Western Tennessee, 1862 The year had started out badly for the Confederate forces in the Western Theater of Operations now focused mainly in western Tennessee. Fort Henry and Fort Donelson fell in February. Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston was forced to fall back to western Tennessee, northern Mississippi, and Alabama to reorganize.
Union Major General Henry W. Halleck, who was the Western Theater commander, ordered Major General Ulysses S. Grant and his Army of West Tennessee to advance down the Tennessee River. The overall objective of this advance was to cut the railroad line between Memphis and Richmond.
Grant was also ordered to link up with Major General Don Carlos Buell's Army of the Ohio as part of a joint offensive.
Grant arrived at Pittsburg Landing on the western edge of the Tennessee River with a force of around 49,000 men and went into bivouac to wait for Buell and his 18,000 men.
Grant did not anticipate, nor did he fear any attack from the Confederates. If the Confederates did happen to consider an attack, Grant figured that it would come from the west -- if it came at all. He did not order his men to construct any defensive positions, but chose instead to concentrate his efforts on training the many raw recruits that made up his army.
But Johnston had a surprise for Grant.
Johnston led a force of around 45,000 men north from Corinth with the intention of defeating Grant before Beull was able to come south down the Tennessee to reinforce him.
Johnston's plan was to attack Grant's left flank, turn it, and force the Union Army away from its gunboat support on the river and drive it to the west into the swamps at Snake and Owl Creeks where it could then be destroyed.
But he had his own problems. His men were poorly equipped --many men armed with antiquated smoothbore muskets and shotguns. Some of the men even had pikes. They had little combat experience.
So, for Johnston, everything depended upon surprise.
Johnston's second in command, General P.G.T. Beauregard had cautioned him that the sound of a large army on the move could not fail to alert the Union forces. There had also been two days of rain, and the standard practice of troops was to test fire their rifles once the rain cleared up to see if their powder was dry. The enemy was sure to hear all of the noise that this created.
But the Union army remained blissfully unaware of Johnston's approach. Johnston had complete strategic and tactical surprise.
A Union reconnaissance patrol finally made contact and engaged a Confederate outpost at 5:15am on April 6th. This had the effect of raising the alarm, but the Union commanders still did not prepare properly for what was to come.
But now it was the turn of the Confederates to make mistakes.
Johnston's plan called for the emphasis of the attack to be on the right flank (the Union left). If executed properly, this would dislodge the Union forces from the Tennessee River and their gunboat support. But the startup alignment caused confusion resulting in a misunderstanding as to where the focus of the attack was to be.
More confusion ensued when Johnston decided to go forward to the right flank to oversee the attack leaving Beauregard behind to command the reserve formation behind the center of the line. This had the unintended affect of placing Beauregard in a better position to run the battle. But because of all of the earlier confusion, all Beauregard ended up doing was to commit the reserves piecemeal to the left and the right deluding the effectiveness of Johnston's original plan.
So, instead of an attack focused on the right flank, what happened was a general assault all along the Union line. There was no concentration of effort on the right flank. In fact, there was no depth or weight anywhere along the line.
Units became intermingled and Confederate command and control broke down.
But the assault was ferocious. The Union army was pushed back toward Pittsburg Landing.
Grant, and particularly Sherman began to rally their troops. Sherman, in fact, was everywhere inspiring his men to resist the Confederate onslaught.
Grant was on a gunboat ten miles up river when the assault began. He had been injured when his horse fell, and only able to get around with the use of crutches. Nevertheless, at the sound of the guns, he rushed to the battlefield. He also worked frantically to bring in reinforcements.
One division of these reinforcements was under command of General Lew Wallace. Grant ordered Wallace to reinforce Sherman, but the route that Wallace took actually placed him behind the Confederates instead of to Pittsburg Landing.
Wallace could have attacked the Confederates from the rear, drastically altering the course of the battle, but instead opted to retrace his steps to find the right paths to Pittsburg Landing. When Grant learned of this, he was furious with Wallace and Wallace's military career was damaged as a result. (Wallace later became famous for being the author of "Ben-Hur")
By 9:00am, furious fighting erupted in an open field known as the "Hornet's Nest" and the "Sunken Road". The flanks around that position were pushed back creating a salient, or bulge in the line. But instead of by-passing the salient and continuing the attack toward Pittsburg Landing where they might have succeeded in overcoming the Union forces trying to set up defenses there, the Confederates kept up the attack on the salient.
This gave Grant and Sherman time to rally and consolidate.
To make matters worse for the Confederates, Johnston fell mortally wounded around 2:30pm. Beauregard was now in command. But the Union army was now entrenched around Pittsburg Landing instead of being driven into the swamps.
As evening fell, Beauregard halted the assault with the intent of resuming the attack the next morning. He wired Confederate President Jefferson Davis with news of a complete victory as he was confident that the next day would make it so.
But it was not to be. During the night, as the desperate cries of the wounded and the dying permeated the battlefield, Beull and his 18,000 men arrived at Pittsburg Landing to reinforce Grant.
Next morning, April 7th, it was Grant, not Beauregard that attacked.
In the early afternoon, Beauregard counterattacked in the Shiloh Church area, but his flanks were squeezed and the counterattack failed.
Beauregard, finally realizing that he had lost the initiative, and knowing that he was running out of ammunition began an orderly withdrawal back to Corinth.
The battle was over.
Up until that time, it was the bloodiest battle in American history. The Union army suffered more than 13,000 casualties, while the Confederates suffered almost 11,000. The combined total of casualties from this single battle was more than all of the American casualties suffered during the American Revolution, the War of 1812, and the Mexican War combined.
Although both sides were shocked at the carnage, no one knew that in the next three years there would be eight more battles that would have casualty figures that would exceed this one.
