v1.1.1 / chapter 14 of 93 / 01 sep 07 / greg goebel / public domain
* By the early spring of 1862, the Federal war machine was on the move towards Richmond, with McClellan's Army of the Potomac advancing up the James River Peninsula. Although the Union effort was hobbled by bureaucratic fumbles, the Confederacy seemed to have no chance of defeating the ponderous Federal offensive.
Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston did take a bold chance in Tennessee, falling on Grant's forces at Shiloh Church. The result was an exercise in bloodletting on scale that America had never seen, with Johnston among the dead. The massive casualties shocked both North and South. The battle successfully stalled Grant's drive into the state of Mississippi, but the Confederates had only bought time at Shiloh: Union pressure lightened but did not cease. At Island Ten on the Mississippi River, General John Pope managed to eliminate a significant obstacle to the Federal push down the river, with few casualties and significant strategic consequences.
* By the first of April 1862, when McClellan left Washington to lead the roundabout attack on Richmond, the general had relocated over 100,000 men and an enormous amount of equipment from Washington and its surrounding area to Fort Monroe. The move had been flawlessly executed, one of the greatest amphibious efforts in history, "the stride of a giant" as one observer later put it. Having moved so decisively, the whole thing then began to bog down. The first problem demonstrated that while McClellan was extremely competent in the supply and movement of a large army, his planning in other respects left something to be desired.
Fort Monroe sat at the eastern tip of the James River Peninsula, which was a long finger of land flanked by the York River to the north and the James River to the south, with Richmond at the base of the Peninsula, a little over 60 miles (97 miles) away. The first objective for the Federals was Yorktown, near the mouth of the York river on the north side of the Peninsula. Yorktown had been thoroughly fortified by the rebels. These defenses were matched with others on the north shore of the York at the town of Gloucester, and the two together formed an effective barrier to block the movement of warships and transports needed to support the Federal advance.
McClellan intended to use the Navy's gunboats to shell Yorktown into submission while his ground forces attacked the town. McClellan had discussed the idea with Secretary Stanton in mid-March and simply assumed that the Navy had been signed up for the task. He was wrong. When McClellan had arrived at Fort Monroe on the morning of 2 April, he claimed to have spoken to Flag Officer Louis Goldsborough, the commander of US naval forces at Hampton Roads, about the attack, only to find that Goldsborough knew nothing of any such plan and was only concerned about keeping the CSS VIRGINIA bottled up in Norfolk.
In fact, it is very unclear how well-defined this combined operation was in McClellan's own mind. Assistant Navy Secretary Fox later said that nobody had even mentioned the matter to him, and that the rebel batteries were sited too high to make naval gunfire effective anyway. Goldsborough's recollections of his conversation with McClellan on 2 April make matters even muddier, since Goldsborough claimed that the only thing asked of the Navy was to assist in an amphibious assault on Gloucester. Goldsborough promised to provide seven gunboats to help in the operation. If McClellan had felt naval support was an issue, it was one he didn't bother to press further.
Whatever the facts, on 4 April McClellan's men moved out from Fort Monroe. Part of the force was to isolate Yorktown, while the rest moved up the Peninsula to engage the Confederates in a decisive battle. Now McClellan discovered another defect in his plans: his maps were wrong, very wrong. Not only were the roads mischarted, but the maps gave entirely misleading information about the Warwick River. The faulty maps showed the Warwick to be a small stream that wouldn't be an obstacle to the Federal advance. In fact, the Warwick cut almost completely across the Peninsula, starting below Yorktown and flowing south into the James. The Warwick had also been dammed in five places, creating lakes that could not be forded, and the Confederates had set up artillery and other defenses on the far side of each dam.
* Bad maps are a traditional problem in warfare and it hard to fault McClellan too much for this bungle. He resorted to an imaginative solution, making use of a hydrogen balloon, to perform military observations. This contraption was operated by Thaddeus Lowe and his staff, and was carried and operated from a convoy of four wagons. The hydrogen was generated by pouring sulfuric acid over iron filings.
Balloonists had been performing at fairs and the like for decades before the war, offering rides and performing exhibitions. The week after the bombardment of Fort Sumter, "Professor" Lowe -- he didn't have a degree, it was just a performance title -- had performed a test flight for a trans-Atlantic crossing from Cincinnati, hoping to end up on the East Coast but floating farther South than he planned, to land in South Carolina. He'd had a hell of a time getting back North, since he kept being arrested as a spy, only being released each time when locals who had seen his balloon show vouched for his bizarre story.
With the war heating up, a number of balloonists offered their services to the Union, leading to an odd exercise in which they fought among themselves to found a balloon corps while the military paid them little mind. Lowe had contacts and managed to get the ear of President Lincoln; when Winfield Scott snubbed Lowe, Lincoln escorted Lowe over to the war department and suggested to the general that he be more considerate. McClellan was much more enthusiastic about using balloons in combat, and the Union Army acquired a fleet of eight balloons, with the operation managed by Lowe.
In any case, from a few hundred feet up, the professor and Army officers made extensive observations of the network of Confederate defenses, using a telegraph line to communicate with the ground, while the rebels took futile potshots with rifles and cannons at the irritating gasbag. Such airborne inspections only emphasized impressions obtained on the ground. The more the Federals looked at the Warwick, the bigger an obstacle it seemed -- and then it began to rain. The roads, which intelligence had declared to be passable in any sort of weather, quickly turned into bottomless mud. One Federal officer later claimed that he saw a mule, or at least a small mule, sink all the way into the mud, leaving only its ears poking above the surface.
The next problem was one of bureaucratic arithmetic. President Lincoln had agreed to McClellan's plan on the condition that Washington was adequately protected. McClellan, by his own reckoning, estimated that roughly 73,000 men would be left to the defense of Washington, which would be enough to protect the city. Unfortunately, McClellan's reckoning was based on different assumptions than those used by the President, Secretary of War Stanton, and a number of nervous politicians and bureaucrats.
Lincoln's reckoning of the actual number came to about 28,000. It was a sign of the poor communications between General McClellan and his political superiors that Lincoln simply assumed that McClellan had disobeyed orders. The response was abrupt and drastic. On 3 April, President Lincoln ordered Secretary Stanton to withhold one corps from McClellan's expeditionary force for the defense of Washington, and so Stanton in turn ordered General McDowell to remain with his force of roughly 35,000 men. From that time on, McDowell took orders from the War Department, not General McClellan.
McClellan found out about this order, as well as one denying him use of the over 10,000 troops at Fort Monroe, while he was still absorbing his difficulties with local conditions. The Army of the Potomac had been instantly reduced in strength by a quarter. Even more demoralizing to McClellan was the fact that Secretary Stanton closed all the recruiting offices on that same day, apparently under the assumption that the war was almost over and no new recruits would be necessary. In the meantime, Jefferson Davis was trying to push through the Confederate conscription act.
McClellan was thunderstruck. His plans had been made assuming a full complement of troops, and the reduction in present and future forces available to him seemed perverse at the very least. Even Lincoln's personal secretary John Hay, who had no high regard for McClellan, felt the general was being treated very badly: "McClellan is in danger, not in front but in rear," Hay wrote in his diary.
Yet even this seemingly clearcut black news had a muddled aspect. McClellan hadn't been expecting McDowell to arrive for several weeks, and McClellan's own intelligence estimates, which often exaggerated Confederate strength drastically, did not place Confederate forces in Yorktown to be more than 15,000. That was much smaller than his own army, which by the general's own conservative estimate consisted of 85,000 men, as reported to President Lincoln on 7 April. As Lincoln pointed out in his reply on the 9th, that was 23,000 less than an earlier estimate given by the general using the same assumptions. It must be said in McClellan's defense that it appeared to him the enemy was being reinforced, for reasons to be explained in a bit.
Furthermore, even before McClellan had received the bad news about McDowell and his men, he had been told that the fortifications along the Warwick were too strong to be taken without suffering large numbers of casualties. McClellan had concluded a siege was necessary, requiring the laborious and time-consuming construction of trenches and other fortifications and the movement of heavy guns and mortars -- meaning that he had no immediate need for reinforcements. McClellan also managed to beg the President to release one division of 12,000 men from McDowell's corps for use in the campaign. They didn't arrive until late in the month, and when they did, they simply sat on their transports for about two weeks while McClellan figured out what to do with them.
In short, the whole effort fell into bumbling at the start. Lincoln's reply to McClellan on 9 April revealed the President's anxiety: "Once more let me tell you that it is indispensable to you that you strike a blow. I am powerless to help this ... I beg to assure you that I have never written you or spoken to you in greater kindness of feeling than now ... But you must act."
A country editor dropped by the White House, claiming to have been the first person to suggest Lincoln's nomination for President. Lincoln had business at the War Department with Secretary Stanton, and, not knowing what else to do with his visitor, brought him along. When they got there, Lincoln said: "I shall have to see Mr. Stanton alone, and you must excuse me." He started to leave, and then thought twice about leaving the man so abruptly. He took the editor by the hand and said: "Goodbye. I hope you will feel perfectly easy about having nominated me. Don't be troubled about it. I forgive you."
* The rebels were having anxieties of their own about McClellan's actions, and with much more justification. As McClellan took his giant stride, General Lee was riding up a steep learning curve in his new job as Jefferson Davis's military advisor. Lee had been getting reports from Norfolk and Yorktown about the buildup of Federal ground forces at Fort Monroe. It was clear that McClellan was up to something, but what? Were the troops intended for a drive up the Peninsula? Were they simply concentrating there for an ocean voyage south to reinforce Burnside on the Carolina coast? Or were they simply a feint?
The Confederates had too few resources to be prepared for every contingency, and Lee had to be careful how he moved the forces under his control. Lee had to slowly, patiently, tactfully ease a brigade here and a brigade there from the touchy Joe Johnston, assign them to trouble points along the arc of defense, and wait for McClellan to show his hand. Lee was able to pull two brigades from Johnston's army, sending one down to the Carolina coast and the other to Yorktown. With further efforts, by 4 April, the day the Federal offensive got under way, Lee had been able to bring three of Johnston's six divisions down to the vicinity of Richmond.
The 14 mile (22.5 kilometer) long defenses at Yorktown and along the Warwick weren't as impressive as the Federals assumed. They wouldn't stand up to any real pressure, since they were undermanned and Federal gunboats could enfilade them with heavy cannon fire on either end. The appearance of strength was mainly due to the theatrical talents of the Confederate commander at Yorktown, 52 year old Major General John Bankhead Magruder, known as "Prince John" for his dapper appearance.
Magruder was not a particularly competent general. Even he admitted his lack of skill in laying out field fortifications, but he had a hobby, amateur theatrical production, that proved very useful. While McClellan and his generals stood befuddled before the Warwick, Magruder, having been denied reinforcements and told to make do with what he had, did his best to make them even more befuddled. He marched his men around in circles so they appeared to be endless columns of troops; ordered his artillery to blast away as often as possible; and had the bands play often and as noisily as they could at night.
Magruder only had 12,000 men, but McClellan was easily misled and concluded that he would be soon facing 100,000 Confederates. In the meantime, Magruder was building a second line of defense 10 miles (16 kilometers) to the rear, in front of the town of Williamsburg, centered around a large earthwork fortification named Fort Magruder. Lee was simultaneously working on a third line of defense, 40 miles (64 kilometers) up the peninsula from the second and 10 miles (16 kilometers) in front of Richmond.
By 9 April, the Confederates were convinced that McClellan did intend to conduct an offensive up the Peninsula, and on that day Davis ordered Joe Johnston to report to Richmond and bring two of his three divisions along with him. Johnston arrived on the 12th, along with divisions commanded by Major Generals James Longstreet and Gustavus W. Smith. Johnston was told that his command now included Norfolk and Yorktown. He went the same day to inspect Magruder's lines. He was waiting in Jefferson Davis's office on the morning of the 14th, where he told Davis that the Confederacy should immediately abandon the Peninsula and fall back to the third line of defense. Davis was startled and suggested that Johnston come back at 11:00 AM to discuss matters with him, Secretary of War Randolph, and General Lee. Johnston, not wishing to come alone, asked that his division commanders come along. Davis agreed.
Longstreet and Smith arrived that morning. Longstreet was 41 years old, a burly, hairy, strong-willed man who had been born in South Carolina, raised in Georgia, and appointed to West Point from Alabama. He was still burdened by the death from scarlet fever of his three children three months previously. He was slightly deaf, and this day he chose not to hear well. He simply sat and watched, leaving the talking up to Gustavus Smith.
Smith was a West Pointer and Mexican War veteran who came from Kentucky, but he had been the Street Commissioner of New York City and had actually been Mansfield Lovell's boss there. Smith had gone South in September, to be given a major general's rank and assigned a division under Johnston. Smith was experienced in organizational politics and submitted a memorandum that Davis read aloud. Smith suggested that the Confederacy pull its forces back from the Peninsula and Norfolk, and then use them for a fast strike against McClellan or a deep thrust into the North, possibly even to New York City. Johnston was inclined to agree with his subordinate's plan. Although Johnston didn't think it would be practical to go as far north as New York City, he certainly felt Confederate forces on the Peninsula and Norfolk were in immediate danger.
Secretary Randolph didn't like the plan. Losing Norfolk would mean losing the CSS VIRGINIA, which drew too much water to steam up the James and was too unseaworthy to go out into the open ocean, even if it could penetrate the Federal blockade. Johnston felt that it would be lost anyway, and there was no point in losing the ground forces along with it. The argument went on until 1:00 that morning, with Lee and Randolph on one side and Johnston and Smith on the other. Finally Davis decided that Yorktown and Norfolk should be defended. He ordered Johnston to unite his forces with Magruder's and resist McClellan's advance from existing positions. Not only could the Confederacy not afford to lose the VIRGINIA, conscription was coming and a massive reorganization of the Confederate army was in progress. Johnston needed to buy time, regardless of the risk.
Johnston accepted this, though Davis had been half expecting he would offer his resignation, which would have been quickly accepted. Johnston simply felt that events would turn the argument in his favor in a very short time. He returned to Yorktown, with Longstreet's division following.
Magruder's men were worn out playing their bluff against McClellan. They had poor food, their uniforms were dirty rags, the Federals had been pounding them with artillery, and they were becoming totally demoralized. McClellan never realized their weakness. On 16 April, a Union brigade and a few companies assigned to perform a reconnaissance in force into the middle of the rebel lines at a place called Burnt Chimneys punched a neat hole in the Confederate defenses. Had McClellan followed up on this success, the rebels would have been in a desperate situation. But the Yankee soldiers had no orders to go further, and when the rebels counterattacked to plug the hole the Federals retreated, with no result other than the killing and wounding of several dozen soldiers on both sides.
In the meantime, Johnston built up his forces along the Warwick line up to a total of roughly 50,000. McClellan's prophecies had proven to a degree self-fulfilling. Johnston still had absolutely no confidence that he could stop the Federals, writing on 22 April: "No one but McClellan could have hesitated to attack." In the meantime, McClellan continued to move up his heavy artillery.
* The collision between the Union army and the Confederate army in western Tennessee was set into motion on the evening of 2 April, when Beauregard received a telegram with intelligence stating that Grant's men were preparing to move on Memphis. Beauregard forwarded the telegram to Albert Sidney Johnston, along with a suggestion that it was time to move against the Federals.
Johnston was not keen on the idea, since his army was poorly trained and drilled and Van Dorn had not arrived with his reinforcements. However, on conferring with Braxton Bragg, who had become his chief of staff, Johnston was convinced that they needed to move immediately, before Buell arrived to reinforce Grant. Johnston's intelligence had given him a correct assessment of the poor state of readiness at the Federal camp. If he moved quickly, he could take the Yankees by surprise.
Beauregard issued orders to begin the march, and then things started to go wrong. Beauregard's inclination toward grand schemes led him to order a coordinated overnight march along two routes that would meet up in attack formation at Pittsburgh Landing. This plan might have been practical with veteran soldiers, but it was completely unrealistic with raw recruits. When the columns set out from Corinth on Thursday, 3 April, they were late and quickly got into traffic jams. By nightfall, they had covered less than half the distance to Pittsburgh Landing, and were seriously behind schedule.
Thursday was bad; Friday was a nightmare. Rain began to fall, bogging the columns down in mud, and the confusion that had prevailed the day before only grew worse, with divisions getting lost and tangled and everyone into bad temper. The confusion carried over into Saturday. When the rain stopped and the sun came out, the undisciplined troops tested to quality of their powder by firing into the air. It seemed impossible to believe that the Federals hadn't been alerted to their presence. After all, they were so close that Beauregard could hear drumming from Camp Shiloh.
Beauregard was angry and discouraged. He wanted to call off the attack. "There is no chance for surprise. Now they will be entrenched to the eyes." Furthermore, Buell had almost certainly arrived with his reinforcements and the Confederates would find themselves seriously outnumbered. Johnston conferred with his other generals. He asked Polk, Bragg, and Breckinridge what they thought; Hardee was not present at the meeting. Polk replied that if his men retreated without a fight they would feel defeated, and Bragg and Breckinridge emphatically agreed. They'd come for a fight, and so they would have one. Johnston gave his judgement: "Gentlemen, we shall attack at daylight tomorrow." The rebel soldiers bedded down in positions where they would be ready to attack the moment they woke up in the morning.
* Buell had actually arrived downriver, though with only one division. The rest of his men were strung out along the road from Nashville. Grant was pleased to see them arrive. Once they were all present, he would move on Corinth. William Tecumseh Sherman was effectively in charge of the site at Camp Shiloh for the moment. He was getting warnings of skirmishes along his picket line to the south and reports of Confederate movements beyond that line, but though he reported the clashes to Grant, he complacently concluded: "I do not apprehend anything like an attack on our position."
The next morning, Sunday, 6 April 1862, Beauregard went to Albert Sidney Johnston to beg him once more to call off the attack. Before Johnston could reply, he was interrupted by the sound of musketry and the firing of cannon. Johnston said: "The battle has opened, gentlemen. It is too late to change our dispositions." Beauregard got on his horse and rode off to the battle. Johnston mounted as well, sat there for a moment collecting himself, and then turned towards the fighting himself, telling his staff: "Tonight we water our horses in the Tennessee river."
* The battle had started before the jump-off time. A Federal officer had sent out a handful of companies to investigate rebel activities, and the Union soldiers had quickly got into a fight. They fell back and gave frantic warnings of the attack now falling on the Federal camp. A captain who went to investigate came back in a hurry shouting: "The rebs are out there thicker than fleas on a dog's back!"
A courier was sent to Sherman, who replied blandly: "You must be badly scared over there." Sherman went with an orderly, Private Thomas Holliday, to check the reports for himself and saw the long rows of Confederates advancing across a field. Rebel skirmishers broke through the brush and a lieutenant shouted to Sherman: "General, look to your right!"
Sherman threw up his arm as if to ward off bullets and shouted: "My God, we're attacked!" The rebels fired a volley that killed Private Holliday immediately and wounded Sherman in the hand. Sherman called out to the colonel in charge of the regiment on the spot: "Hold your position, I'll support you!" -- and then spurred his horse to gallop off and alert his men. Though the colonel and many of his men fled, the rest of the troops stood their ground long enough to give Sherman time to move his soldiers into line along the ridge where they were camped.
The Federals held their ground against four charges, laying murderous fire into the ranks of Confederates, and then fell back in good order when the rebels charged a fifth time. One Mississippi regiment that had begun the fight with 425 men had only 100 left by the time they made the ridge, leaving so many dead and wounded in the valley below that a man could have walked across on their bodies.
Sherman's division held the line on the western part of the battlefield. A second division under Major General John McClernand held the center, near Shiloh Chapel, and a third division under Brigadier General Benjamin M. Prentiss, an Illinois merchant who had been born and raised in Virginia, held the east. Some men were fading away to the rear, but most were holding their ground and fighting.
Sherman was moving among his men and encouraging them to stand fast. He'd been wounded twice, the wound in the hand that he had taken at the outset of the battle plus a nick across the shoulder, and had four horses shot out from underneath him. Despite his injuries and his exciteable nature he remained cool, riding about upright while bullets flew about, organizing his defense. The unstrung Sherman of the previous fall was a thing of the past. When a headquarters aide came up to see how things were going, Sherman told him, matter-of-factly: "Tell Grant if he has any men to spare I can use them. If not, I will do the best I can. We are holding them pretty well just now. Pretty well; but it's hot as hell."
* Grant had abandoned his breakfast when he heard the sound of cannon fire from the south. He told his staff: "Gentlemen, the ball is in motion. Let's be off." Grant jotted off two notes. One went to Buell, telling him not to worry about meeting with him for the moment. The second went to Brigadier General William Nelson, who had brought Buell's lead division there the day before, and instructed Nelson to move his men down the east side of the river to the bank opposite Pittsburgh landing. Grant then took a steamship up the river.
At 8:30, he passed the jetty at Crump's landing and found the commander of the division camped there, Major General Lew Wallace, waiting for him. Grant called out to Wallace as the vessel steamed past: "General, get your troops under arms and have them ready to move at a moment's notice!" Wallace shouted back: "I have already done so!" Grant disembarked at Pittsburgh Landing and rode up towards the firing lines. He'd badly sprained his ankle when his horse had fallen during a thunderstorm two nights before and was having trouble getting around on foot. The first thing he did was form up a straggler line to catch soldiers leaving the battle, and form them up in a rear line of defense.
The divisions of Sherman, McClernand, and Prentiss were in the thick of the fighting. There were two other divisions behind them, including C.F. Smith's division, now under Brigadier General W.H.L. Wallace, an Ohio lawyer who had fought in Mexico; and a division under Brigadier General Stephen Hurlbut, an Illinois lawyer who originally had come from Charleston, South Carolina. These two divisions had formed up behind the front line of fighting and were sending reinforcements forward. By the time Grant reached them, he had decided to commit his reserves, and sent messages to Lew Wallace and William Nelson to order them to move up as fast as possible.
By 10:00, Grant was in the front with Sherman, who had been forced to fall back from his original position and take up a new line. One of Sherman's brigades had disintegrated, but the other two on the line were holding fast. Sherman worried about running out of ammunition, but Grant assured him that more was on the way. Grant then rode east to check on McClernand, who was holding the line north of Shiloh Chapel; and then to Prentiss, whose men were making a stand in a sunken road and inflicting a terrible punishment on their attackers. Grant told Prentiss to "maintain that position at all hazards." Prentiss said he would try.
By noon, Sherman and McClernand had been forced back and men were streaming to the rear, but Prentiss was holding his ground stubbornly against repeated charges. The fight there was so severe that a soldier later told of a terrified wild rabbit coming out of the brush and snuggling up to a prone soldier for comfort. W.H.L. Wallace and Hurlbut sent in their divisions to support Prentiss. Grant had now committed all his available reserves, and a Confederate breakthrough would throw his army into the Tennessee. He sent two officers northward to see what was taking Lew Wallace so long, and sent a note to Nelson indicating extreme urgency, telling him the rebel force was estimated at over 100,000 men.
* On the other side of the firing line, Beauregard directed the flow of reinforcements to the attack from his combat headquarters at Shiloh Chapel. In the meantime, Albert Sidney Johnston rode among his men, encouraging them by his words and example.
Keeping the assault on track took diligence. Some regiments could not face the bloodshed, though most fought hard. There were the inevitable mistakes of battle. The New Orleans Guard Battalion, which counted P.G.T. Beauregard as an honorary private, absent on duty, wore their blue militia uniforms into battle. They were unsurprisingly fired upon by the Confederates they were marching to support. They returned fire, and when an officer rode up in a lather to tell them they were shooting at friends, the regimental colonel replied: "I know it, but dammit sir, we fire at everybody who fires on us!" The Guards decided to turn their jackets inside out, showing off a white lining that made them vivid targets but at least didn't draw the fire of friends.
A bigger problem was straggling in the ranks, more from hunger than anything. The Yankees had been surprised at their breakfast by the dawn attack, and the food that still lay spread out on tables was more than starved rebel soldiers could resist. Others rummaged through the campsite from curiosity or in search of loot.
The worst problem, however, was simply that the attack was bogging down because of the irregular terrain and stubborn Federal resistance. The sheer chaos of battle was destroying the organization of the Confederate force, reducing it to great gangs of fighting men. Johnston wanted to push up the riverbank to cut the Federals off from the river and force them to surrender, but although Sherman and McClernand had fallen back, Prentiss' men were still stubbornly holding out from the sunken road.
"It's a hornet's nest in there!" rebel soldiers cried after each time they were thrown back, leaving bodies laid in piles, many of them horribly mutilated and dismembered by cannon fire. Johnston went forward to correct this problem. To the east of the "Hornet's Nest", as it would forever be known, some of Hurlbut's men were holding the line from a peach orchard. Johnston arrived just after they had driven off a rebel attack, and the Confederate officers were to little surprise having trouble persuading their men to go forward again.
Johnston rode among them, saying: "Men! They are stubborn! We must use the bayonet!" The men formed up but hesitated to move forward, so Johnston went front and center and called out: "I will lead you!" Johnston rode forward and the men followed, driving the Yankees out of the orchard. Johnston came back, exhilirated and excited, with his uniform torn and a bootsole shot in half by a bullet. A few moments later, his aide, Governor Isham Harris of Tennessee, saw Johnston go faint in the saddle. Harris cried: "General, are you hurt?"
Johnston replied: "Yes, and I fear seriously." Harris led the general to a nearby ravine, eased him off his horse, and looked him over for wounds. He found Johnston's right boot full of blood and traced it back to a severed femoral artery. Johnston's doctor was attending to some wounded Federal prisoners, and the governor did not know how to apply a tourniquet. Harris fumbled anxiously while the blood flowed, until it stopped, and he realized Johnston was dead. Johnston was 59 years old.
* It was about 2:30 in the afternoon. When the news reached Beauregard, he gave orders that the general's death not be announced to the men lest it demoralize them. The attack would continue, and in particular the Hornet's Nest would be wiped out. It had not occurred to Johnston and did not occur to Beauregard that it might have been more profitable to simply bottle up the troublesome Federals there and throw the weight of the attack onto the weaker Union forces that were already giving way.
In the Hornet's Nest, Prentiss and his men had driven off twelve attacks, leaving the ground in front of their position carpeted with dead and wounded Confederates. Johnston's charge had been the death of him, but it had left the Federals exposed on their flank. Now the rebels massed 62 cannon and, after gathering their forces for one final, overwhelming assault, opened up on the Federals with a pounding barrage. W.H.L. Wallace's and Hurlbut's divisions were smashed back. Wallace was wounded horribly in the head while trying to rally his men and left on the battlefield. The Confederates move around and sealed off the Hornet's Nest. The surrounded Federals fought on for three more hours, but at 5:30 PM, Prentiss decided there was no more purpose in fighting on, and surrendered himself and the 2,200 men who had survived -- less than half of those who had started the battle. Many of his men kept fighting even after Prentiss raised the white flag. Some Federals smashed their muskets against trees to keep the rebels from taking them and were shot by their captors.
Beauregard was in fine spirits. The rebels had driven the Union soldiers from every stand they had made, the Confederates had captured dozens of cannon, and it seemed one more big push would finish the Yankees. The reality was that his troops didn't have one more big push left in them, and the Yankees were far from feeling beaten. Beauregard's orders went out and the soldiers went forward, but they were too exhausted, confused, and cut to pieces to go much further. While the Federals had been forced back, they had done so in tolerably good order, had formed up in yet another defensive line -- this one very strong -- and were not ready to cave in. Furthermore, though Foote's ironclads were at Island Ten, Grant still had the two wooden gunboats TYLER and LEXINGTON and they gave the rebels the best pounding they could.
Despite their lack of training, the Confederates had for the most part fought with superhuman endurance, but they were now at their limit. Beauregard sent out couriers to call back the attack for the day, though the fighting had already fizzled out on its own. He would renew the attack in the morning and destroy Grant's army once and for all. Unfortunately, the disorganization that had been creeping up on the rebel army all day was by nightfall almost complete. The abundance of food and other supplies lying around on the battlefield was too great a temptation to resist, and many Confederates spent much of the night picking up loot. Some concluded the battle was over, the Yankees were beaten, and went down the road back to Corinth. The rebel assault had shot its bolt.
* Grant had been impatiently waiting the arrive of Lew Wallace and his division for hours. They didn't arrive until 7:00 PM, a mixup in marching orders having taken them down the wrong road; Wallace would find himself on Grant's blacklist from then on. They went into line with the rest. In the meantime, the first of Buell's new reinforcements were being ferried across the Tennessee to Pittsburgh Landing. General William Nelson was enraged to find the landing packed with terrorized and confused fugitives from the battle, some of whom were trying to swim across the river.
The fresh troops pushed through the skulkers and went up to the line. One Kentucky regiment passed Sherman as they moved up. This particular group had been under Sherman when he had lost his nerve at Louisville so many months ago and had few good memories of him, but now he was literally blooded in battle -- his face blackened by powder, his hat brim torn away by shrapnel, his hand wrapped in a dirty bandage. He greeted the men and in return they raised their caps on their bayonets and gave him a rousing cheer. It was not something Sherman was used to and it made a deep impression on him.
The two armies settled down for the night in expectation of more fighting the next day. At midnight, a violent thunderstorm poured down the battleground, with thunderbolts lighting up the figures of the dead that lay strewn everywhere, while the wounded cried out for help as all were soaked to the skin. The corpses lay in heaps and pigs gorged on the bodies. Blood ran literally in rivulets across the battlefield. One rebel later wrote: "O it was too shocking too horrible, God grant that I may never be a partaker in such scenes again ... when released from this I shall ever be an advocate of peace."
* The hopes of Beauregard and many of his soldiers that the battle would be quickly tied up in the morning would have turned to ash if they had known that reinforcements were pouring into Grant's position. Sherman ran into Grant after dark and said: "Well, Grant, we've had the devil's own day, haven't we?" Grant replied: "Yes. Lick 'em tomorrow, though."
Grant had lost two divisions, the three others that had been in the fight had been badly cut up, and the rear of the battle line was crowded with thousands of the faint-hearted. Still, most of the soldiers were standing fast, Lew Wallace and Nelson were in place with their men, and two more of Buell's divisions were trickling in to join them. By morning, Grant would have made good his losses and then some.
One rebel could see what was going on. Bedford Forrest was not the kind of officer to simply assume things were all right. He sent out a scouting party wearing Union jackets after dark, and quickly detected Buell's men going ashore. Forrest realized that Beauregard would either have to stage a night attack or pull out. Unfortunately, Forrest could not find Beauregard. He warned every officer he could find, but they had either lost contact with their men or did not feel they had the authority to act. When Hardee simply told Forrest to go back to his post, Forrest left angrily, telling Hardee: "If the enemy comes on us in the morning, we'll be whipped like hell." An aide describe Forrest as "so mad he stunk."
In the meantime, Beauregard was sleeping contentedly in Sherman's captured tent. Beauregard had received a telegram from Alabama, sent by a Colonel Ben Hardin Helm, who happened to be President Lincoln's brother-in-law, saying that Buell was known to be marching towards the Georgia line and would not be able to reinforce Grant. Beauregard's chief of staff, who was sharing a tent with the captured General Prentiss, was equally cheerful. Prentiss was unimpressed: "You gentlemen have had your way today, but it will be very different tomorrow. You'll see. Buell will effect a junction with Grant tonight and we'll turn the tables on you in the morning."
All through the night, the two Union gunboats fired 11 inch (28 centimeter) shells into the rebel lines at intervals of roughly fifteen minutes, terrorizing Confederate troops. Then as daylight came, the sounds of fighting began to increase steadily. Prentiss sat up abruptly and told his companion: "There is Buell! Didn't I tell you so?!"
* Grant was pressing forward with the four divisions he had left, plus three provided by Buell, under Brigadier Generals William Nelson, Alexander D. McCook, and Thomas L. Crittenden, brother of Confederate General George Crittenden, who had come to ruin at Logan's Crossroads. After an early bombardment, the Federals jumped off at 7:00 AM and made steady progress at first. Buell's men had never seen real combat before, but they adjusted to it quickly. One Indiana colonel, who found his men too shaky in their advance, halted them on the battlefield and put them through a formal manual of arms. The ritual of the familiar, even in such a deadly environment, seemed to steady their nerves, and they then returned more resolutely to their advance.
By noon, the Federals were closing into on Shiloh Chapel, but rebel resistance had stiffened. Beauregard had recovered from his initial surprise and was doing his best to rally his increasingly confused army. Despite what had happened to Johnston the day before, Beauregard twice seized the colors of faltering regiments and fearlessly led them against Union soldiers. There was no hope of regaining the initiative, however, and the rebels were being chewed to pieces. By about 2:00 PM, Governor Harris, now Beauregard's aide, went to the general and suggested: "General, do you not think our troops are very much in the condition of a lump of sugar thoroughly soaked in water, preserving its original shape, though ready to dissolve? Would it not be judicious to get away with what we have?"
Beauregard was cool as he nodded and answered: "I intend to withdraw in a few minutes." The orders went out, and by 4:00 PM the rebels had pulled off the firing line in surprisingly good order. The Federals did not pursue. Although they now owned the battlefield, they had taken a terrible beating themselves and were too exhausted to do more than pick up the pieces. As chewed up as they were, however, they were still better off than the rebels.
It had rained intermittently during Monday's battle, and as darkness fell and the rebel army filed down the road to Corinth, a howling spring storm broke out, drenching everyone, turning the roads into quagmires, and pounding the helpless wounded with huge hailstones. Through it all, Beauregard rode up and down the column, pressing the men on and comforting them.
The last rebels were on the road by Tuesday morning. Sherman followed with a brigade to make sure they did not hang around. Four miles (6.4 kilometers) down the road to Corinth, at a place called Fallen Timbers, he ran into the cavalry rearguard of Beauregard's army. There were about 350 Confederate horsemen, outnumbered by about 5 to 1 by Sherman's brigade, but they were led by Bedford Forrest, who had a fascinating ability to cheat the odds. Fallen Timbers had received its name because it had been partly logged before the war, and it was the kind of terrain through which an orderly advance was impossible. Forrest gave the order to charge. His cavalrymen swept down on the Yankees, throwing the Federal front ranks into confusion and sending Sherman and his staff fleeing through the mud.
The rebels were still outnumbered and Forrest, driving forward, suddenly found himself surrounded by Federal infantry who were screaming: "Kill him! Kill the goddam rebel! Knock him off his horse!" Forrest wheeled and slashed, and then a bluecoat shoved a rifle into his back and fired, blasting Forrest up from the saddle. Forrest responded by grabbing a Union soldier, hoisting him up to use as a shield, and then galloped off to safety, tossing off his captive when he had gone out of range. That was the end of it. Sherman's men were exhausted by three day's fighting and there was no more to be done. He ordered them back to camp.
The Federals were badly bloodied and worn out. An endless stream of wounded flowed back to field hospitals, and burial of dead men and animals presented work details with a miserable and appalling task.
General W.H.L. Wallace was found alive on the battlefield, despite his ghastly wound. A musket ball had gone in the side of his head and come out through his left eye. He had been wrapped in a blanket by a kindly Confederate. Wallace's wife had arrived on Sunday to visit her husband. With the battle howling all around her, she had kept her wits by tending to the wounded, and kept her dignity when she was told that the man had fallen in battle. When they brought the wounded general in the next day, he was strong enough to recognize the woman and clasp her hand, and she hoped he would live, but the wound grew infected and like so many of the other wounded, he died a few days later. His wife said: "He faded away like a fire going out."
* In tactical terms, the battle was a draw. Beauregard still regarded it as a victory and sent messages to Van Dorn, telling to hurry so they could give the Yankees another whipping. Jefferson Davis announced it at such, though he was greatly saddened by the death of Albert Sidney Johnston. The rebels had in fact succeeded in blunting the Federal drive down the Mississippi. On the Union side, General Halleck reacted as though Grant's army was now in imminent danger of complete destruction, and rushed up the Tennessee to take personal command. However, slowing down the Federal advance only bought the rebels time; they really needed to retake the initiative, and in this they failed.
What was unambiguous was that the casualties had been frightful, with losses of almost a quarter of the forces involved. The rebels had lost almost 11,000 men, the Federals over 13,000. The sum was more than all the casualties inflicted in all battles Americans had fought to that time. The news horrified the public, North and South, and if there had been doubts that the war would be long and bloody, Shiloh put them to rest for good. Nobody absorbed the lesson better than U.S. Grant: "I gave up the idea of saving the Union except by complete conquest."
* The news from Shiloh was not cause for rejoicing on either side, but not all the news from the West was so grim for the North. John Pope, a major general as of late March, had been frustrated in his effort to capture Island Ten by Commodore Foote's refusal to run the rebel guns. Two weeks of bombarding the Confederate defenses with mortar boats had shown little effect, and until General Pope obtained naval firepower downstream he wouldn't be able to move across the Mississippi and take Tiptonville, isolating the rebel garrison at Island Ten.
Pope was so desperate to get his hands on an ironclad that he had telegraphed Halleck, suggesting that Foote give up two of his ironclads and let Pope's men run them downstream. This exercise didn't go anywhere, but some of the naval officers were impatient as well, in particular Commander Henry Walke, the 54-year-old commander of the ironclad CARONDOLET. Walke had been humiliated by the beating his vessel had taken at Fort Donelson and wanted to make up for it. In a conference of war held at the end of March, he expressed his belief that he could make the run past Island Ten in the dark of the night. Foote was uncertain, but pleased at Walke's initiative and gave him the go-ahead.
Walke spent a week getting ready for the dash. He was ready by the night of 4 April, when the moon would be new and set early. His men had reinforced the CARONDOLET with whatever armor they could improvise, such as planks, cordwood, and chains, and a coal barge loaded with bales of hay was lashed to the port side. She looked, as one witness put it, like a "farmer's wagon prepared for market". The vessel was rigged for blackout running and the steam exhaust, which made the gunboat sound like a locomotive engine under normal circumstances, was muffled by routing it through the paddle-wheel housing.
To prevent the vessel from being seized by Confederate boarders, the crew was armed, and two dozen volunteer sharpshooters were taken on board. Hot water hoses were rigged to the boilers, and Walke was prepared to scuttle her if worst came to worst. As additional insurance, Foote ordered a raiding party to destroy the northernmost battery of the Confederate defenses. On the night of 1 April, Colonel George Roberts of the 42nd Illinois and his fifty men rowed downriver in a thunderstorm. A flash of lightning gave them away, but the raiders moved in fast, overwhelmed the defenders, spiked the six guns, and rowed back to the fleet. It was neatly done.
The moon went down at 10:00 PM on the night of 6 April. It was cloudy and utterly black. The CARONDOLET made steady, quiet progress towards the rebel batteries and it seemed as though the Federals might make their passage completely undetected, and then a wild storm broke out, bathing the vessel in thunder and lightning. Walke was certain the gunboat would be detected, but it made it past the first battery without trouble, and then the soot in the CARONDOLET's smokestacks, normally kept damp by the steam exhaust, caught fire and sent blasts of flame from the top of the stacks.
The rebels ran to battle stations and tried to fire on the black gunboat gliding down the river past their guns in the storm, but their aim was poor and the CARONDOLET was unharmed, though a pair of cannonballs were later found in the barge and a bale of hay. She arrived downstream at New Madrid at midnight, to be greeted by the cheers of army artillerists.
After a day's delay, the CARONDOLET set down the river on 6 April to attack rebel batteries on the Tennessee shore. That night, Foote, his enthusiasm rekindled, sent the PITTSBURGH downstream to join the CARONDOLET. On the 7th the two gunboats took up the bombardment together, providing cover for transports that took Pope's men across the river. With the Yankees closing in, most of the garrison at Island Ten tried to run for it. Those that remained behind surrendered that night, while those who had fled found themselves boxed in by Pope's soldiers and surrendered on the morning of the 8th.
Pope was a hero. He had captured roughly 7,000 Confederates and piles of weapons and supplies, at a cost of less than a hundred casualties. Pope had shown both ingenuity and drive, while the rebels had passively let themselves be swallowed up.
The next objective was Fort Pillow; the Confederates had been building it up ever since the fall of New Madrid, and Pope and Foote made plans to move against it. However, Halleck had other plans. Seizing Corinth, Mississippi, would leave Fort Pillow hanging to eventually fall of its own dead weight. Pope was ordered to take himself and his men to Pittsburgh Landing to join Grant and Buell. Together, the combined forces would amount to roughly 100,000 men.
The fall of Island Ten had undermined the faltering Confederate defense of the region. Despite Beauregard's assertions of "victory", his forces were in a precarious position and he had no real means of changing the balance back in his favor.
