Battle of Shiloh in The Civil War - Research Paper Example

 Introduction The Battle of Shiloh is one of the important battles fought in the course of the American civil war, and took place in April 1862. This battle also referred to as the Battle of Pittsburg Landing, occurred over a span of two days (6th -7th April) and became a major decisive battle that resulted in the defeat of the Confederates, with both sides incurring heavy losses. This battle also brought forth the grimness of the war which till then was regarded lightly by both the sides. The war took place in the south west regions of Tennessee, the place where the Union army under the leadership of the Major General U.S. Grant had camped, waiting for reinforcements to arrive. Situated on the western bank of the river Tennessee, the place was known as the Pittsburg Landing, and it was here that on the 6th of April 1862, the Confederates under their General Beauregard and General Johnston, made a surprise and fierce attack on the Union army. It was an attempt by them to recapture Tennessee and recover their losses on the Western Theatre of the civil war. This war which resulted in the defeat of the Confederate south saw a large number of lives lost, with more than 23000 soldiers’ dead, wounded or captured. Such huge casualty numbers were unprecedented in the American history, and were even more than the combined causality numbers recorded in the Mexican –American war, American revolutionary war, and the 1812 war. In the previous major points of the Civil war, which consisted of the Wilson’s Creek, First Battle of Bull Run, Pea Ridge and Fort Donelson saw a combined death figure of around 12000. In just two days the Shiloh war toll nearly doubled these numbers, causing huge losses to the Union and Confederacy, and bringing in unprecedented grief and sorrow to the families of the Confederates which remain pertinacious for the next three years, that the war lingered on. This article will explore in detail the background of the civil war, with special focus on the Battle of Shiloh. It will also explore as to what exactly happened on those two fateful days highlighting the main events, the activities of the two forces and their generals, and will study the public reactions towards the victorious General Grant of the Union army. It will also examine the reactions of President Jefferson and the Confederacy as a whole, towards their conceding defeat. This article will do an in-depth study on both the immediate repercussions and the long lasting effects that this battle had on the entire civil war. All in all, this entire article will prove the significance of the battle of Shiloh in changing the entire course of the civil war. Body In April 1861, when the Confederates fired the first canon in Fort Sumter in South Carolina, and declared war against the Union, both the sides had taken the war very lightly. The north side consisted of “scarcely 16000 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”1. However, as the battle progressed and months became years, the grimness of the situation emerged, and both sides soon had to raise an army right from scratch. Both sides had to call to for volunteers from the various state regiments, a tedious process which created a lot of confusion and much initial mistakes were committed on both sides. Though the Confederates got a better start, however, by the spring of 1862 they were in a desperate situation. With the exception of Virginia, the entire Western Theatre saw one defeat after the other by the Confederacy at the hands of the Union army, and the former came under pressure to win back Tennessee and regain some of its ground that was fast slipping away. It was at this precarious juncture that the Confederacy made a desperate attempt to regain Tennessee, which became later famous in history as the Battle of Shiloh. Here it is essential for us to understand a little of the background that resulted in the American civil war and caused an entire nation to become divided and fight against each other, where even relatives and friends were seen to be facing each other as enemies. Background causes that lead to the civil war: Before the war, the North and the South was sharply demarcated by their lifestyle and economy. The southern economy was completely based on agriculture and grew chiefly export crops like cotton and tobacco, while the north was primarily industrial and grew mainly food crops. The southern states had large plantations that were dependent on slave labor; drawn mainly from the black Africans. The southern economy had risen and was flourishing with the help of slave labor, and northern states expressed their anguish against this exploitation of human beings as slaves. Slavery had already become illegal in many states of the northern and western USA. These ‘Free states’ were pushing the southern states for the abolishment of slavery. The southern and south eastern states that supported slavery consisted of Texas, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Louisiana and Tennessee, Alabama, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Florida, Maryland and Georgia. Besides the issue of slavery, the southern and northern states also differed over their views on theory of ‘states’ rights’. According to this theory “each state should have the power to make its own laws and govern itself”2 and the southern states were intent to continue with this states’ rights policy in order to preserve their sovereignty. The northern states were opposed to this entire concept, and they strongly vouched for a central government that would make uniform laws for all the states. Since the northern states were greater in number, the south felt constantly threatened that federal laws would be implemented and that would have a negative impact on the southern economy. The main threat that loomed in front of the south was in the form of taxes on their agricultural products, failing which they felt the north might try to make laws that would make slavery illegal. Keeping this threat in mind, some southern leaders went to the extent of proclaiming that since they believed that the states should be given more power than the central government, the southern states need not compulsorily follow all the federal laws. This proclamation in turn enraged their northern counterparts. There was another long standing territorial disagreement that was proving to become another matter of contention amongst the north and south. This controversial issue involved the western territories that were yet to be officially divided into states. The federal government could not make up its mind as to whether to declare these states as ‘free states’ or allow these states to practice slavery. Since the new states that would be formed would give elected representatives to the Federal Congress, both the south and north felt that the stand of the federal government on the issue of slavery in relation to these new states would be of primary importance to their positions of power within the central authority. When in 1860 Abraham Lincoln just before the presidential elections, promised not to introduce slavery into these new states, the south finally decided to call it quits, and opted for secession from the north. They formed a separate nation which was named as the Confederate states of America, or in short the Confederacy, of which Jefferson Davis was elected the President. Under him the Confederate army was formed, which soon took charge of many southern ports and harbors. On April 12th 1861, with the first firing at Fort Sumter by the Confederate army and the subsequent capture of the Union army stationed there, the civil war officially started. Conditions that led to the Battle of Shiloh and the people involved in this battle: With a few minor setbacks, by the New Year eve of 1862, the Confederate army seemed to be comfortably placed with a series of decisive victories at Wilson’s creek, Belmont, Lexington in Missouri, and Ball’s Bluff. They had managed to hold their ground in Missouri, Virginia, and Kentucky, and their number of causalities had barely touched 5000. “The war had not yet turned vicious…nor had the …government felt the crushing weight of northern industry and man power…Hoped-for British intervention seemed closer…”3 However the much promised British help never came, and soon by the spring of 1862, Confederacy started losing a string of strategically placed locations to the Union army. February 1862 saw the Confederacy losing to the Union army at Fort Donelson and Fort Henry. More losses followed and it was soon seen that “the Confederacy’s fortunes in the west has taken a drastic downturn. All across that region, the South has lost battles, seen armies captured, and forfeited vast amounts of territory”4. This forced General Johnston to withdraw his forces into Alabama, west Tennessee and Mississippi, to rearrange and regroup his troops. Meanwhile in March, the Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant moved up the Tennessee River in order to invade the western Tennessee regions. Soon Major General Don Carlos Buell of the Ohio regiment, with instructions from Union Major General Henry Halleck, strove to join forces with General Grant, whereupon he moved his forces from Nashville and proceeded towards Pittsburg Landing to meet Grant. This whole strategy was worked out in order to penetrate deep into south to cut off the vital line of Charleston Memphis railroad that connected Memphis, with the Mississippi valley and Richmond, and also take over the strategically located town of Corinth in Mississippi. At this time General Grant commanded six separate divisions. These divisions were under Major Generals William Sherman, Stephen Hurlbut, W. Wallace, Lew Wallace, John Mc Clernand and Benjamin Prentiss, and they were encamped well within Tennessee by early April, with Lew Wallace stationed at Crump’s Landing, and the others in Pittsburg Landing which was further down south. Here General Grant with his characteristic lack of good planning had spread his army round the church of Shiloh (a small wooden church), without taking any defensive measures, like making fortifications or even entrenchments. In his memoirs General Grant defends himself by saying that “the troops with me, officers and men, needed discipline and drill more than they did experience with the pick, shovel and axe… under all these circumstances I concluded that drill and discipline were worth more to our men than fortifications” 5. On April 5, William Nelson was the first of Don C. Buell’s division to reach the Savannah, and was ordered to remain there by General Grant. With the rest of the Buell’s division yet to reach Savannah, at the time of the battle it was found that only four of Buell’s divisions with only 17918 men were present to take part in this war, that too, they would reach the battle field only on the second day of the war. A look at the Confederate side is now necessary to understand their positions, just at the eve of this war. As Smith tells us “the Confederates did not stand idly by. It was the intention of Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston and the Confederate high command to defend Corinth by attacking the Union army at Pittsburgh Landing”6. Johnston had planned to attack and cut off Grant on the left side, from where his reinforcements were supposed to arrive. If this tactics would work out, then Johnston rationalized, the Union army could be pushed back into the Owl Creek swamps where they could be easily finished off. Though planned for the 4th of April, circumstances forced the Confederates to delay their attacks till the 6th April, amidst expressed fears by the second-in-command General Beauregard, that this delay might have betrayed the surprise element in this covert attack. However, Johnston paid no heed to Beauregard’s warnings and decided to proceed. His newly reorganized army now rechristened as the ‘Army of Mississippi’ had around 55000 men that was concentrated mainly around the all important town of Corinth. Johnston, realizing that Buell’s forces would soon be arriving to reinforce Grant’s men, knew that he would have no such reinforcements to help him, and so decided that he had no time to lose. From his troops he separated 44699 men and sent them on the 3rd of April to attack Grant’s forces and take them by surprise, before Buell could reach to help. Johnston had divided his trrops into four major groups at head of which were Major General William Hardee, Major General Braxton Bragg, Major General Leonidas Polk and major general John Breckinridge. So at the eve of the battle of Shiloh we find that both the Union army and the Confederate army were of equal sizes, though a closer inspection would reveal that the Confederates were a poor match to the Union army. Johnston’s army were mostly carrying old antiquated firearms that included single shot guns, muskets that belonged to previous generation, some firearms were old relics that had once been used in Mexican war, while some confederates had only pikes to fight with. The Confederates were lacking in experience, and only General Bragg’s men had some experience of the actual war. When this is compared with the Union troops, we find that General Grant had an army that consisted of 62 infantry regiments, out of which 32 had taken an active part in the battle at Fort Donelson, and his cavalry and artillery sections also consisted of highly experienced men. The two days of the war- 6th and 7th April 1862: On the 6th of April, after spending the whole of the previous night preparing and taking their positions for the assault, Johnston and his men finally attacked the Union army at 6 in the morning. This sudden early morning assault took the Union army completely by surprise, that had no prior warning of this abstruse attack and they were ill prepared for this sudden war. However, Johnston who wanted to cut off the Union army from the river Tennessee, when gave Beauregard charge of the rear guard, the latter had completely opposite plans, and worked towards pushing the Union army more towards the river. Bragg and Hardee started their assault in one line that was almost 5 km wide, and soon they became intermingled and chaos ensued, making it extremely difficult for the confederate generals to control their men. Again around 7.30am, Beauregard made his second mistake, when he ordered the Breckinridge and Polk to advance on both sides of the line. This completely diluted the depth of attack of the Confederate army on the Union troops, turning it into a full frontal assault lacking in both depth and width which was needed for an attack of such a grand scale. However the sudden attack was quite fierce in nature and frightened many of Grant’s men causing many of them to flee in panic, resulting in the complete breakdown in many of the divisions of the Union army. General Grant who injured himself on the 4th of April, was unable to move without crutches, and so was missing from direct action. It was General Sherman, whose men bore the initial assault, and who stood out with his fierce leadership and courage, despite being injured in the battle field. Under his command his men fought doggedly, but fell back after some time and moved behind the Shiloh church. So, we find that the on the first part of 6th April, Johnston’s men made steady victorious advances, winning over one position after the other from the Union army, with only John Mc Clernand and his men managing to retaliate and hold on the Confederates for some time. General Grant who was 10 miles away from the epicenter of the war, on the banks of the river Tennessee, was waiting eagerly for the reinforcements to arrive, which reached only on the second day of the battle. By this time the number of casualties in the Union army had gone up very high. At around 9 am on the 6th of April, the war intensified on an area known as the ‘Hornet’s Nest’. Here the Confederate army assaulted and practically laid siege for many hours on end, instead of simply bypassing the area, and it was here that the Confederates suffered huge losses. After seven hours of intense fighting and losing many men, finally the Union forces surrendered. However, these seven hours gave General Grant the time to prepare a strong line of defense at the Pittsburgh Landing. At around 2.30 pm while still fighting at the Hornet’s nest, the Confederates suffered their most fatal blow when General Johnston was mortally wounded. After his death General Beauregard assumed command, and again made another mistake of resuming the fight in Hornet’s Nest, in order to keep the news of Johnston’s death a secret, so that the army morale remained intact. Soon at the day end, it was found that Johnston’s plan of pushing the Union army into the swamp had utterly failed, mainly owing to the lack of vision and other tactical errors by Beauregard, and they were now in a more comfortable position along the river bank, something which Johnston had foreseen and tried to avoid. Next day, the Union army received reinforcements and numbered around 45000, while the Confederates were a mere 20000, with many dead, and more straggling behind or deserting the army. Soon the Union army with their new reinforcements launched a fully fledged attack on the Confederate army. The battle was most intense at Hamburg-Purdy road and though Beauregard managed to get some temporary success in the early afternoon in the Shiloh church region, however the Union army soon took charge and managed to drive the Confederates back into Prentiss’s old camps. By evening Beauregard realized that he had lost almost 10000 of his men and were running extremely low on resources, and around 5pm with the Confederates retreating into Corinth, the war was officially over, and the Union army emerged victorious. Aftermath of the war: Immediately after the war, General Grant was completely vilified by the media and the general public. There were rumors spread by those no-where near the actual battle field, as to his lack of leadership qualities and that he had completely failed to prepare to provide defenses for his troops. It was also falsely insinuated by General Halleck 7 that Grant was drunk on the eve of the attack and this had led to the killing of many of his defenseless men in their very tents. Public opinion which spitted venom against him, openly lauded General Buell for taking control, and General Sherman was hailed as the war hero. There was a general call for Grant’s dismissal and Alexander McClure, a Republican from Pennsylvania, tells us in his memoirs as to his request to President Lincoln for Grant’s dismissal, “I appealed to Lincoln for his own sake to remove Grant at once, and, in giving my reasons for it, I simply voiced the admittedly overwhelming protest from the loyal people of the land…”8 Here Abraham Lincoln refused to remove Grant, and recognizing Grant’s obduracy to fight under unfavorable conditions, very famously commented “I can’t spare this man: he fights”9. However, Grant temporarily lost his power, and was relegated to an insignificant bearing as the second-in-position under Henry Halleck, after this battle. The southern states plunged into complete mourning after the battle, blaming the entire defeat on the unfortunate and untimely death of General Johnston, overlooking the mismanagement of their various generals like Beauregard and later Bragg. President Jefferson later in his memoirs tells us about Johnston’s death as the “turning point of our fate; as we had no other hand to take up his work in the west”10. The fate of the Confederate army went into a downhill after this episode, never to rise again. The large number of casualties in this fateful two day battle was unprecedented in the American history. A count given by General Grant himself proves the immense loss of lives on both sides, “Our loss in the two-days' fight was 1754 killed, 8408 wounded, and 2885 missing…Beauregard reported a total loss of 10,699, of whom 1728 were killed, 8012 wounded and 957 missing: This estimate must, be incorrect. We buried, by actual count; more of the enemy's dead in front of the divisions of McClernand and Sherman alone than here reported, and 4060 was the estimate of the burial parties for the whole field. Beauregard reports the Confederate force on the 6th at over 40,000, and their total loss during the two days at 10,699; and at the same time declares that he could put only 20,000 men in battle on the morning of the 7th”11. It is estimated that the Union army lost around 13,047 men of which 1754 were killed, 2885 were listed as missing, and 8408 were wounded. In the Confederate camp an estimated 10699 were declared as casualties, of which, 1728 were killed and 8012 were said to be wounded. Conclusion The Battle of Shiloh was an important battle that changed the course of the entire civil war. Posed to win, the Confederates lost the war owing to lack of co-ordination and mediocre generals who all failed to realise the tactics outlined by Johnston. However, the most telling blow to the Confederates fell when their brilliant commander General Johnston died while fighting at the Hornet’s Nest. This battle was significant in the sense that in no previous warfare in the American history had there been so many losses of human lives. This battle is significant also in a sense that it heralded the end of the Confederate power in the civil war, bringing forth the might of the industrial north, and ending in the victory of the northern states. Notes 1. Mark Grimsley and Steven Woodworth. Shiloh: a battlefield guide. (U of Nebraska Press, 2006), 3. 2. Kerry Graves. The Civil War. (Minnesota: Capstone Press, 2001), 9. 3. Daniel Larry. Shiloh: The Battle that Changed the Civil War. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998), 15. 4. Timothy Smith. The Untold Story of Shiloh: The Battle and the Battlefield. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2008), 68. 5. Ulysses Grant. Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S, Grant. (New York: Cosimo, INC., 2007), 211-12. 6. Timothy Smith. Ibid., 71. 7. Steven Woodworth, ed. The Shiloh Campaign. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2009), 150. 8. Ibid., 151. 9. Ibid,. 151. 10. Wiley Sword. Shiloh: Bloody April. (New York: Morrow, 1974), 436. 11. Ulysses Grant. The Battle of Shiloh. The Century Magazine, February 1885. Vol. XXIX. Accessed at http://www.researchonline.net/battles/shiloh/the_battle_of_shiloh.pdf Bibliography Grant, U. The Battle of Shiloh. The Century Magazine, February 1885. Vol. XXIX. Accessed at http://www.researchonline.net/battles/shiloh/the_battle_of_shiloh.pdf Grant, U. Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S, Grant. New York: Cosimo, INC., 2007. 211-12. Graves, K. The Civil War. Minnesota: Capstone Press, 2001, 9. Grimsley, M and Woodworth, S. Shiloh: a battlefield guide. U of Nebraska Press, 2006. 3. Larry, D. Shiloh: The Battle that Changed the Civil War. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998. 15. Smith, T. The Untold Story of Shiloh: The Battle and the Battlefield. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2008. 68. Sword, W. Shiloh: Bloody April. New York: Morrow, 1974. 436. Woodworth, S. ed. The Shiloh Campaign. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2009. 150. Read More