Defeat at Shiloh Battle - Essay Example

This essay shall focus on Purdy’s engagement, the arrival of the Confederates, and the movement from Corinth.

Preparations for what was later to be known as the Battle of Shiloh began in February 1862.  In the wake of the Confederate loss of both Fort Henry and Forte Donelson, Confederate General Alber Sydney Johnston withdrew to Tennessee for reorganization purposes.  Recognizing that the Confederates were planning for action, Major General Ulysses Grant moved his army to West Tennessee, occupying Pittsburg Landing by March 1862. Directly following, orders were issued to Major General Don Carlos Buell to join Grant and, with their joint armies, undertake a seizure of the Memphis and Charleston Railways (Veit).  The plan, as explained by Suhr was to cut off Confederate supplies and encircle and suffocate the Confederate forces.

Even as the Union army was proactively planning to offset what they had determined to be Confederate preparations for the offensive, and take the offensive themselves, Confederate General, Johnston, was preparing for an offensive on Grant’s forces, scheduled for April 4th, 1862 (Bagby).  The Confederate forces which had been scattered in the wake of the Forts Henry and Donelson losses were gathered, reorganized, and fortified by fresh forces, finally making an army of 55,000 men, renamed the Army of the Mississippi.  This army, in its entirety, was concentrated at and around Corinth, approximately 20 miles from Grant’s position.  On 3rd April, Johnston departed with 44,000 men planning to launch a surprise attack on Grant’s forces on 4th April and in advance of Buell’s arrival (Bagby).  The plan, as explained by Bagby, was to attack Grant’s forces from the left, strike a divide within the Union flanks separate them from their gunboat supports on the Tennessee, thereby closing off their retreat path following which the Union army would be driven to swamps in the West and completely decimated (Bagby).

As noted above, the offensive was scheduled for April 4th but multitudinous factors led to a 48-hour delay.  As the Confederate Army Brigadier General Marcus Joseph Wright recorded in his diaries, on April 4th the “enemy’s cavalry dashed in on our picket beyond Purdy,” with the unexpected engagement ultimately forcing the Confederate forces to leave Purdy on April 5th and march 23 miles to Shiloh (90-91).  In other words, even though Grant’s army, according to the General’s admission had not suspected of the Confederate’s plan of attack for April 4th, the Confederate army at Purdy unexpectedly found itself on the defensive despite their preparations for the offensive (Bagby).  This fact, needless to say, and insofar as it entailed an unexpected engagement and forced a Confederate withdrawal from Purdy, delayed the execution of the above-explained battle plan by 48 hours, in addition to which the stated development necessitated a change in the mentioned plans since the Confederate army no longer had a stronghold at Purdy.  It was at this point that Johnson’s second in command, General Beauregard, advised a withdrawal to Corinth, arguing that insofar as the element of surprise had been lost, the Confederate army needed to rethink the entire offensive and reorganize accordingly.  Johnston, however, refused the advice and insisted that the Confederate army move ahead to Pittsburg Landing where Grant’s Union forces were (Bagby).

The Battle of Shiloh was finally fought on April 6th, concluding with a Union victory on April 7th.   The Confederate army initially launched a ferocious attack but, as stated by Bagby, Johnson unexpectedly and inexplicably decided to lead the charge straight into the Union forces as a result of which, he was killed.  Without their General there to modify the battle plans and reassess the situation, the Confederate army fell back.  To further complicate the situation, Buell arrived with his forces on that very day.  The Confederate army began a hasty retreat along the way to Corinth with the Union army in ferocious pursuit (Veit).  The battle was, thus, lost.