Shiloh and the Western Campaign of 1862 Read online

  © 2007, 2009 by Gary D. Joiner and Timothy B. Smith

  Shiloh and the Western Campaign of 1862

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  Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-932714-27-2 (hardcover)

  ISBN 13: 978-1-932714-34-0 (paperback)

  eISBN: 9781611210231

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  First paperback edition, second printing

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  For T. Harry Williams

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  Chapter 1: Along the Rivers

  Chapter 2: Lincoln Takes a Hand

  Chapter 3: Breaking the River Barriers

  Chapter 4: General Halleck Intervenes

  Chapter 5: The Armies Gather

  Chapter 6: The March to Shiloh

  Chapter 7: Surprise

  Chapter 8: Around Shiloh Church

  Chapter 9: The Battle Spreads

  Chapter 10: The Crossroads

  Chapter 11: Hornet’s Nest

  Chapter 12: Retreat

  Chapter 13: Last Stand

  Chapter 14: Buell, Grant, and Beauregard

  Chapter 15: Victory?

  Chapter 16: Corinth

  Appendix 1: Organization of the Confederate Army

  Appendix 2: Organization of the Union Army

  Appendix 3: Casualties at the Battle of Shiloh

  Appendix 4: Photo Tour of Shiloh

  Bibliography

  Index

  List of Illustrations

  A Confederate photo gallery

  A Union photo gallery

  List of Maps

  Western Theater

  Fort Henry

  Fort Donelson

  Shiloh-Corinth Concentration

  Shiloh Battlefield

  Union Camps

  Confederate Deployment

  First Contact

  Opening Attacks

  Shiloh Church Line

  Prentiss’ Line Collapses

  The Critical Left Flank

  Stuart’s Withdrawal

  The Crossroads

  Early Hornet’s Nest Action

  The Counterattack

  Sherman and McClernand Withdraw

  Later Hornet’s Nest Action

  The Peach Orchard

  Hurlbut Retires

  Pressing The Union Right

  The Flanks Cave In

  The Hornet’s Nest Surrounded

  Prentiss Surrenders

  Grant’s Last Line

  A Horrible Night

  Grant and Buell Attack

  The Confederate Stand

  Beauregard Withdraws

  Breckinridge’s Rear Guard

  The Battle Ends

  Siege of Corinth

  Appendix 4: Photographic Map Key

  Acknowledgments

  THE ASSISTANCE OF MANY persons made this project possible, but the person who conceived and directed this dissertation is Professor T. Harry Williams. Without his guidance, this work would never have been started, let alone brought to fruition.

  Mrs. Hilda B. Cunningham, my mother, performed many secretarial duties connected with this work. Mr. Jerry L. Schober, Supervisory Park Historian at Shiloh National Military Park, helped me locate many disputed locations, while Mr. Edwin Bearss, Park Historian of Vicksburg National Military Park, Mr. Fred Benton, Jr. and Mr. Charles East, of Baton Rouge, courteously allowed me to use valuable materials. Mr. Ray Smith of the Chicago Industrial Institute generously permitted me to use his index to the Confederate Veteran. The staffs of numerous archival depositories aided me in my research work, but Mr. E. L. Bedsole of the Department of Archives, Louisiana State University, was especially helpful. Mr. Maurice duQuesnay read the manuscript, making many valuable suggestions. To all these people I wish to extend my heartfelt thanks for their aid.

  Edward Cunningham

  In addition to Dr. Cunningham’s 1966 acknowledgments, we the editors would like to thank a few people who have aided in the process of publishing this book. Chief among them is Dr. Cunningham’s family, especially Mrs. Iris Cunningham and Vicki Gully.

  The good people at Savas Beatie LLC worked hard to make this book a reality. Managing Director Theodore P. Savas warmed immediately to the idea of publishing this dissertation and shepherded the book through the complicated publishing process. Lee Merideth helped lay out the book and produced its index.

  The staff of Precision Cartographics in Shreveport, Louisiana, aided greatly with the map work. We would also like to thank Karen Peters for her able assistance in converting the battlefield maps for publication.

  The staff at Shiloh National Military Park, particularly Stacy Allen and Bjorn Skaptason, offered insights into some of Dr. Cunningham’s conclusions and minor errors.

  Last but certainly not least, our wives, Marilyn and Kelly, supported and loved us through the entire process. We thank them for making life so much more pleasurable—just by their presence in our lives.

  Gary D. Joiner and Timothy B. Smith

  Introduction

  CIVIL WAR BOOKS CONTINUE to be published at an astounding clip on nearly every topic imaginable. Campaign and battle studies, especially those eschewing social history and take a more traditional military approach, remain very popular with students of the war. Some combats, like the fighting at Gettysburg in the summer of 1863, attract hundreds of writers on every imaginable aspect of the fighting. Others, like the horrific early-war battle of Shiloh, catch the attention of far fewer scribes. Given the latter battle’s complexity, fascinating cast of characters, and obvious importance to the course of the war, it is difficult to account fully for this lopsided disparity.

  Some readers will likely inquire (and with some justification) what makes the publication of a forty-year-old dissertation on the subject of Shiloh worthwhile? And what could possibly be inside a decades-old document that can be touted as new material?

  There are good reasons behind the decision to publish Dr. Cunningham’s Shiloh and the Western Campaign of 1862. For starters, Shiloh is the exception to the rule mentioned above. It has been the recipient of only four scholarly book-length battle studies. Only three of these are academically “modern”: Wiley Swords’ Shiloh: Bloody April (1974), James Lee McDonough’s Shiloh—In Hell Before Night (1977), and Larry J. Daniel’s Shiloh: The Battle That Changed the Civil War (1997). The fourth entry to this rather exclusive group was the first to appear in print more than a century ago, David W. Reed’s The Battle of Shiloh and the Organizations Engaged (1902). There is definitely plenty o
f elbow room available for another book on the subject.

  We also firmly believe Dr. Cunningham’s work is the best overall account of the Shiloh battle. Reed’s study has an early familiarity with the subject seldom seen elsewhere, but it is in no way comprehensive. Sword’s book is the best tactical study of the four. McDonough’s account makes for good reading, but offers little tactical detail. Daniel’s work breaks ground with his “new military history” slant. Each of these books has its strengths and weaknesses, just as all books do. We believe Dr. Cunningham’s dissertation offers the strengths of each of these works without their associated weaknesses—a feat he managed to accomplish before three of these authors ever put pen to paper.

  Writing in 1989, revered and long-time Shiloh Chief Ranger George Reaves observed that Cunningham’s unpublished dissertation “is the most detailed analysis of the campaign and the battle.” It is also an extremely well written piece of scholarship (which is not the case with the vast majority of dissertations). His work might be described as a significantly expanded and in-depth version of McDonough’s work. Cunningham, however, finished his study more than a decade before McDonough’s book appeared.1

  Perhaps most important, Dr. Cunningham’s dissertation deserves publication because the passage of forty years has not, as some might initially believe, dated his efforts. Indeed, readers will quickly discover it is still a fresh and vivid player in Shiloh historiography.

  Dr. Cunningham espoused in his 1960s-era dissertation many new ideas about the fighting that were not widely accepted (or even seriously considered) until very recently. Shiloh and the Western Campaign of 1862 was forty years (an eternity in Civil War historiography) ahead of its time. It is not, therefore, simply an older treatment of the battle dusted off and repackaged for a wider audience. Shiloh historiography is just now catching up with Cunningham.

  Historical writing on Shiloh falls into four distinct schools of thought. The first school, post-battle to the late 1880s, is comprised of a recounting of the battle by its participants. The second school of thought—which is the dominant school even today—began with the establishment of the park in 1894. With access to published reports, accounts penned by the veterans, and the battlefield itself, this school insisted that the keys to the battle were the Hornet’s Nest and Sunken Road. A more recent third school argued it was Albert Sidney Johnston’s death—and not the struggle in the Hornet’s Nest—that determined the fate of the battle. The fourth and final school, which is just emerging and quite revisionist in nature, takes a new and almost radical approach to understanding the combat at Shiloh. This school argues that neither the Hornet’s Nest nor Johnston’s death was the key to the battle. Rather, it was a misunderstanding of the enemy’s positions, deployment, and a failure to understand the battlefield’s geography that resulted in the Confederate defeat; simply put, Johnston, et. al., fought the battle incorrectly.2

  The first school of Shiloh historiography, the Veterans’ School, spanned three decades and consisted of hundreds of works. Large numbers of soldiers, from privates to general officers, wrote about their experiences in the battle. Newspapers ran weekly serials, as did Century magazine and several others. Old soldiers like Confederate Sam Watkins put their memories on paper for distribution, while more famous personages like U. S. Grant, William T. Sherman, and P. G. T. Beauregard received large sums of money for their recollections. Veterans’ organizations such as army societies published many reminiscences, as did state historical societies. The flood of information that emerged during these thirty-plus years following the war was simply immense.3

  David W. Reed, a Shiloh veteran of the Union Army of the Tennessee and Shiloh National Military Park’s first historian, dominated the next period called the Reed School. Appointed in 1895 by Secretary of War Daniel S. Lamont, Reed became the chief historian of the battle. His efforts at marking the field, writing about the battle, and interpreting the events of April 1862 combined to produce a major school of thought that has dominated Shiloh historiography to this day. Reed’s findings became manifest on the battlefield, in newspaper accounts, in journal articles, and in two books.

  The first volume reflecting this was a history of his regiment, the Twelfth Iowa Infantry. The book emphasized the regiment’s activities in the battle, with the Hornet’s Nest and Sunken Road playing the major role. With the second book, The Battle of Shiloh and the Organizations Engaged, Reed produced the first volume dealing specifically with the battle itself. Published for the Shiloh commission by the Government Printing Office in 1902, Reed’s study contained a general overview of the campaign as well as detailed actions of each unit down to the brigade level. He also included orders of battle and casualty tables. Veterans received a free copy, and when the supply was exhausted by 1909, a new edition was produced. The 1909 version incorporated new knowledge and corrected errors in the first edition. When that supply dwindled, the commission reprinted the 1909 edition four years later.4

  After the National Park Service took control of the battlefield in 1933, the agency’s historians helped institutionalize Reed’s thesis. In a 1950s handbook written by park historian Albert Dillahunty, the Hornet’s Nest message gained further widespread attention. Sold at Shiloh, these small books gave a short overview of the battle in which the Hornet’s Nest was emphasized over other sectors of the battlefield. Likewise, the park’s 1956 film, Shiloh: Portrait of a Battle, heavily concentrated on the Hornet’s Nest, leaving other actions relatively untouched. This film has been shown to millions of visitors throughout the decades, and was still being shown at the visitor center when this book went to press.5

  It was not until the late 1970s that an academic historian published a book on the battle. A professor at David Lipscomb College in Nashville, James Lee McDonough produced Shiloh: In Hell Before Night (1977). McDonough’s entertainingly written book utilized primary and secondary sources and was well received by the Civil War reading community. Although it is not deep on tactical detail, it is laced with human-interest stories and remains useful to the study of the battle. Its appearance played a major role in the perpetuation of the Reed School. Reed developed the idea and the park service interpreted it; McDonough’s work reinforced and carried the Reed thesis to scholars and public alike.6

  Paralleling the academic emergence of the Hornet’s Nest thesis was a smaller yet equally important school of thought centering on Albert Sidney Johnston’s death at Shiloh. One of the few major books on the battle is Wiley Sword’s Shiloh: Bloody April, which first appeared in 1974 (with a revised 2001 edition). Sword argued that Johnston’s death at Shiloh was the key factor in determining ultimate victory and defeat. Although the impact of what has been called the Sword School has not been as significant on popular opinion as the Reed thesis, Sword’s Shiloh has played an important role in determining how others interpret the battle.7

  The Johnston death thesis propounded by Sword appeared earlier in the Veterans’ School, most notably in the writings of Johnston’s son, William Preston Johnston. The thesis gained scholarly credence when the first academic biography of Johnston appeared. In 1964, Charles P. Roland published Albert Sidney Johnston: Soldier of Three Republics. This respected work portrayed Johnston’s life in an objective and clearly presented manner. Roland did not excuse Johnston’s mistakes, but he did emphasize that other commanders new to war made similar mistakes. They lived to learn from their sins, a luxury Johnston did not enjoy. Roland argued that if Johnston had lived, he might have provided the Confederacy with an equal to Robert E. Lee in the Western Theater. Sword’s major 1974 battle study reinforced the Johnston “mystique.”8

  An emerging revisionist school of thought incorporates within it the arguments about the Hornet’s Nest and Johnston’s fatal wounding, but reaches new conclusions about the meaning and significance of these events. This line of thinking is the first to use the battlefield as a major source. The battlefield holds the key to understanding what happened at Shiloh, not only because of the
relatively undisturbed terrain but also because of the vast array of troop position monuments and tablets erected by the veterans themselves. Thus, in many ways the field itself provides historians with as much or more insight into the action than simple reports, letters, and diaries. Indeed, most of these revisionist works cite battlefield tablets and monuments in their footnotes.

  The revisionist school is also the first to challenge former schools in both matter of interpretation and questions of fact. This school explores, for example, the number of charges launched against the Hornet’s Nest, the number of artillery pieces in Confederate Brigadier General Daniel Ruggles’ line, and the effects of terrain on the outcome of the battle.

  Finally, the recent revisionist manner in examining Shiloh is the first to attempt to place the battle in the complete context of Civil War history. Former schools dealt only with the tactical and strategic context of Shiloh. This school also looks at the political as well as the postwar Civil War memory of the nation as a whole. The result is a fresh, if not yet completely coherent, interpretation of the battle.

  Readers well versed in Shiloh literature will be familiar with the revisionist works of Larry Daniel, Stacy Allen, and Timothy B. Smith. Daniel broke new ground when he published Shiloh: The Battle that Changed the Civil War (1997). Most important, Daniel incorporated Washington’s and Richmond’s views of the operations in his coverage of the preliminary strategic campaign leading up to the tactical action. In addition to the political context, Daniel also evaluated the battle from the viewpoint of other eyes, such as those in major cities like New Orleans and Chicago, and even those watching from afar in foreign nations. Daniel’s study capably placed the battle in its correct political and social light.9

  Also in 1997, Shiloh’s Chief Ranger Stacy D. Allen published a revisionist account of Shiloh in two widely-circulated issues of Blue and Gray Magazine. These issues also contained fresh interpretations of the battle. Allen was able to document only seven attacks in five hours against the Hornet’s Nest position. He noted also that these charges were made in the least populated area of the battlefield. When most of the attacks took place, he explained, the “vast majority of the brigades [Confederate and Union] were actively engaged on either the left or the right flank.” As far as Allen is concerned, for the majority of the day the Hornet’s Nest was not the critical point on the battlefield. Allen also reached the conclusion that the Confederate command authority (most notably Johnston) misread the Union deployment at Pittsburg Landing in the context of the geography of the site.10