The Battle of Shiloh, one of the bloodiest conflicts of the American Civil War, took place in Tennessee in April 1862. Confederate generals planned to engage Union forces in the woods around Shiloh Church, but their attack on April 6 took the Union by surprise. The Union’s resistance held for seven hours, giving them time to redeploy their troops. By nightfall, Confederate troops had taken control of the Union camp, but the Union’s reinforcements arrived the next day, and the Confederates were forced to withdraw. The battle was decisive because it decimated the Confederate army and the South lost critical strategic ground. Today, Shiloh National Military Park commemorates the battle.
The word Shiloh means “place of peace,” but on April 6 and 7, 1862, the area around Shiloh Church in a quiet corner of Tennessee was a place of war. There raged one of the bloodiest conflicts of the American Civil War – the battle of Shiloh. Confederate generals AS Johnston and PGT Beauregard confronted Union generals Ulysses S. Grant, William T. Sherman and Don Carlos Buell. The result was the Battle of Shiloh, a battle which at first seemed to have no victors, but proved to be a decisive point in the war.
Confederate General Johnston knew Union forces were crossing into Tennessee. After the Union victory at Forts Henry and Forts Donelson, he knew they would be heading south into Mississippi, which he could not have afforded if he were to hold a strategic position. Turning south into Mississippi meant the Union Army would contend for Corinth, Miss.
Corinth was a vital stronghold. At Corinth, the two major railroads east of the Mississippi River intersected. Whoever held that intersection effectively controlled the southwest theater of operations. Then, Johnston planned to engage Union forces about 30 miles north of Corinth in the woods around Shiloh Church in Tennessee.
The Shiloh area borders the Tennessee River. Although sometimes called the Battle of Pittsburgh Landing, the Battle of Shiloh is the common name. The river was wild in those days before the dams were built, but it still flowed most of its length through Alabama, before turning north through western Tennessee and emptying into the Ohio River at Paducah, Ky. However, the river was a defensible point, and Johnston’s plan was to draw the Union forces away from the river, forcing them into the marshes around the plains where they could be destroyed.
An article of this magnitude cannot cover all the minutiae relating to the Battle of Shiloh, which involved over 100,000 men, but the main points can be addressed.
Confederate forces attacked in the pre-dawn hours of April 6, 1862. Union commanders figured an attack was imminent, but did not think Confederate forces would initiate the Battle of Shiloh on Sunday. They were wrong. The Confederates fled the woods and the Union forces were taken by surprise. Fighting continued furiously throughout the morning, with the Confederates pushing the Union steadily north until they reached what they called “a hornet’s nest.” This Union line of resistance refused to fall for seven hours. The area was along what is now known as “the sunken road” and in 1862 was a couple of feet below ground level.
Eventually, the Confederate heavy artillery broke through the line, but the seven hours spent on it gave the Union generals time to redeploy their troops. Johnston’s wheel was starting to turn, but it was turning in the wrong direction. His generals had miscalculated where Grant’s flank actually was, and the Confederate army was driving Union troops toward the river, rather than away from it. Also, when General Johnston was hit in the leg by a mini ball, he bled to death under a tree, depriving the Confederates of their best strategist and transferring command of the Battle of Shiloh to General Beauregard who had been in the rear all morning . .
By nightfall on April 6, Confederate troops had taken control of the Union camp and were enjoying plentiful food and coffee. However, they were exhausted from the long day of battle and unaware that Union General Don Carlos Buell’s reinforcements, even then, were arriving across the Tennessee River.
At dawn on the morning of April 7, Grant’s now vastly superior force attacked savagely, surprising Beauregard, who was unaware of the arrival of reinforcements. That night he decided to withdraw with his exhausted troops and the Union forces returned to their camp at Shiloh Church. A few skirmishes occurred here and there, but the bulk of the Confederate army was returning to Corinth. The battle of Shiloh was over.
The Battle of Shiloh was so decisive because it decimated the Confederate army and because the Confederates lost critical strategic ground. The South was not as densely populated as the North, and those lost soldiers could not be replaced as easily as the US Army could replace their fallen. In October 1862, the Union Army also held Corinth, Mississippi and its railroads. The Confederates never resumed the offensive in that part of the country.
Nowadays, Corinth Road is Tennessee 22, a winding two-lane country road, whose quiet rural curves give little hint of the carnage that occurs in its vicinity. The traveler arrives at Shiloh National Military Park quite suddenly. Monuments from various states dot the landscape here, and the visitor can get a map at the visitor center, watch a short film about the battle, and peruse in the bookstore. The battlefield route has stops along the way.
Union soldiers who fell in the Battle of Shiloh are buried in Shiloh National Cemetery, on well-maintained grounds, commemorated with white stone headstones. The weather was warm that weekend in April and the Confederate dead had to be buried quickly. Their mass graves are marked in plots around the battlefield.
The Tennessee River is wider now, but deeper and calmer than it was when General Buell landed his troops. Silence lingers over the place, even at Peach Orchard, where fierce fighting took place, and at Bloody Pond, where so many soldiers on both sides washed their wounds, filled their canteens and died. There is still a church in Shiloh, and it now fits his name, “a place of peace.”
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