miles between Savannah and the point opposite the landing: all things considered, a very respectable performance. Union transports soon began transporting Nelson’s division across the river. It took until 7 : 30 p.m. for Ammen’s brigade to complete its crossing, with the other brigades following during the evening. Enraged by the sight of so many skulkers, the tempestuous Nelson was sorely tempted to open fire on them, particularly since they interfered with the

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landing of his own troops. Nothing so draconian occurred, however, and as the night deepened, Buell’s remaining divisions began to steam upstream from Savannah. By dawn on April 7, three divisions from the Army of the Ohio (those of Nelson, Brig. Gen. Thomas L. Crittenden, and Brig. Gen. Alexander McD. McCook) had reached the battlefield. Approximately 20,000 fresh Union troops were now at hand. One might suppose that Grant would have been grateful for Buell’s arrival. In fact, then and later, he took pains to minimize the significance of Buell’s contribution, while Sherman later claimed that Buell “did not seem to trust us . . . and I really feared he would not cross over his army that night, lest he should become involved in a general disaster.” The charge was grossly unfair. That said, Buell was equally unfair in his insistence that only the arrival of his army saved Grant from total destruction. The most judicious conclusion is that, without Buell’s arrival, Grant would have held his final defensive line but would not have been able to unleash the successful April 7 counterattack.

Major-General Alexander McD. McCook. blcw 1:491

Appendix B: Orders of Battle

Union Forces

ARMY OF THE TENNESSEE (Grant)

Abbreviations:

1st Division (McClernand)

bde: brigade bn: battalion

1st bde (Hare)

2nd bde (Marsh)

3rd bde (Raith)

s.s.: sharpshooters

8th il

11th il

17th il

co: company

18th il

20th il

29th il

11th ia

45th il

43rd il

13th ia

48th il

49th il

2nd il Lt. Artillery, Battery D

Carmichael’s il Cavalry

not brigaded: Stewart’s il Cavalry; 1st il Light Artillery, Battery D; 2nd il Light Artillery, Battery E; 14th oh Battery 2nd Division (W. H. L. Wallace)

1st bde (Tuttle)

2nd bde (McArthur)

3rd bde (Sweeny)

2nd ia

9th il

7th il

7th ia

12th il

50th il

12th ia

13th mo

52nd il

14th ia

14th mo (Birge’s s.s.)

57th il

81st oh

8th ia

58th il

not brigaded: 2nd il Cavalry, Cos. A and B; 2nd U.S. Cavalry, Co. C; 4th U.S. Cavalry, Co. I; 1st il Light Artillery, Battery A; 1st mo Light Artillery, Batteries D, H, and K 3rd Division (Lew Wallace)

1st bde (M. Smith)

2nd bde (Thayer)

3rd bde (Whittlesey)

11th in

23rd in

20th oh

24th in

1st ne

56th oh

8th mo

58th oh

78th oh

68th oh

78th oh

not brigaded: 9th in Battery; 1st mo Light Artillery, Battery I; 11th il Cavalry, 3rd Bn; 5th oh Cavalry, 3rd Bn

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Appendix B

4th Division (Hurlbut)

1st bde (Williams)

2nd bde (Veatch)

3rd bde (Lauman)

28th il

14th il

31st in

32nd il

15th il

44th in

41st il

46th il

17th ky

3rd ia

25th in

25th ky

not brigaded: 5th oh Cavalry, 1st and 2nd Bns; 2nd mi Battery; 1st mo Light Artillery, Battery C; 13th oh Battery 5th Division (Sherman)

1st bde (McDowell)

2nd bde (Stuart)

3rd bde (Hildebrand)

4th bde (Buckland)

40th il

55th il

53rd oh

48th oh

6th ia

54th oh

57th oh

70th oh

46th oh

71st oh

77th oh

72nd oh

6th in Battery not brigaded: 4th il Cavalry, 1st and 2nd Bns; 1st il Light Artillery, Batteries B and E 6th Division (Prentiss)

1st bde (Peabody)

2nd bde (Miller)

12th mi

61st il

21st mo

18th mo

25th mo

18th wi

16th wi not brigaded: 15th, 16th ia; 23rd mo; 11th il Cavalry, 8 cos.; 1st mn Battery; 5th oh Battery unassigned troops 15th MI; 14th WI; 1st IL Light Artillery, Batteries H and L; 2nd IL Light Artillery, Batteries B and F; 8th OH Battery ARMY OF THE OHIO (Buell) 2nd Division (McCook)

4th bde (Rousseau)

5th bde (Kirk)

6th bde (Gibson)

6th in

34th il

32nd in

5th ky

19th in

39th in

1st oh

30th in

15th oh

15th U.S. Infantry, 1st Bn.

77th pa

49th oh

16th U.S. Infantry, 1st Bn. 19th U.S. Infantry, 1st Bn.

Artillery: 5th U.S. Artillery, Battery H

153

Orders of Battle 4th Division (Nelson)

10th bde (Ammen)

19th bde (Hazen)

22nd bde (Bruce)

36th in

9th in

1st ky

6th oh

6th ky

2nd ky

24th oh

41st oh

20th ky Cavalry: 2nd in

5th Division (Crittenden)

11th bde (Boyle)

14th bde (W. Smith)

9th ky

11th ky

13th ky

26th ky

19th oh

13th oh

59th oh not brigaded: 3d ky Cavalry; 1st oh Light Artillery, Battery G; 4th U.S. Artillery, Batteries H and M 6th Division (Wood)

20th bde (Garfield)

21st bde (Wagner)

51st in

15th in

13th mi

10th in

64th oh

57th in

65th oh

24th ky

ARMY OF THE MISSISSIPPI ( Johnston, Beauregard) I Corps (Polk) 1st Division (Clark)

1st bde (Russell)

2nd bde (Stewart)

11th la

13th ar

12th tn

4th tn

13th tn

5th tn

22nd tn

33rd tn

Bankhead’s tn Battery

Stanford’s ms Battery

154

Appendix B 2nd Division (Cheatham)

1st bde ( Johnson)

2nd bde (Stephens)

Blythe’s ms Bn

7th ky

2nd tn

1st tn Bn

15th tn

6th tn

154th tn (senior)

9th tn

Polk’s tn Battery

Smith’s ms Battery

cavalry: 1st ms; ms and al Bn unattached: 47th tn (arrived on April 7) II Corps (Bragg) 1st Division (Ruggles)

1st bde (Gibson)

2nd bde (Anderson)

3rd bde (Pond)

1st ar

1st fl Bn

16th la

4th la

17th la

18th la

13th la

20th la

19th la

9th tx

(la) Crescent Regiment

Bains’s ms Battery

Confederate Guards Response Bn

(la) Orleans Guard Bn

Hodgson’s la Battery, Washington Artillery

Ketchum’s al Battery

Gage’s al Battery

3rd bde ( Jackson)

38th tn

2nd Division (Withers)

1st bde (Gladden) 21st al

2nd bde (Chalmers)

22nd al

5th ms

18th al

23rd al

7th ms

19th al

26th al

9th ms

2nd tx

1st la

10th ms

Robertson’s al Battery

52nd tn

Girardey’s ga Battery

17th al

Cavalry: Clanton’s al Regiment

155

Orders of Battle III Corps (Hardee)

1st bde (Hindman)

2nd bde (Cleburne)

3rd bde (Wood)

2nd ar

15th ar

16th al

5th ar

6th ms

8th ar

6th ar

9th (14th) ar Bn

7th ar

2nd tn (Provisional)

3rd Confederate

5th (35th) tn

27th tn

Miller’s tn Battery

23rd tn

44th tn

Swett’s ms Battery

24th tn

55th tn

Shoup’s ar Artillery Bn

Harper’s ms Battery

3rd ms Bn

Reserve Corps (Breckinridge)

1st bde (Trabue)

2nd bde (Bowen)

3rd bde (Statham)

4th al Bn

9th ar

15th ms

31st al

10th ar

22nd ms

3rd ky

1st mo

19th tn

4th ky

2nd Confederate

20th tn

5th ky

Hudson’s ms Battery

28th tn

Watson’s la Battery

Rutledge’s tn Battery

6th ky tn Bn (Crews) Byrne’s ms Battery

45th tn

Lyon’s (Cobb’s) ky Battery unattached: Forrest’s tn Cavalry; Wharton’s tx Cavalry; Adams’s ms Cavalry; McClung’s tn Battery; Roberts’s ar Battery

Appendix C: Organization, Weapons, and Tactics You will get much more from your battlefield tour if you take a few minutes to become familiar with the following information and then refer to it as necessary. The Organization of Civil War Armies

Following is a diagram of the typical organization, and range of strength, of a Civil War army: army (40,000–120,000 men)

corps

corps

corps

(10,000–30,000 men)

(10,000–30,000 men)

(10,000–30,000 men)

division

division

division

(3,000–8,000 men)

(3,000–8,000 men)

(3,000–8,000 men)

brigade

brigade

brigade

(1,500–3,000 men)

(1,500–3,000 men)

(1,500–3,000 men)

regiment

regiment

regiment

regiment

regiment

(300–800 men)

(300–800 men)

(300–800 men)

(300–800 men)

(300–800 men)

Note: The Union army at Shiloh had no corps organizations. Both Grant’s and Buell’s armies were composed of several divisions reporting directly to army headquarters. The Basic Battlefield Functions of Civil War Leaders

In combat environments the duties of Civil War leaders divided into two main parts: decision making and moral suasion. Although the scope of the decisions varied according to rank and responsibilities, they generally dealt with the movement and deployment of troops, artillery, and logistical support (signal detachments, wagon trains, and so on). Most of the decisions were made by the officer himself, whose staff helped with administrative paperwork but in combat functioned essentially as glorified clerks; they did almost nothing in the way of sifting intelligence or planning operations. Once made, the decisions were transmitted to subordinates either by direct exchange or by courier, with the courier either carrying a written order or conveying the order orally. More rarely, signal flags were used to send instructions. Except in siege operations, when the battle lines were fairy static, the telegraph was almost never used in tactical situations. Moral suasion is the art of persuading troops to perform their duties and dissuading them from a failure to perform

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Organization, Weapons, and Tactics

them. Civil War commanders often accomplished this by personal example, and conspicuous bravery was a vital attribute of any good leader. It is therefore not surprising that 8 percent of Union generals—and 18 percent of their Confederate counterparts—were killed or mortally wounded in action. (By contrast, only about 3 percent of Union enlisted men were killed or mortally wounded in action.) Although any leader might be called upon to intervene directly on the firing line, army, corps, and division commanders tended to direct from behind the battle line, and their duties were mainly supervisory. In all three cases their main ability to influence the fighting, once it was underway, was by the husbanding and judicious commitment of troops held in reserve. Army commanders principally decided the broad questions—whether to attack or defend, where the army’s main effort(s) would be made, and when to retreat (or pursue). In effect they made most of their key choices before and after an engagement rather than during it. Once battle was actually joined, their ability to influence the outcome diminished considerably. They might choose to wait it out or they might choose, temporarily and informally, to exercise the function of a lesser leader. In various Civil War battles, army commanders conducted themselves in all sorts of ways: as detached observers, “super” corps commanders, division commanders, and so on, all the way down to de facto colonels, trying to lead through personal example. Corps commanders chiefly directed main attacks or supervised the defense of large, usually well-defined, sectors. It was their function to carry out the broad (or occasionally quite specific) wishes of the army commander. They coordinated all the elements of their corps (typically infantry divisions and artillery battalions) in order to maximize its offensive or defensive strength. Once battle was actually joined, they influenced the outcome by “feeding” additional troops into the fight—sometimes by preserving a reserve force (usually a division) and committing it at the appropriate moment, sometimes by requesting additional support from adjacent corps or from the army commander. Division commanders essentially had the same functions as corps commanders, though on a smaller scale. When attacking, however, their emphasis was less on “feeding” a fight than keeping the striking power of their divisions as compact as possible. The idea was to strike one hard blow rather than a series of weaker ones. The following commanders were expected to control the actual combat—to close with and destroy the enemy:

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Appendix C

Brigade commanders principally conducted the actual business of attacking or defending. They accompanied the attacking force in person or stayed on the firing line with the defenders. Typically they placed about three of their regiments abreast of one another, with about two in immediate support. Their job was basically to maximize the fighting power of their brigades by ensuring that these regiments had an unobstructed field of fire and did not overlap. During an attack it often became necessary to expand, contract, or otherwise modify the brigade frontage to adapt to the vagaries of terrain, the movements of adjacent friendly brigades, and/or the behavior of enemy forces. It was the brigade commander’s responsibility to shift his regiments as needed while preserving, if possible, the unified striking power of the brigade. Regiment commanders were chiefly responsible for making their men do as the brigade commanders wished, and their independent authority on the battlefield was quite limited. For example, if defending they might order a limited counterattack, but they usually could not order a retreat without approval from higher authority. Assisted by company commanders, they directly supervised the soldiers, giving specific, highly concrete commands: move this way or that, hold your ground, fire by volley, forward, and so on. Commanders at this level were expected to lead by personal example and to display as well as demand strict adherence to duty. Civil War Tactics

Civil War armies basically had three kinds of combat troops: infantry, cavalry, and artillery. Infantrymen fought on foot, each with his own weapon. Cavalrymen were trained to fight on horseback or dismounted, also with their own individual weapons. Artillerymen fought with cannon. infantry Infantry were by far the most numerous part of a Civil War army and were chiefly responsible for seizing and holding ground. The basic Civil War tactic was to put a lot of men next to one another in a line and have them move and shoot together. By present-day standards the notion of placing troops shoulder to shoulder seems insane, but it still made good sense in the mid-nineteenth century. There were two reasons for this: First, it allowed soldiers to concentrate the fire of what were still rather limited weapons. Second, it was almost the only way to move troops effectively under fire. Most Civil War infantrymen used muzzle-loading muskets

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Organization, Weapons, and Tactics

capable of being loaded and fired a maximum of about three times a minute. Individually, therefore, a soldier was nothing. He could affect the battlefield only by combining his fire with that of other infantrymen. Although spreading out made them less vulnerable, infantrymen very quickly lost the ability to combine their fire effectively if they did so. Even more critically, their officers rapidly lost the ability to control them. For most purposes, the smallest tactical unit on a Civil War battlefield was the regiment. Theoretically composed of about 1,000 officers and men, in reality the average Civil War regiment went into battle with about 300– 600 men. Whatever its size, though, all members of the regiment had to be able to understand and carry out the orders of their colonel and subordinate officers, who generally could communicate only through voice command. Since in the din and confusion of battle, only a few soldiers could actually hear any given command, most got the message chiefly by conforming to the movements of the men immediately around them. Maintaining “touch of elbows”—the prescribed close interval— was indispensable for this crude but vital system to work. In addition, infantrymen were trained to “follow the flag”—the unit and national colors were always conspicuously placed in the front and center of each regiment. Thus, when in doubt as to what maneuver the regiment was trying to carry out, soldiers could look to see the direction in which the colors were moving. That is one major reason why the post of color bearer was habitually given to the bravest men in the unit. It was not just an honor, it was insurance that the colors would always move in the direction desired by the colonel. En route to a battle area, regiments typically moved in a column formation, four men abreast. There was a simple maneuver whereby regiments could very rapidly change from column to line—that is, from a formation designed for ease of movement to a formation designed to maximize firepower— once on the battlefield. Regiments normally moved and fought in line of battle—a close-order formation actually composed of two lines, front and rear. Attacking units rarely “charged” in the sense of running full-tilt toward the enemy; such a maneuver would promptly destroy the formation as faster men outstripped slower ones and everyone spread out. Instead a regiment using orthodox tactics would typically step off on an attack moving at a “quick time” rate of 110 steps per minute (at which it would cover about 85 yards per minute). Once under serious fire the rate of advance might be increased to a “double-quick time” of 165 steps per minute (about 150 yards per minute). Only when the regiment was

160

Appendix C

within a few dozen yards of the defending line would the regiment be ordered to advance at a “run” (a very rapid pace but still not a sprint). Thus a regiment might easily take about ten minutes to “charge” 1,000 yards, even if it did not pause for realignment or execute any further maneuvers along the way. In theory an attacking unit would not stop until it reached the enemy line, if even then. The idea was to force back the defenders through the size, momentum, and shock effect of the attacking column. (Fixed bayonets were considered indispensable for maximizing the desired shock effect). In reality, however, the firepower of the defense eventually led most Civil War regiments to stop and return the fire— often at ranges of less than 100 yards. And very often the “charge” would turn into a stand-up firefight at murderously short range until one side or the other gave way. It is important to bear in mind that the above represents a simplified idea of Civil War infantry combat. As you will see as you visit specific stops here at Shiloh, the reality could vary significantly. artillery Second in importance to infantry on most Civil War battlefields was the artillery. Not yet the “killing arm” it would become during World War I, when 70 percent of all casualties would be inflicted by shellfire, artillery nevertheless played an important role, particularly on the defense. Cannon fire could break up an infantry attack or dissuade enemy infantry from attacking in the first place. Its mere presence could also reassure friendly infantry and so exert a moral effect that might be as important as its physical effect on the enemy. The basic artillery unit was the battery, a group of between four and six fieldpieces commanded by a captain. Early in the war batteries tended to be attached to infantry brigades. But over time it was found that they worked best when massed together, and both the Union and Confederate armies presently reorganized their artillery to facilitate this. Eventually both sides maintained extensive concentrations of artillery at corps-level or higher. Coordinating the fire of 20 or 30 guns on a single target was not unusual, and occasionally (as in the bombardment that preceded Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg) concentrations of well over 100 guns might be achieved. Practically all Civil War fieldpieces were muzzle loaded and superficially appeared little changed from their coun-

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terparts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In fact, however, Civil War artillery was quite modern in two respects. First, advances in metallurgy had resulted in cannon barrels that were much lighter than their predecessors but strong enough to contain more powerful charges. Thus, whereas the typical fieldpiece of the Napoleonic era fired a 6pound round, the typical Civil War– era fieldpiece fired a round double that size, with no loss in ease of handling. Second, recent improvements had resulted in the development of practical rifled fieldpieces that had significantly greater range and accuracy than their smoothbore counterparts. Civil War fieldpieces could fire a variety of shell types, each with its own preferred usage. Solid shot was considered best for battering down structures and for use against massed troops (a single round could sometimes knock down several men like ten pins). Shell—hollow rounds that contained an explosive charge and burst into fragments when touched off by a time fuse—were used to set buildings afire or to attack troops behind earthworks or under cover. Spherical case was similar to shell except that each round contained musket balls (78 in a 12-pound shot, 38 in a 6-pound shot); it was used against bodies of troops moving in the open at ranges of from 500 to 1,500 yards. At ranges of below 500 yards, the round of choice was canister, essentially a metal can containing about 27 cast-iron balls, each 1.5 inches in diameter. As soon as a canister round was fired, the sides of the can would rip away and the cast-iron balls would fly directly into the attacking infantry or ricochet into them off the ground, making the cannon essentially a large-scale shotgun. In desperate situations double and sometimes even triple charges of canister were used. As recently as the Mexican War, artillery had been used effectively on the offensive, with fieldpieces rolling forward to advanced positions from which they could blast a hole in the enemy line. The advent of the rifled musket, however, made this tactic dangerous— defending infantry could now pick off artillerists who dared to come so close—and so the artillery had to remain farther back. In theory the greater range and accuracy of rifled cannon might have offset this a bit, but rifled cannon fired comparatively small shells of limited effectiveness against infantry at a distance. The preferred use of artillery on the offensive was therefore not against infantry, but against other artillery—what was termed “counterbattery work.” The idea was to mass one’s own cannon against a few of the enemy’s cannon and systematically fire so as to kill the enemy’s artillerists and dismount his fieldpieces.

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Appendix C

cavalry “Whoever saw a dead cavalryman?” was a byword among Civil War soldiers, a pointed allusion to the fact that the battlefield role played by the mounted arm was often negligible. For example, at the battle of Antietam—the bloodiest single day of the entire war—the Union cavalry suffered exactly 5 men killed and 23 wounded. This was in sharp contrast to the role played by horsemen during the Napoleonic era, when a well-timed cavalry charge could exploit an infantry breakthrough, overrun the enemy’s retreating foot soldiers, and convert a temporary advantage into a complete battlefield triumph. Why the failure to use cavalry to better tactical advantage? The best single explanation might be the fact that for much of the war, there was simply not enough of it to achieve significant results. Whereas cavalry had comprised 20–25 percent of Napoleonic armies, in Civil War armies it generally averaged 8–10 percent or less. The paucity of cavalry may be explained in turn by its much greater expense compared with infantry. A single horse might easily cost ten times the monthly pay of a Civil War private and necessitated the purchase of saddles, bridles, stirrups, and other gear as well as specialized clothing and equipment for the rider. Moreover, horses required about 26 pounds of feed and forage per day, many times the requirement of an infantryman. One might add to this the continual need for remounts to replace worn-out animals and the fact that it took far more training to make an effective cavalryman than an effective infantryman, as well as the widespread belief that the heavily wooded terrain of North America would limit opportunities to use cavalry on the battlefield. All in all it is perhaps no wonder that Civil War armies were late in creating really powerful mounted arms. Instead cavalry tended to be used mainly for scouting and raiding, duties that took place away from the main battlefields. During major engagements their mission was principally to screen the flanks or to control the rear areas. By 1863, however, the North was beginning to create cavalry forces sufficiently numerous and well armed to play a significant role on the battlefield. At Gettysburg, for example, Union cavalrymen armed with rapid-fire breach-loading carbines were able to hold a Confederate infantry division at bay for several hours. At Cedar Creek in 1864, a massed cavalry charge late in the day completed the ruin of the Confederate army. And during the Appomattox campaign in 1865, Federal cavalry played a decisive role in bringing Lee’s retreating army to bay and forcing its surrender.

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Appreciation of the Terrain

The whole point of a battlefield tour is to see the ground over which men actually fought. Understanding the terrain is basic to understanding almost every aspect of a battle. It helps explain why commanders deployed their troops where they did, why attacks occurred in certain areas and not in others, and why some attacks succeeded and others did not. When defending, Civil War leaders often looked for positions with as many of the following characteristics as possible: First, it obviously had to be ground from which they could protect whatever it was they were ordered to defend. Second, it should be elevated enough so as to provide good observation and good fields of fire—they wanted to see as far as possible and sometimes (though not always) to shoot as far as possible. The highest ground was not necessarily the best, however, for it often afforded an attacker defilade—areas of lower ground that the defenders’ weapons could not reach. For that reason leaders seldom placed their troops at the very top of a ridge or hill (the “geographical crest”). Instead they placed them a bit forward of the geographical crest at a point from which they had the best field of fire (the “military crest”). Alternatively they might even choose to place their troops behind the crest. This concealed the size and exact deployment of the defenders from the enemy and offered protection from longrange fire. It also meant that an attacker, upon reaching the crest, would be silhouetted against the sky and susceptible to a sudden, potentially destructive fire at close range. Third, the ground adjacent to the chosen position should present a potential attacker with obstacles. Streams and ravines made good obstructions because they required an attacker to halt temporarily while trying to cross them. Fences and boulder fields could also slow an attacker. Dense woodlands could do the same but offered concealment for potential attackers and were therefore less desirable. In addition to its other virtues, elevated ground was also prized because attackers moving uphill had to exert themselves more and got tired faster. Obstacles were especially critical at the ends of a unit’s position—the flanks—if there were no other units beyond to protect them. That is why commanders “anchored” their flanks, whenever possible, on hills or the banks of large waterways. Fourth, it must offer ease of access for reinforcements to arrive and, if necessary, for the defenders to retreat. Fifth, a source of drinkable water—the more the better—should be immediately behind the position if possible. This was especially important for cavalry and artillery units, which had horses to think about as well as men.

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Appendix C

When attacking, Civil War commanders looked for different things: First, they looked for weaknesses in the enemy’s position, especially “unanchored” flanks. If there were no obvious weaknesses, they looked for a key point in the enemy’s position— often a piece of elevated ground whose loss would render the rest of the defensive line untenable. Second, they searched for ways to get close to the enemy position without being observed. Using woodlands and ridgelines to screen their movements was a common tactic. Third, they looked for open, elevated ground on which they could deploy artillery to “soften up” the point to be attacked. Fourth, once the attack was underway, they tried, when possible, to find areas of defilade in which their troops could gain relief from exposure to enemy fire. Obviously it was almost never possible to find defilade that offered protection all the way to the enemy line, but leaders could often find some point en route where they could pause briefly to “dress” their lines. Making the best use of terrain was an art that almost always involved tradeoffs among these various factors—and also required consideration of the number of troops available. Even a very strong position was vulnerable if there were not enough men to defend it. A common error among Civil War generals, for example, was to stretch their line too thin in order to hold an otherwise desirable piece of ground.

Estimating Distance

When touring Civil War battlefields, it is often helpful to have a general sense of distance. This can help you, for example, estimate how long it took troops to get from point A to point B or to visualize the points at which they would have become vulnerable to different kinds of artillery fire. There are several easy tricks to bear in mind: — Use reference points for which the exact distance is known. Many battlefield stops give you the exact distance to one or more key sites in the area. Locate such a reference point, then try to divide the intervening terrain into equal parts. For instance, say the reference point is 800 yards away. The ground about halfway in between will be 400 yards; the ground halfway between yourself and the midway point will be 200 yards, and so on. — Use the football field method. Visualize the length of a football field, which of course is about 100 yards. Then estimate the number of football fields you could put between yourself and the distant point of interest.

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— Use cars, houses, and other common objects that tend to be roughly the same size. Most cars are about the same size and so are many houses. Become familiar with how large or small such objects appear at various distances—300 yards, 1,000 yards, 2,000 yards, and such. This is a less accurate way of estimating distance, but it can be helpful if the lay of the land makes it otherwise hard to tell whether a point is near or far. Look for such objects that seem a bit in front of the point. Their relative size can provide a useful clue. Maximum Effective Ranges of Common Civil War Weapons

Rifled musket Smoothbore musket Breech-loading carbine Napoleon 12-pounder smoothbore cannon Solid shot Shell Spherical case Canister Parrott 10-pounder rifled cannon Solid shot 3-inch ordnance rifle (cannon) Solid shot

400 yds. 150 yds. 300 yds. 1,700 yds. 1,300 yds. 500–1,500 yds. 400 yds. 6,000 yds. 4,000 yds.

Further Reading

Coggins, Jack. Arms and Equipment of the Civil War. 1962; reprint, Wilmington nc: Broadfoot, 1990. The best introduction to the subject: engagingly written, profusely illustrated, and packed with information. Griffith, Paddy. Battle Tactics of the Civil War. New Haven ct: Yale University Press, 1989. Argues that in a tactical sense, the Civil War was more nearly the last great Napoleonic war rather than the first modern war. In Griffith’s view the influence of the rifled musket on Civil War battlefields has been exaggerated; the carnage and inconclusiveness of many Civil War battles owed less to the inadequacy of Napoleonic tactics than to a failure to properly understand and apply them. Jamieson, Perry D. Crossing the Deadly Ground: United States Army Tactics, 1865 –1899. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1994. The early chapters offer a good analysis of the tactical lessons learned by U.S. Army officers from their Civil War experiences. Linderman, Gerald F. Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War. New York: Free Press, 1987. This thoughtful, well-written study examines how Civil

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Appendix C

War soldiers understood and coped with the challenges of the battlefield. McWhiney, Grady, and Perry D. Jamieson. Attack and Die: Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1982. Although unconvincing in its assertion that their Celtic heritage led Southerners to take the offensive to an inordinate degree, this is an excellent tactical study that emphasizes the revolutionary effect of the rifled musket. Best read in combination with Griffith above.

A Union battery taken by surprise. blcw 1:598

Sources Shortened titles given here are listed in full in section “For Further Reading.” Stop 1

(Pittsburg Landing): (a) William T. Sherman, Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, 2 vols. in 1 (1875; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1957), 1 : 229; (b) Maj. H. M. Dillard, quoted in Eyewitnesses at the Battle of Shiloh, ed. David R. Logsdon (Nashville: Kettle Mills, 1994), 3.

Stop 2

(Shiloh Church): Sword, Shiloh, 124 (first quote); Daniel, Shiloh, 137 (second quote); U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 128 vols. (Washington >dc: Government Printing Office, 1881– 1901), vol. 10, pt. 1, 89 (third quote) [hereinafter cited as OR; all references are to series 1].

Stop 3

(Fraley Field): (b) G. T. Beauregard, “The Campaign of Shiloh,” in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, ed. C. C. Buel and R. U. Johnson, 4 vols. (New York: Century, 1887), 1 : 579 (first quote); OR, 10, pt. 1, 89 (second quote); (c ) William Preston Johnston, “Albert Sidney Johnston at Shiloh,” in Battles and Leaders, 1: 555, 556, 553 (first, second, and third quotes); John Keegan, The Mask of Command (New York: Viking Penguin, 1987), 329 (fourth quote).

Stop 4

(Peabody’s Battle Line): Logsdon, Eyewitnesses, 15.

Stop 5

(Peabody’s Camp): OR, vol. 10, pt. 1, 283 (first quote); Logsdon, Eyewitnesses, 18 (second and third quotes).

East Stop 6

(Spain Field): (a) Daniel, Shiloh, 152 (first quote); Sword, Shiloh, 158 (second quote); (c) Logsdon, Eyewitnesses, 17 (first quote); Daniel, Shiloh, 196 (second quote).

East Stop 9

(The Peach Orchard): (a) Daniel, Shiloh, 192 (first quote); Sword, Shiloh, 235 (second quote); (e) Daniel, Shiloh, 217 (first quote); Sword, Shiloh, 263– 64 (second quote).

Hornets’ Nest Excursion

(a) OR, vol. 10, pt. 1, 235; (b) U. S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, 2 vols. (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1885), 1 : 340; (d) OR, vol. 10, pt. 1, 480, 488 (first and second quotes); Daniel, Shiloh, 213 (third quote); (f ) OR, vol. 10, pt. 1, 150; (g) Sword, Shiloh, 292 (first quote); Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (New York: Pantheon, 1998), 178 (second quote).

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Sources

East Stop 11

(Johnston’s Death): Johnston, “Albert Sidney Johnston at Shiloh,” 564 – 65.

West Stop 6

(Rea Field): OR, 10, pt. 1, 264.

West Stop 8

(Ridge near Shiloh Church): (a) OR, vol. 10, pt. 1, 581; (b) Thomas W. Connelly, History of the Seventieth Ohio Regiment (Cincinnati: Peak Bros., n.d.), 22.

West Stop 9

(On the Hamburg-Purdy Road): (a) Ira Blanchard, I Marched with Sherman: Civil War Memoirs of the 20th Illinois Volunteer Infantry (San Francisco: J. D. Huff, 1992), 54; (b) Lucius W. Barber, Army Memoirs of Lucius W. Barber, Company “D,” 15th Illinois Volunteer Infantry (Chicago: J. M. W. Jones, 1894), 52–53.

West Stop 10

(Review Field): (a) Daniel, Shiloh, 179; (b) Luther H. Cowan to Harriet Cowan, Apr. 27, 1862, Luther H. Cowan Papers, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison; (c) Nesbitt Baugher to “Dear Father,” Apr. 9, 1862, Cowan Papers.

West Stop 11

(McClernand’s Camps): (a) Johnny Green, Johnny Green of the Orphan Brigade: The Journal of a Confederate Soldier, ed. A. D. Kirwan (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1956), 26; (b) Statement of Dr. Reilly, assistant surgeon of the 45th Illinois, in Warren [Ill.] Independent, Apr. 22, 1862, Cowan Papers.

West Stop 13

(Hell’s Hollow): (a) Daniel, Shiloh, 230; (b) Sword, Shiloh, 441.

Stop 14

(Grant’s Last Line): (a) Daniel, Shiloh, 253; (b) Daniel, Shiloh, 254 –55 (quote); (c) Daniel, Shiloh, 249 (both quotes).

East Stop 15

(Line of Departure): OR, vol. 10, pt. 1, 355.

East Stop 16

(Wicker Field): Daniel, Shiloh, 268.

East Stop 17

(Bloody Pond): OR, vol. 10, pt. 1, 534 (first quote); Sword, Shiloh, 389 (second quote); OR, vol. 10, pt. 1, 374 –75 (third quote).

West Stop 15

(Lew Wallace’s Approach): (a) Stacy Allen, “If He Had Less Rank: Lew Wallace and Ulysses S. Grant,” in Grant’s Lieutenants: From Cairo to Vicksburg, ed. Steven E. Woodworth (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001); (b) Johann Stuber, Mein Tagebuch ueber die Erlebnisse im Revolutions-Kriege (Cincinnati: S. Rosenthal, 1896), 22–23.

169

Sources

West Stop 16

(Tilghman Branch): (a) Silas T. Grisamore, The Civil War Reminiscences of Major Silas T. Grisamore, ed. Arthur W. Bergeron Jr. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993), 38; (b) undated letter, R. W. Burt Letters, Western Historical Manuscript Collection, 23 Ellis Library, University of Missouri– Columbia; (c) letter from Capt. S. M. Emmons, Lt. J. H. H. Hunter, and Lt. F. Morrison, East Liverpool (Ohio) Mercury May 15, 1862, 2.

West Stop 17

( Jones Field): (a) OR, vol. 10, pt. 1, 171; (b) letter from Capt. S. M. Emmons, Lt. J. H. H. Hunter, and Lt. F. Morrison, East Liverpool (Ohio) Mercury May 15, 1862, 2.

West Stop 18

(Sowell Field): OR, vol. 10, pt. 1, 627.

West Stop 19

(Water Oaks Pond): (a) OR, vol. 10, pt. 1, 251; (b) George Rogers to “My Dear Friend,” Apr. 12, 1862, Wiley Sword private collection, printed in In Camp on the Rappahannock: The Newsletter of the Blue & Gray Education Society 4, no. 2, Fall 1998, 14.

Appendix A

(The Union and Confederate Commands on April 6): Daniel, Shiloh, 174 (first quote); OR, vol. 10, pt. 2, 95 (second quote); Daniel, Shiloh, 176; Thomas Jordan, “Notes of a Confederate Staff-Officer at Shiloh,” Battles and Leaders, 1 : 599 – 600 (third quote); Daniel, Shiloh, 209 (fourth quote); Stephen D. Engle, Don Carlos Buell: Most Promising of All (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 217 (fifth quote); OR, vol. 10, pt. 1, 332 (sixth quote); Sherman, Memoirs, 1:246 (seventh quote).

Beating the long roll. blcw 4:179

For Further Reading Allen, Stacy D. “Shiloh!: A Visitor’s Guide.” Columbus oh: Blue & Gray, 2001. Written by the Shiloh National Military Park historian, this excellent brief survey is a revision of two articles originally published in the February 1997 and April 1997 issues of Blue & Gray Magazine. It includes not only a well-illustrated narrative of the campaign and battle but also detailed tours of the Confederate approach march from Corinth to Shiloh, Nelson’s march to Pittsburg Landing, Lew Wallace’s ill-fated march to the battlefield, and the postbattle rear-guard action at Fallen Timbers. Highly recommended. Daniel, Larry J. Shiloh: The Battle that Changed the Civil War. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997. This most recent study of Shiloh builds on the work of McDonough and Sword while based on deep archival research of its own. It is the best starting point for those interested in a thorough exploration of the battle. Engle, Stephen D. Struggle for the Heartland: The Campaigns from Fort Henry to Corinth. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001. This concise, reliable study places the Shiloh campaign within the context of western-theater operations from February through June 1862. Foote, Shelby. Shiloh. 1954; reprint, New York: Vintage, 1991. Despite some minor historical missteps, this is a generally accurate, well-crafted, and gripping novel about the battle, told through the eyes of numerous participants. Frank, Joseph Allan, and George Reeves. “Seeing the Elephant”: Raw Recruits at the Battle of Shiloh. Westport ct: Greenwood, 1989. An interesting study based on a close reading of hundreds of first person accounts by common soldiers in the battle. McDonough, James Lee. Shiloh: In Hell before Night. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1977. A good strategic overview, but it is brief, almost cursory, in its treatment of the tactical details. McDonough faults Beauregard for his failure to press home the Confederate assault after Johnston’s death. Sword, Wiley. Shiloh: Bloody April. 1974; reprint, Dayton oh: Morningside, 1988. Comparable in depth to Daniel and much more detailed than McDonough, Sword primarily blames Johnston for the Confederate loss.

Reveille. blcw 4:475

In This Hallowed Ground: Guides to the Civil War Battlefields series Chickamauga: A Battlefield Guide with a section on Chattanooga Steven E. Woodworth Gettysburg: A Battlefield Guide Mark Grimsley and Brooks D. Simpson Shiloh: A Battlefield Guide Mark Grimsley and Steven E. Woodworth

Feeling the enemy. blcw 3:224