SHILOH
McClellan's advance upon Richmond, in its beginnings at least,
antedated the great conflict at Shiloh. But its crisis did not come
until much later, nor did it in its early progress involve aught that
was of significance in its bearing upon the conduct and outcome of the
war.
It seems proper therefore to discuss Shiloh and other operations in the
Mississippi Valley first, leaving the campaign in Virginia for later
consideration.
The Confederates, before the fall of Fort Donelson and Fort Henry, were
maintaining a line of offensive defense in Kentucky. This line extended
from the Big Sandy in the eastern part of the state to Columbus on the
Mississippi river in the extreme west.
The line was in many respects defective. The Confederate center of
operations was at Bowling Green, while the two ends of the defensive
line lay much farther north than that. The line thus constituted what
in military parlance is known as a reëntering angle. The enemy pushing
into such an angle with forces greater than those that defended it or
even with an inferior force, had easy choice to attack on either side
as he pleased, concentrating at will, while compelling the Confederates
to scatter their forces along the whole of an extensive line by way of
defending all parts of it equally.
It was the original purpose of those who devised this defensive system
to correct the fault by pushing their center forward from Bowling Green
to Paducah on the Ohio river, nearly fifty miles above the mouth of
that stream. Had this been accomplished, it would have made the angle
of defense a salient instead of a reëntering one.
Let us explain the advantage of this for the benefit of the
non-military reader. If the Confederates could have established
themselves at Paducah with their lines trending off to the southeast on
the one side and to the southwest on the other, they, instead of their
enemies, would have had choice of positions in which to concentrate.
Assailed at any point it would have been easy for them to throw all
possible force quickly to the defense of the threatened position.
Grant interfered with all this planning when he moved up the Ohio, and
seized upon Paducah, which was quickly fortified so strongly as to
render the execution of the scheme thereafter impracticable. From that
time forward it was clear that the Confederates must either maintain
their line of defense by means of a vast and dangerously unmanageable
reëntering angle, or they must withdraw from their two advanced wing
points. To do this latter thing would have been to abandon Kentucky
completely, and it was no part of the Confederate program to do that.
A second defect in this scheme of defense was that the line thus
formed was traversed by two rivers, the Tennessee and the Cumberland,
both practically navigable by steamboats. It was obvious to ordinary
common-sense that should both or either of these rivers at any time
fall under control of the enemy, with his multitudinous gunboats and
other river craft which could easily be made to carry guns, the western
half of the Confederate force must be completely and at once cut off
from all but a very roundabout and slow communication with its allies
on the east.
Here was a danger which must have presented itself obtrusively to the
minds of those who formed and ordered this military arrangement. It
is difficult for a military critic in this later day to understand or
to conceive upon what principle of scientific warfare such a line was
accepted as even tolerably judicious. Its adoption seems in fact to
have been determined more by political than by military considerations.
In order to meet the difficulty the Confederates created the two great
fortresses--Henry and Donelson--to defend the rivers. These forts were
curiously misplaced. They were located one upon the one river, and
the other upon the other, at a point near the dividing line between
Kentucky and Tennessee. At that point the two rivers run within eleven
miles of each other. But a little farther down the streams--that is
to say a little farther north--their course brings them within three
miles of each other. Here obviously on all accounts was the point at
which the defensive works should have been constructed. In that case
the two forts would have been within easy supporting distance of each
other and neither could have been assailed from the rear. Moreover,
we have the authority of no less eminent an engineer than General
Beauregard for saying that the ground at this point is well fitted by
its natural conformation for purposes of defense, while at the point
actually selected for the two fortresses it is peculiarly lacking in
that advantage. But the more defensible position was in Kentucky and
purely political considerations had weight in determining the choice of
the less advantageous point of defense in Tennessee.
The defective character of this line of defense and the mistake
underlying its acceptance were strongly emphasized after the overthrow
of Zollicoffer at Mill Springs and the pushing forward of General
Thomas's forces to more southerly points. This movement placed a
threatening force on the right flank of the Confederate line of
defense. Nevertheless, the Confederate War Department clung to its
mistaken policy. It lived at that time in a fool's paradise in which
facts counted for little in comparison with theories, and in which
optimism was expected to serve the purpose of guns and brigades and
defensive works.
When at the end of January, 1862, the War Department asked General
Beauregard to go to that region as second in command under General
Albert Sydney Johnston, it confidently assured him that the troops
under General Johnston's command exceeded seventy thousand in number.
On his arrival there General Beauregard found that in fact these widely
and dangerously scattered forces numbered less than forty-five thousand
and that the several parts could not possibly be made to support each
other. He found also that the strength in fortification, in guns and
in men, which should have been concentrated mainly in Forts Henry and
Donelson, had been largely wasted at Columbus, a position naturally
indefensible or defensible by a small as easily as by a large force. He
found that vast quantities of precious stores had been warehoused there
in face of the fact that Columbus was the most northerly and the most
exposed point on the entire defensive line.
When General Beauregard joined General Johnston and made his study
of conditions, he pointed out all these defects in the line and all
the dangers they involved. General Beauregard had, since the battle
of Manassas, developed an aggressive tendency which he had strangely
lacked in the earlier months of his career as a general. He had grown
into a real general. He therefore proposed to General Johnston an
instant offensive movement.
Here it is important for the reader clearly to understand the situation.
General Polk, commanding the Confederates at Columbus, was threatened
by a superior force under General Pope in Missouri, on the other
side of the river. General Johnston's position at Bowling Green was
threatened by a distinctly superior army under General Buell which lay
scarcely more than a two days' march to the north and east. Moreover
the position of Bowling Green was already in effect turned by Thomas's
advance from eastern Kentucky towards eastern Tennessee. In the
meanwhile General Grant, supported by the gunboats, was in possession
of Paducah and threatening to advance with 15,000 men for the reduction
of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson.
The Confederate forces were scattered beyond all possibility of
effective coöperation except by a concentration in advance involving a
radical change in the scheme and line of defense. There were at that
time about 14,000 Confederate effectives at Bowling Green; about 5,500
at Forts Henry and Donelson; about 8,000 near Clarksville; and about
15,000 at and near Columbus. Other detached forces at various points
swelled the total of the Confederate forces in Kentucky and Tennessee
to about 45,000 fighting men.
Grant was threatening the river forts with 15,000 men. Pope had 30,000
men or more in southeast Missouri, threatening Columbus. Buell had a
large and rapidly increasing army, numbering from 40,000 to 60,000 men
(overestimated by Beauregard at 75,000 or 80,000) at Bacon's Creek,
within striking distance, forty miles, of Bowling Green.
It was obviously easy for Pope to occupy Polk at Columbus and for Buell
to engage Johnston at Bowling Green with an overwhelming force, while
Grant should advance to the assault of Forts Henry and Donelson.
Buell, with his army of 40,000 or 50,000 men, might easily have
overwhelmed Johnston's 14,000 at Bowling Green. Pope could have so far
engaged Polk at Columbus as to prevent the detachment even of a squad
from that quarter for Johnston's reinforcement. Grant in the meanwhile
could make his advance with 15,000 men--to be reinforced presently to
27,000--and the gunboats, against Forts Henry and Donelson, defended as
those works were by no more than 5,500 men.
It was Beauregard's urgent advice to withdraw all but garrison forces
from Columbus, Bowling Green and Clarksville, and to concentrate an
overmastering force for resistance to Grant in front of Fort Donelson.
This plan was in some degree acted upon. That is to say enough men were
concentrated at the forts to swell the record of Grant's subsequent
capture to about 15,000 men, but not enough to defend the position.
The plan might have failed had an attempt been made to execute it in
its full scope. Attempted by half measures as it was its failure was
clearly foreordained. Grant captured the forts and their defending
garrisons and made himself master of the two rivers which, next to the
Mississippi, were of most vital importance to both sides. After the
forts had fallen the occupation of Nashville was quite a matter of
course, and equally so was the necessity of the Confederate evacuation
of Kentucky and of practically all of Tennessee.
Presently after being "kept in" by Halleck Grant was restored to
command--though still as a mere volunteer officer under censure and
still subject to General Halleck's often paralyzing domination. Grant
instantly began, after his habit, to plan a further campaign of damage
to the enemies of the Union. One opportunity had been denied to him. He
sought another.
In the meanwhile his capture of Forts Henry and Donelson had split the
Confederate line of defense in two and rendered its further maintenance
an utter impossibility. With the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers in
Federal possession it was manifestly absurd to think of maintaining a
line of defense which those rivers traversed. The success of Grant had
completely ended all possibility of coöperation between the eastern and
western wings of that defensive line. The forces west of the Tennessee
and those east of that river must henceforth act independently and
rather hopelessly, or else they must retire to a new line farther south
upon which coöperation might be possible.
It was decided to retire. Bowling Green was evacuated and the Federal
General Buell instantly occupied it. A little later Nashville was
evacuated by the Confederates in behalf of a less exposed position.
It was at the same time determined to withdraw from Columbus all the
forces assembled there except a garrison sufficient to work the guns,
and to defend the point for a time with the aid of Commodore Hollins's
gunboats in the Mississippi.
The new line of defense adopted by the Confederates was the Memphis and
Charleston railroad, running through southern Tennessee and northern
Mississippi, Alabama, etc. This line presented no natural advantages
of defense, but it covered the most vitally important railroad
communications of the Confederacy. Furthermore it will be observed
that this line of defense lies almost exactly midway between the Ohio
River and the Gulf of Mexico. In other words, under Grant's energetic
aggressiveness, the Federal control had been pushed from the Ohio river
nearly half way to the gulf. The process of "splitting the Confederacy
in two," was already well advanced at the beginning of the spring of
1862.
It was always the keynote of Grant's policy to "press things," and
after his period of suspension from command he began again to carry out
that obviously wise policy.
As the dominant thought in General Grant's strategy from beginning to
end of the war, he was strongly impressed with the fact that the North
was vastly superior to the South in all military resources, and as a
man of practical common sense it was his idea that this superiority in
men, arms, ammunition, food supplies, and all else that tends to help
military endeavor should be insistently and persistently utilized in
the breaking of Confederate resistance within the briefest possible
time. The ancient thought of divine arbitrament in arms had no place in
his mind. The notion was incredible to him that two armies should stand
still and do nothing while a David on the one side and a Goliath on the
other should make a personal trial of conclusions. He was not lacking
in chivalry or sentiment, as abundantly appeared on several conspicuous
occasions, but he had besides an all-dominating common sense, and he
used it. He fully agreed with the Confederate General Forrest in his
definition of strategy as the art of "getting there first with the most
men." He did not understand modern warfare to be in any wise akin to
a medieval tournament in which equality of opportunity must be sought
at all costs. Quite on the contrary he regarded war as a perfectly
practical matter of business, to be carried on as such. He clearly saw
it to be what it is and always must be, a cruel survival from barbaric
times, a measuring of brute strength in that last appeal of humanity,
to the arbitrament of arms.
His common sense taught him that whatever of science there might be
involved in the conduct of war, its results depended after all upon
brute force. It was therefore his plan always to bring to bear all that
he possessed of brute force for the solution of the problems at issue,
and, wherever he could, to press his adversary with heavier battalions
than that adversary could muster.
Having been set free again with permission to resume active warfare,
Grant intuitively desired to push forward, pressing his adversary at
every point, seizing upon every assailable position and making himself
master of every place from which further war could be waged with hope
of success.
As we have seen, he had been called back from this program of common
sense after his capture of Forts Henry and Donelson, and until March
13 he was not again allowed to do anything whatever or to use his
abilities in any manner in the public service.
By making himself master of the two rivers he had completely destroyed
the Confederate line and scheme of defense. He had completely cut
off that part of the Confederate force which had its headquarters at
Bowling Green from that part of it whose chief seat was at Columbus.
So complete was this severance, as a glance at a map will show, that
General Albert Sydney Johnston sent General Beauregard at once to
command the western force as a separate army with specific instructions
to act upon his own judgment, bearing in mind that coöperation between
the two forces was no longer possible.
It was surely a great strategic victory for Grant thus to break an
elaborate line of defense and thus completely to divide an army
already inferior to the armies opposing it in numbers, resources
and equipments. But this was not all of it. By this division of the
Confederate forces Grant was left free to attack either half of the
Southern army at will, with overwhelming numbers--for in addition to
his own 38,000 men--for his force had been swelled to that strength--he
had Buell's much larger force within easy call, to say nothing of
Thomas's command, now foot-loose for aggressive campaigning. It is safe
to say that had Grant been permitted, he could and would have fallen
upon and crushed the Confederates under Johnston, with an absolutely
overwhelming army. He could and would have conquered every remaining
Confederate stronghold in Tennessee and northern Georgia and Alabama
and he could and probably would have made within the first year of the
war that "march to the sea," either at Mobile or at Savannah, which was
left for Sherman to make years later.
On the other hand, with a strong detachment he could easily have
destroyed the long and exceedingly vulnerable line of communication
that connected Columbus, Kentucky, with the South.
At Jackson, Tennessee, the Mississippi Central railroad coming up from
New Orleans and the Mobile and Ohio line running north from Mobile
formed a junction. From that point north to Columbus, there was but
one fragile line of single track, earth-ballasted railroad, serving
as a connecting link between the South and its excessively advanced
western position at Columbus. It is difficult to imagine a line of
military communication more vulnerable than this little thread. The
country between the Tennessee river and this railroad line was quite
open and there was neither fortress nor force, except here and there
an easily conquerable picket post to defend the communication. If
Grant had been left with a free hand there is no doubt whatever that
he would instantly have sent westward a force too small in itself for
its detachment to weaken him, but large enough to make itself instantly
and completely master of this railroad line. He would thus have cut off
all communication between Columbus and the South. He would have made
himself quickly master of all the forces and all the supplies and all
the ordnance that had been foolishly concentrated at Columbus. He would
without a battle have compelled the surrender of that stronghold, with
all its preposterously numerous garrison, with all its great guns, and
with all of the rich store of supplies and ammunition and other war
material collected there.
It was another absurdity of the early war that Grant was forbidden to
do any of these things, when the time for their doing was ripe. By
orders of his "superior officer" Halleck, Grant was held idle at the
forts that he had conquered while this opportunity slipped away. From
the sixteenth of February to the thirteenth of March this only general
who knew how to do things and how to get things done was condemned to
idleness and inaction by the absurd order of a distinctly unfriendly
martinet.
In the meantime the Confederates, not being fools, utilized the
opportunity given them by this delay, to rescue themselves from their
peculiarly perilous position. Johnston withdrew the eastern half of the
Confederate army from Bowling Green to the line of the railroad that
led from Memphis eastward. Beauregard, in command of the western half
of the army which Grant had so completely sundered, clearly saw the
situation and promptly retired his forces from Columbus to Corinth,
Mississippi, on the line of the Memphis and Charleston railroad at
its intersection of the Mobile and Ohio line. He had in the meantime
transferred to New Madrid on the Mississippi, and to Island Number 10
in that stream, the best of the ordnance in Columbus, thus providing as
effectually as he could for the defense of the great river and for its
blockading against Federal gunboats and still more important Federal
transports bearing troops and supplies to points below.
Corinth is a little village in the extreme north of Mississippi. It
has no pronounced defensive advantages whatsoever. It lies in a region
of nearly flat lands with no line of bold hills to protect it and no
difficult stream to serve as a base of defense. But it lies upon that
line of railroad which the Confederates must defend if they were to
preserve their communications between the east and the west at the
crossing of the north and south line.
At Corinth the Confederates concentrated all their forces. Against
Corinth Grant instantly directed his operations as soon as he was
restored to command and permitted by his superior officer to carry on
the war for his country upon lines marked out by common-sense.
He moved at once to Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee river. Pittsburg
Landing lies about twenty miles north by east of Corinth and between
the two there is no considerable stream, no important range of hills,
nothing in the shape of physical conformation of the ground that could
aid Confederate defense or facilitate Confederate aggression. On the
contrary the streams near Pittsburg ministered exclusively to Federal
purposes.
When Grant arrived at Pittsburg Landing he found the army encamped
about equally upon the eastern and western sides of the river. He
instantly and boldly ordered the whole of it to the western or
Confederate bank of the stream.
This was a very daring thing to do. For with the Tennessee river behind
him and with no means of easily crossing it in retreat, Grant must face
the certain surrender of his army in case of an unsuccessful battle in
that position. In such an event there could be no alternative. But it
was not Grant's habit of mind to look for alternatives. He boldly took
the risk as it was his custom to do. He threw his whole army across
the river and there waited for the arrival of Buell's stronger force,
which had been ordered by Halleck to join him and was marching in
very leisurely fashion to do so. The army under Grant's own immediate
command numbered now about 38,000 men, increased almost immediately
to 45,000. That under Buell which was strolling westward to reinforce
him numbered more than 40,000. He thus had prospect of an overwhelming
force with which to assail the Confederates at Corinth, where under
Beauregard's tireless activity they had succeeded in concentrating
about 45,000 or 50,000 men, a large part of this force consisting of
raw recruits unorganized, undrilled, undisciplined and extremely ill
armed.
Whether Halleck planned this concentration of Grant's and Buell's
armies for an advance upon Corinth as his partisans contend, or whether
Grant planned it and Halleck merely accepted the plan as others stoutly
assert, is a matter of no historical consequence, whatever biographical
interest it may have. In either case the purpose of the concentration
was to move upon Corinth in irresistible force, overthrow the
Confederates there and seize upon the two important lines of railroad
which intersect each other at that point. It was at any rate Halleck's
purpose to command in this campaign in person. But it was not intended
to advance upon Corinth until Grant's and Buell's armies should form a
junction, and there was no thought or expectation that the Confederates
would themselves assume the offensive. General Halleck planned to leave
St. Louis not earlier than April 7, and perhaps several days later,
for Pittsburg Landing. In the meanwhile General Grant had posted his
army loosely and had thrown up no earthworks in the field. All his
procedures indicated that he did not expect to be molested where he lay
or to encounter the enemy until he should go in search of him. Indeed,
he telegraphed Halleck on the fifth of April, the very day before the
battle, saying, "The main force of the enemy is at Corinth, with troops
at different points east.... I have scarcely the faintest idea of an
attack (general one) being made upon us, but will be prepared should
such a thing take place."
At the very moment when that dispatch was penned the Confederates with
their entire strength were actually on march to assail an enemy who had
"scarcely the faintest idea of an attack" being made upon him either
then or later. In his memoirs General Grant said:
"When all reinforcements should have arrived I expected to take the
initiative by marching on Corinth and had no expectation of needing
fortifications.... The fact is I regarded the campaign we were engaged
in as an offensive one and had no idea that the enemy would leave
strong intrenchments to take the initiative when he knew he would be
attacked where he was, if he remained."
It had been the purpose of General Johnston to deliver his blow on the
morning of the fifth of April, overthrow Grant, and be prepared to
fall upon Buell when he should arrive. But matters of detail went so
far wrong that the Confederates, advancing from Corinth to attack, did
not reach the neighborhood of Shiloh church, where Sherman was posted
without fortifications, until nightfall of that day. They bivouacked
very near the Federal lines, but strangely enough their presence in
force was not discovered by the enemy they purposed to fall upon at
daylight. In the meanwhile the head of Buell's column had come up and
the rest of it was dangerously near at hand.
The Confederates made their assault with great impetuosity at dawn
of April 6. The first that Sherman, who held the advance of Grant's
position, knew of the impending battle was when the Confederates forty
thousand strong rushed upon his camps and after a brief but stubborn
struggle carried them, Sherman being driven back so hurriedly that he
left his tents standing and the breakfasts of his men not yet cooked.
The first that Grant knew of a tremendous attack of which he had had
"scarcely the faintest idea," was when at his headquarters at Savannah
several miles down the river he heard the guns at work at Shiloh.
There has been much and angry discussion of the question whether or
not Grant and Sherman were "surprised," in the military acceptation
of the term, by the Confederate onslaught at Shiloh. The point has
little historical importance, but in the light of all the facts since
disclosed by the records it is difficult to interpret what happened
there otherwise than as a complete surprise, which but for the
excellent discipline of the Federal troops and their superb fighting
quality might easily have ended in disaster. We have seen that Halleck
in St. Louis did not intend to leave for the front, where he expected
to command in person, until the next day or even later. We have seen
how confident Grant was in his belief that the Confederates intended no
general attack either then or later and how he planned himself to take
the offensive. It is certain that Grant's forces were not disposed as
they would have been if an assault by the enemy had been anticipated.
The several advance corps were posted with little or no reference to
coöperation between them to resist an enemy assaulting in force. No
line of battle had been formed or in any way provided for. Sherman,
who was first assailed, was resting quietly in camps which would very
certainly have been stripped for action if an attack had been expected.
Indeed, Sherman's very latest reports to Grant had expressed the
utmost confidence that no attack was in contemplation, and that the
Confederates would do nothing more than annoy the pickets. He reported
to Grant that they "will not press our pickets far." In brief it is
obvious that neither Halleck at St. Louis, nor Grant at Savannah,
Tennessee, nor Sherman, holding the front at Shiloh meeting house,
anticipated a battle in front of Pittsburg Landing. They expected to
fight on the offensive at Corinth when they should be ready to advance,
but the thought of having to defend themselves against a Confederate
force assailing them at Shiloh seems never to have occurred to them
until the Confederates fell upon Sherman's camp with their "yell," for
a first warning of their presence.
Sherman with two brigades lay in front. The two brigades were widely
separated, as they would not have been had an attack in force been
regarded as even a possibility. McClernand's division lay far in rear
of Sherman. Prentiss, Hurlbut, W. H. L. Wallace and the commander of C.
F. Smith's force--that general being ill--with their several divisions
were scattered about in the rear all the way to Pittsburg Landing,
while Lew Wallace with about five thousand men was posted several miles
farther down the river in complete isolation from the rest of the force.
General Van Horne, writing under the direct inspiration of General
George H. Thomas and with all the orders and dispatches under his
eye, says that the several divisions "were widely separated and did
not sustain such relations to each other that it was possible to
form quickly a connected defensive line; they had no defenses and no
designated line for defense in the event of a sudden attack, and there
was no general on the field to take by special authority the command of
the whole force in an emergency."
The ground in front of Pittsburg Landing was especially well adapted
to defense. Flanked on either side by creeks difficult to cross, it
compelled the assailants to depend almost entirely upon direct assault
in front with little chance of success in any effort they might make to
turn either flank.
There was as yet no officer authorized to take general command,
General Grant being at Savannah, far from the field, but the division
commanders, each acting upon his own responsibility, quickly responded
to the need, and not long after Sherman's camps had been overrun there
was a very tolerable line of battle contesting the Confederate advance
with great obstinacy and determination.
In the meanwhile Grant had ordered up such reinforcements as were at
hand and was himself hurrying to the scene to give personal direction
to the battle.
He found multitudes of stragglers and skulkers cowering under the river
bank, as is always the case during a battle when a place of refuge near
at hand offers a tempting security to the cowardly. But apart from
these spiritless ones he found the men of his army bearing themselves
right gallantly and contesting every inch of the ground over which the
Confederates were slowly beating them back towards the river.
The purpose of the Confederates was to break through the left of
Grant's line and reach the river, thus placing themselves on their
enemy's flank, threatening his rear and imperiling his entire army.
General Albert Sydney Johnston had been mortally wounded early in
the afternoon, but Beauregard, upon whom the Confederate command had
devolved, adopted and sought to carry out the strategy determined
upon. Late in the afternoon, he hurled the whole of Bragg's force upon
the left of Grant's line with an impetuosity which must have achieved
success had the tremendous assault been made an hour earlier. But
fortunately for the Federals General Buell had come up with a part
of his army. He quickly threw such regiments as he had with him into
action at the point of danger, and the danger was really extreme. It
was only necessary for the Confederates to push Grant's left wing back
for about two hundred yards farther than it had been pushed already in
order to seize upon the landing and completely cut Grant off from his
gunboats and transports acting as ferry-boats, and from all hope of
further reinforcement.
In that case Grant's problem would have been to save his shattered army
from complete overthrow, with surrender as the well-nigh inevitable
result. There is little doubt that the left wing must have given way
before Bragg's assault, as the Confederates expected it to do, but for
the reinforcement which Buell sent into action at the critical moment.
This reinforcement saved the left wing from the destruction intended
for it.
This statement is made upon the very careful and trustworthy authority
of General Van Horne, writing under direct inspiration of General
Thomas. In his "Memoirs" General Grant repudiates the claim of Buell's
having rendered important assistance at that time and insists that he
rendered him no help of any consequence on the first day of the battle.
But the memoirs were written from the memory of a very ill man many
years after the event, and may therefore be erroneous. At any rate
General Van Horne's account of what happened, supported as it is by
copies of all the orders given, seems the more trustworthy authority on
the point at issue.
Night was now near at hand. During a long day of continuous and
desperate fighting Grant had been slowly beaten back to the
neighborhood of the river bank. There he stood at bay with all his
artillery and all his infantry massed in a commanding position,
shattered and broken, and standing in desperate defense of a point from
which he could retreat no farther without retreating into the river.
Across his front lay a deep ravine. This would have been difficult
for his enemy to cross under the best of conditions. It was rendered
the more difficult by the fact that it was in part filled with back
water from the river. Still more important was the fact that it was
completely commanded by a plunging fire from the Federal artillery
which in spite of defeat stood resolutely to its guns.
Nevertheless the passage of that ravine was not quite impossible to a
determined foe; more difficult tasks have been accomplished by generals
of desperate courage commanding such an army as that under Beauregard
had proved itself to be during that unflinching day of slaughter.
It was a critical moment of the war--we may almost say it was _the_
critical moment of the war. If Beauregard could have forced that
ravine he must have driven his adversary into the river or compelled
the surrender of the Federal army with its complete destruction as the
only alternative. On the other hand, if he failed to force the ravine
that night it would be forever too late. For Buell's whole army was now
within call and it was certain that on the following day, if Grant were
not now destroyed, there would be a Federal force on the Confederate
side of the river with which Beauregard could not reasonably hope to
cope successfully.
It would perhaps be unjust to say that at this supreme crisis
Beauregard faltered and failed. The peril of the attempt was so great
and the certainty of slaughter so appalling that the very stoutest
heart might well have shrunk from the desperate hazard.
Beauregard himself has told us in his official reports, and in Colonel
Roman's inspired book, that he was unwilling to order a movement so
desperate in its chances and so certain to involve a slaughter of brave
men greater than any that has been anywhere recorded in the annals of
modern war. He was satisfied with the day's work done and confident of
complete victory on the morrow. So sure was he of this that he sent
dispatches to Richmond that night announcing a victory of stupendous
proportions and painting it in colors so glowing that President Davis
was moved to send a congratulatory message to the Congress, and that
body passed resolutions of the most enthusiastic kind.
During that night Buell's army, itself outnumbering what remained of
Beauregard's, was hurrying to reinforce Grant who planned to renew
the conflict at dawn with every prospect of reversing the first day's
results and wresting victory from what had been so nearly a complete
and disastrous defeat.
Early on the morning of the seventh of April Grant, reinforced by
Buell's men and having now an overmastering superiority of numbers,
took the offensive and assailed Beauregard's weakened army with a
determination which under the circumstances could mean nothing less
than victory.
But Beauregard was an obstinate fighter and a skilful one and his men
were Americans of the same race and lineage and traditions as those
they were meeting in battle. There was terrible fighting, therefore,
on that second day, and it was only after a very desperate and a very
bloody struggle, hours long in duration, that Grant regained the
ground lost on the day before.
But Beauregard's struggle on that second day was rendered hopeless
from the outset by irresistible odds of numbers, and after a heroic
resistance he withdrew his army and retired in good order and
unmolested to his strongly fortified position at Corinth.
Thus ended one of the great and decisive battles of the war. The
Federals had lost 13,047 men--killed, wounded and prisoners. The
Confederate loss was officially reported at 10,699 men. They had
captured the whole of Prentiss's division, 2,200 strong.
But the respective losses did not accurately measure the importance
of the contest. The battle left the Confederates baffled in their
attempt to overthrow Grant, but not less determined than ever to fight
the matter out to that conclusion which they religiously believed to
be their due of righteousness. On the other hand, it left the Federal
army in overmastering force on the Confederate side of a river which
constituted the last serious natural obstacle to Grant's purposed march
to the gulf.
But Grant was again immediately superseded in the chief command and
forbidden to press the Confederates with that tireless and ceaseless
activity which was the dominant characteristic of his military methods.
He had now an army of about 120,000 men. In front of him lay the enemy
upon a weakly defensive line with an army reduced by battle losses
to less than 40,000 effectives. It was obviously Grant's greatest
opportunity, but he was not permitted to seize it and turn it to
account. For no sooner was the battle completely won than General
Halleck hurried down from St. Louis and himself assumed command.
His orders were paralyzing. Instead of pushing forward with his force,
that outnumbered the Confederates by about three to one, and quickly
making an end of their resistance, he fortified and proceeded to busy
himself with the petty and nagging criticism of battle reports while
the Confederates were doing all that remained possible to them to
gather recruits, to strengthen their position at Corinth and to prepare
means of resistance farther South.
When we shall come to consider in a future chapter, what else had
happened, we shall see clearly that by his victory on the second day of
the Shiloh battle, taken in connection with other occurrences, General
Grant had made easily possible the immediate and complete conquest
of the entire Mississippi Valley. It only required an immediate
and determined advance such as General Grant naturally and eagerly
desired to make, in order to complete that work at once. He says in
his "Memoirs" that two days would have been ample for the conquest of
Corinth. But General Grant was not in control of operations in the
western department. General Halleck was. General Grant was no longer
even in command of the army with which he had driven General Beauregard
back to Corinth. General Halleck was, and instead of pressing forward
at once as Grant desired to do and driving Beauregard still farther
south while capturing all his stores or compelling him to destroy them,
Halleck forbade all this and with three men to Beauregard's one, and
with thrice or four times his resources in artillery, ammunition and
everything else, he fortified at Shiloh and began a slowly scientific
approach to works that Grant, in command of that army, would have run
over as a schoolboy tramples down a pathway through a clover field.
Halleck did not even begin this "scientific" advance against Corinth
until the thirtieth of April--more than three weeks after the battle
at Shiloh had opened the way. It took him, by his slow methods, a
full month more to reach Corinth--less than twenty miles away--and
when he got there at last he found the place already evacuated, the
Confederates having made good use of the seven or eight weeks' time
which his dilatoriness had thus allowed them in removing their guns,
ammunition and stores to newly fortified positions farther south.
But Grant's achievement at Shiloh was too great to be ignored. Again,
as after the capture of Forts Henry and Donelson, the land was
resounding with the praises of this Galena clerk Ulysses S. Grant, and
nobody outside the war department at Washington was even thinking of
his superior officer, General Halleck.
But in order clearly to understand what and how much all this meant, it
is necessary in another chapter to recount what else had happened of
a nature calculated to contribute to the recovery of the Mississippi
river and the Mississippi Valley, and to the severance of the
Confederacy in twain.