Shiloh, Battle of (1862), costly
Civil War engagement.In February 1862, a Union campaign along the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers had forced the Confederates under General Albert Sidney Johnston to cede much of middle and western Tennessee. By spring forty thousand Federal troops under Major General Ulysses S.
Grant were massed near Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River, preparing to attack the vital rail junction of Corinth, Mississippi.
On 6 April after a dilatory march northward from Corinth, 44,000 Confederates under Johnston and General P.G.T. Beauregard attacked the Federal troops near a Methodist meetinghouse, Shiloh Church. Surprising their foes, the Southerners drove the Union right flank back nearly a mile in three hours of savage fighting. Yet the attack failed to turn Grant's left flank near the river, a prime tactical goal, and stubborn resistance in the Union center stalled the offensive. As Union defenders held out until late in the day, bloodied Confederates dubbed the area the “Hornet's Nest.” By that time, Johnston was dead, struck by a stray minié ball that severed an artery in his leg. Beauregard assumed command and, although the Hornet's Nest was subdued, called off further attacks. Grant received reinforcements under Major General Don Carlos Buell, and at dawn on 7 April he seized the offensive. In a reversal of the previous day's action, the Federals forced the Confederates back, and Beauregard withdrew in midafternoon.
Shiloh failed to alter the strategic situation in the
West, although the Union followed with subsequent victories. The engagement was particularly significant, however, because its appalling casualty toll—over 23,000 men killed, wounded or missing—disabused both sides of the notion that the war would be short‐lived.
Bibliography
Wiley Sword , Shiloh: Bloody April, 1974.
James Lee McDonough , Shiloh—in Hell before Night, 1977.
Christopher Losson
