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THE BATTLE OF SHILOH

Below are chapters 1-3 of my unpublished book about the Battle of Shiloh, which took place on April 6-7, 1862.  To read chapters 4-7, click here.  

CHAPTER ONE:  THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY FRONT

No American was prepared for the four-year holocaust that was the Civil War.  It was unfortunate that this conflict, which had been brewing ever since the Declaration of Independence was signed eighty-five years earlier, broke out at the particular time that it did.  It was a time in which weapons were at their peak in killing efficiency, and tactics had not yet been modified to counter this fact.  It was also a time in which the art of medicine was essentially at the same stage as it was during the Middle Ages, five hundred years earlier.

Of course, none of this could have been known by contemporary minds; it took over one hundred years of analysis to come to these conclusions.  Both North and South expected a 90-day war in which one quick campaign and battle would settle things once and for all.  However, the fiasco at Manassas, Virginia in July 1861 proved them wrong.  On the eastern front, both sides dug in for what was now expected to be a long affair.  But still the general public tended to believe that a few harsh campaigns could end the war within a year.  This belief was strongest among those on the western front, in the Mississippi Valley.

As the year 1862 began, and George McClellan’s U.S. army was moving at a snail’s pace in the east, the war’s focus shifted west.  It was hoped by both sides that a quick end to the western war could produce a domino effect throughout the rest of the nation.  After eight months of conflict, the Civil War was no longer the glorious skirmish that everyone had envisioned, but it was transforming into the total war that would redefine the art of warfare and permanently reshape American culture.

Whereas the Southern Confederacy enjoyed much success in Virginia due to superior military strategies, the success it enjoyed in the west relied on luck, bluffing, and the reluctance of its opponent to fight.  The Confederate War Department paid virtually no attention to the Western Theater during the first year of the war.  The army that was there to defend the land was composed of sparse detachments spread out over long, thin defensive lines.  Erroneous Federal intelligence tallied the Confederate force in the west at 100,000, but there was scarcely more than 40,000 from the Mississippi River to the Allegheny Mountains.  By the thinnest of margins did the South manage to maintain a foothold on the neutral state of Kentucky, protecting the vital Southern state of Tennessee.

By the beginning of 1862, command of the U.S. Department of Missouri, headquartered in St. Louis, had passed from the famous explorer John C. Fremont to Henry Wager Halleck.  Fremont had superceded his commander-in-chief by establishing a virtual dictatorship in Missouri, ruled by martial law.  He had also felt it necessary to abolish slavery there, something his superiors in Washington would not tolerate.  After all, the war was not yet being fought over the issue of slavery, and even so Fremont had no authority to set political policies.  Although he was not a corrupt commander, Fremont certainly allowed corruption to run rampant in his department, and the War Department had finally lost all patience with him.  Fremont was relieved by President Lincoln on 19 November 1861.

With Major General Halleck, the North had an incorruptible military man.  Graduating third in his West Point class of 1839, Halleck had translated military texts and had written two books on the art of war.  He was an excellent military bureaucrat whose studious tendencies had earned him the somewhat skeptical nickname of “Old Brains.”  Halleck was also fretful and gossipy, obsessed with the idea of rising to the highest military post in the United States.  With these ambivalent traits, Halleck was both respected and disliked by his subordinates, but by January, he had restored order to the Department of Missouri from an administrative perspective.  And now, at the prodding of an impatient President Lincoln, Halleck turned his attention to military affairs in the area from Missouri in the west to the Cumberland River in the east.

East of the Cumberland River, U.S. command was headed by Brigadier General Don Carlos Buell.  Buell was a direct descendant of a Welsh family that emigrated to Connecticut in the mid-17th century, and he graduated from West Point in the celebrated Class of 1841, a class which contributed 20 general officers to the Civil War.  Buell was a professional soldier who had earned three brevets for service in the Mexican War, and he was appointed commander of the Department of the Ohio on 9 November 1861 by his close personal friend, the general-in-chief of the United States, George McClellan.

Buell was cold, dispassionate and silent, and he had a violent temper that repeatedly got him into trouble.  He shared his friend McClellan’s views on war, thus he was very cautious in strategy and often reluctant to fight.  Buell was a methodical disciplinarian who was rigid, opinionated, and unpopular with his men.  A man with no real driving force, it was very difficult for he and Halleck to coordinate any effort against the Confederates in the west.  Both men were too cautious and reluctant to go along with one or the other’s plans.  Their combined forces were much more than any force the Confederacy could have brought to bear, but both stayed with their separate commands, raising armies and not planning seriously to take them anywhere.

Meanwhile, the South was having much trouble with the few reserves that were available to them in the west.  In the first half-year of the war, command in Confederate Department Number Two was handled as efficiently as could have been expected by the well-respected General Leonidas Polk.  Polk graduated from West Point in 1827, and he was a classmate and close friend of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.  Polk resigned his commission shortly after graduation to join the Episcopal ministry, and in 1841, he became the Missionary Bishop of the Southwest out of Louisiana.  After much soul-searching, Polk returned to the army in 1861 after nearly a 44-year absence.  His friend Davis gave him command of the Western Department in July, and he captured Columbus along with the town’s garrison in neutral Kentucky in early September.

Polk was one of the army’s most-loved generals.  He was known as the “Fighting Bishop of New Orleans” throughout the Confederacy, and he was widely regarded as a textbook commander.  He had a strange appearance for a military man:  He was tall, thin and pleasant, but he had no teeth.  He was often criticized by his contemporaries; among them, many high-ranking Confederate officers and politicians, for lacking drive and flair.  This was only natural in an era and a region in which chivalry and flamboyance were almost mandatory traits.  Under Polk was the Army of the Mississippi, or the nucleus of Confederate Department Number Two.

Polk’s command in the west was superceded when the highly regarded Albert Sidney Johnston arrived from California to become the new commander of Department Number Two on 10 September 1861.  From the moment Johnston arrived to take control, he was hampered by shortages of manpower and materiel.  To counter this, Johnston waged a war of pure bluff by having erroneous numbers of troops printed in newspapers and by stretching out long defensive lines that looked formidable from U.S. positions.  He had intimidated Brigadier General William T. Sherman enough to be denounced as “insane” for predicting the Confederate force at 100,000, and because of this, Sherman was relieved of command in Kentucky.  These tactics were working for Johnston for over three months, but at the outset of 1862, Johnston knew that he could not continue the illusion for much longer.

Albert Sidney Johnston was regarded by both North and South as a brilliant commander, and before he opted for the Confederacy, the North offered him a generous commission as well.  A soldier for three republics, Johnston served for the United States, the Republic of Texas before it was annexed by the U.S., and the Confederacy.  Confederate President Jefferson Davis admired Johnston above all other field officers in the South, and his tall, handsome bearing aptly matched his performance in combat.

A graduate from West Point in 1826, the 59 year-old Johnston was the oldest field commander in the Civil War up to that time.  In January his defensive line was stretched out along a 300-mile front from the Mississippi River in the west to Cumberland Gap on the Virginia border in the east.  His force numbered no more than 45,000, and although those numbers were not even half the number of U.S. troops opposing them, Johnston planned to take the offensive to keep the Federal pressure off Tennessee.

A Confederate force under Generals Felix Zollicoffer and George B. Crittenden invaded central Kentucky against the eastern wing of Buell’s army under Brigadier General George Thomas.  The invasion was planned rather well, but through a series of tactical errors, the force was virtually annihilated at Mill Springs on 19 January.  This Southern catastrophe now made Johnston’s eastern defensive line non-existent.  The embarrassment at Mill Springs shocked the Confederacy into giving the Western Theater the attention it desperately needed.  Up to that time, the troops were scattered far and wide in detachments meant to both contest the main Federal invasion routes from the North and to protect the vital agricultural heartland of the South.  The Confederate War Department now realized it could not have it both ways and hope to survive in the west.  On the other side, the Union victory at Mill Springs was a signal for Halleck; he now saw that an invasion into the South via the Tennessee River could succeed, and he set out to launch an independent attack.

For months, President Lincoln had repeatedly requested an invasion of Tennessee and now, finally, Halleck ordered Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant to move on Fort Henry on the Tennessee River.  Grant was a quiet, determined soldier who did his duty as competently and as humbly as possible.  Grant succinctly put his war aims into perspective in the summer of 1861 when he said, “There are now two parties, traitors and patriots.  And hereafter I wish to be associated with the latter.”

Born Hiram Ulysses Grant, a clerical error at West Point made him Ulysses Simpson Grant, and instead of complaining, he lived with it.  He graduated in the middle of his class in 1843 and served with gallantry in the Mexican War.  In 1854, under allegations of drunkenness and misconduct, Grant resigned his commission.

As a civilian, Grant failed at many business ventures and lived near poverty as a clerk in Galena, Illinois when the war broke out.  Grant never succeeded at anything besides the military.  He was methodical, clearheaded under fire, and he had intense concentration.  He was a skilled equestrian who disliked uniforms, martial music, and traditional military pomp; he was most comfortable in the field under fire.  His intense singleness of purpose and cool judgment under fire helped him greatly in war.  Now, under Halleck, he was finally able to take his army into battle for the Union.

Fort Henry was a makeshift garrison on the Tennessee River commanded by a skeleton Confederate force under Brigadier General Lloyd Tilghman.  It was protected by a few artillery pieces, and it was especially vulnerable to an attack from the river.  Grant had planned a simultaneous attack from both the land and the river, and on 4 February, Federal gunboats started up the Tennessee towards Henry.

The lack of troops and the pregnability of the fort proved no match for the massive U.S. force brought against it, and on 6 February, Tilghman surrendered Fort Henry to Grant.  While Halleck urged Grant to take some time to reorganize the newly captured garrison, Grant immediately set his sights on Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River.

General Albert Sidney Johnston saw the extreme danger of the situation.  From his Nashville headquarters, he knew that if Donelson were to fall, then Nashville would likely follow.  And then the Federal army would occupy most of Tennessee.  Johnston also saw that Buell’s army was waiting in the wings, and therefore he could not completely abandon Nashville to reinforce Donelson.  So he relied on the information of his subordinate, Brigadier General John Floyd, who suggested that a token force be sent to Donelson for sufficient reinforcement.  Johnston’s decision based upon Floyd’s advice would become the source of much controversy in the South.

Grant found Fort Donelson to be a much more formidable garrison than Henry.  The Federal ironclad gunboats were beaten back by Southern artillery, and the first of Grant’s land advances were beaten back as well.  But Grant’s dogged tenacity allowed him to keep advancing, and he eventually surrounded the fort.  Once that was done, surrender was imminent.

Meanwhile, Southern command at Donelson had passed from John Floyd to Gideon Pillow to Simon Buckner, who was presented with the dubious task of asking the Union army for surrender terms.  Buckner had been a close friend of Grant’s, even loaning him money when he was struggling with civilian life.  But that did not keep Grant from issuing his now-famous ultimatum:  “No terms except immediate and unconditional surrender can be accepted.  I propose to move immediately upon your works.”  Buckner had no choice but to accept.  Upon the capture of the fort, Grant pulled Buckner aside and offered to repay the debt that he owed him.  Buckner, now a prisoner of war, refused.

It was the greatest Federal victory in the Civil War to date.  The South lost 15,000 men as prisoners of war, and Tennessee was now in great peril.  The loss at Donelson also lost the border state of Kentucky for the Confederacy, a loss that would never be regained.  Nashville was the next logical target, and the citizens of the city knew it.  Upon hearing the news of Donelson’s fall, a mob attacked Johnston’s headquarters and demanded an explanation.  Johnston had none to give, for he was busy preparing a withdrawal from the city.  Johnston’s mistake in not reinforcing Donelson when he had the chance now loomed large, and his strategy was now being questioned by people in Richmond who had previously shown nothing but blind devotion to him.

The Union victories at Forts Henry and Donelson now virtually isolated General Polk’s Confederate army at its garrison in Columbus on the Mississippi River.  Polk knew that it was only a matter of time before he was attacked, and he too prepared for a withdrawal.

Grant’s great success made him a national hero, and admirers from throughout the North sent him boxes and crates of cigars to congratulate him.  Grant, originally a pipe smoker, now switched to 20 cigars a day.

Now it was General Buell’s turn to invade Tennessee.  He moved out of Kentucky and occupied Nashville without a fight on 25 February, making western Tennessee open for Grant to move south up the Tennessee River.  Meanwhile, Johnston’s army fell back to Murfreesboro and awaited reinforcements.  Polk awaited orders to withdraw from Columbus, and he got them on 2 March.  He then began moving his troops to Humboldt, Tennessee.

With these shocking Southern defeats, help from the Confederate War Department was forthcoming with great haste.  Garrisons and detachments from throughout the South were rushed to a new rallying point, and with them came a new commander, General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard.

Beauregard was a dashing, dapper Louisiana Creole.  He was flamboyant, showy, a bit on the flashy side, but highly regarded as an able field commander.  He was of French descent, and he emulated Napoleon.  He was a narcissist who had social charm, a love for rhetoric, and a praising approach towards his own achievements.  He valued his elaborate battle plans, and as a result he constantly ran the risk of having too great an imagination.

      Beauregard graduated from West Point in the Class of 1838, and he earned distinction in the Mexican War as an artillerist under General Winfield Scott.  Beauregard was briefly the superintendent at West Point, but he was relieved due to his Southern sympathies once South Carolina had seceded.  He was one of the first Regular Army officers to resign his commission and head South.

As commander of the Department of South Carolina, Beauregard received the surrender of Major Robert Anderson at Fort Sumter to begin the war.  As second-in-command in the Department of Virginia, it was his battle plan that enabled the Confederates to rout the Federals at the Battle of Manassas (or Bull Run) on 21 July 1861.  Thus, he was a great Southern hero, but his ego permitted him to charge the Confederate government with incompetence, and his feuds with his superior in Virginia, General Joseph Johnston, were bitter.  As a result, he earned the disdain of President Davis, and he was ultimately sent west in an attempt to quiet his criticisms.

Beauregard arrived at Columbus to take command of the garrison there over General Polk, who was already in the process of withdrawing.  When Beauregard arrived to take partial command of Department Number Two, he regarded the assignment as taking command of a ship already washed ashore.  Beauregard led Polk and his force south to safety in early March, and then he set about finding a new rallying point for which he and Johnston could unite.

Beauregard chose Corinth, Mississippi as the site for the Confederate army to retool.  Corinth was a vital railway that was connected to Memphis in the west, and to the east of Corinth the rest of the Confederacy was connected, including Virginia.  Corinth also lay where the North-South railroad of the Mobile and Ohio was built.  With Beauregard and Polk, reinforcements from all over the South were beginning to concentrate there, and if Johnston could reach the town before the North attacked, the Confederate western army could potentially number 50,000.

Brigadier General Daniel Ruggles and his Louisiana brigade started for Corinth from New Orleans, and Major General Braxton Bragg began forwarding forces from his Department of Florida by the middle of March.  With all these individual units coming together, Beauregard could do nothing but continue to move Polk’s troops south into Mississippi and wait for Johnston to arrive with the main western force from Murfreesboro.  Johnston feinted a move to Chattanooga, completely fooling Grant and Buell into believing that he was retreating into Georgia.  Then, Johnston headed west through Alabama to link up the entire Confederate army of Department Number Two.

While all this was happening, Federal gunboats were moving further and further up the Tennessee River searching for locations in which the Union armies could encamp and prepare for a link-up of their own.  As early as 22 February, the gunboat Cairo went up the Tennessee to Savannah, where strong Union sentiment was found among the citizens.  Nine more miles upstream, Pittsburg Landing seemed an enticing spot for an army.  A bit further up the river, Eastport, Mississippi proved to be an excellent potential base of operations as well.  Each site was scouted with the same objective in mind—it would enable the Federal army to form a base from which it could launch the inevitable offensive against the vital railway town of Corinth.

By the beginning of March, Savannah appeared to be the most logical location for Grant’s Army of the Tennessee.  From there, Grant planned to meet Buell’s Army of the Ohio and then thrust into Mississippi and the heart of the South.  But fate was not on Grant’s side.  On 3 March, Halleck (at the instruction of McClellan) relieved Grant of command and replaced him with Major General Charles Ferguson Smith.  A Southern sympathizer supervising the telegraph lines from Fort Henry to St. Louis conveniently deleted many of Grant’s messages to Halleck, and Halleck, unaware of this, took Grant’s lack of communication to mean that he was superceding the power of the overall commander.  Grant’s past also played a part, for Halleck was quick to believe that his subordinate had returned to drinking while on duty, which was a potential reason why he was not reporting to headquarters.

Halleck and Grant were two very different men in regards to their military philosophies, and personally Halleck was jealous of Grant’s fame in the North.  Halleck believed in the importance of occupying enemy territory, and he believed that commerce should follow wherever the army conquered.  Grant was of the opinion that an army had nothing to do with commerce or occupation, but only with fighting.  His objective was to attack the enemy with full force and keep moving.  Because of this difference, Halleck was never impressed with Grant’s military capabilities.  And he wanted nobody to infringe upon his desire to become the top military man in the Federal army.  Thus, Grant was relieved until a further investigation was made, and Smith was placed in charge of the District of West Tennessee, primarily consisted of the Army of the Tennessee.

Smith was an old Regular Army veteran who graduated from West Point in 1825.  He was the Commandant of Cadets there until 1842, and throughout his life he had rendered excellent military service.  He was the fifth ranking officer in the Federal army, and he went strictly by the book.  He was idolized by Grant as the ideal soldier:  A disdain for politics, civilian life, and all non-military affairs.  It was Smith who chose Savannah as the next destination for the Army of the Tennessee.  And it was Smith who chose Brigadier General William T. Sherman to lead the expedition there.

William Tecumseh Sherman was another rigid military man who failed in an attempt at civilian life before the war.  He graduated sixth in his West Point class in 1840, and in 1859, he became the headmaster at the Louisiana Military Academy in Alexandria.  Sherman spent much of his life in the South and he had many Southern ties, which made him a suspicious character to Northern politicians.  He returned North when the war broke out, where he became a colonel of a Regular Army unit.  He fought with valor at Manassas and then he was appointed commander of the Department of the Cumberland.  It was Johnston’s excellent bluffing that made Sherman sound insane when he said he would need 100,000 men to put down the rebellion in Kentucky.  By December 1861, Sherman was out of the army, battling fits of depression and rage and even contemplating suicide.  It was Halleck, a friend of his, who reassigned him to lead a division from Cairo, Illinois to Fort Henry in early March.  From there, Smith ordered Sherman to lead the army into Savannah.

Sherman was a thin, red-haired Ohioan who was tough, fierce, and intense about everything.  His uniform was badly kept, his hair was rarely combed, and he talked incessantly.  Most people thought he was odd, for everything about him seemed disrupted.  He embodied constant movement and a busy imagination.  As a tireless worker, Sherman was guided by reason and practical results, and all the while he had an extraordinary power of expression.  Now, on 10 March, he was given a chance to redeem himself from his embarrassment of four months before.

While he was bitterly criticized by the Northern public and press, Sherman was widely respected in military circles.  He was certainly respected by Smith, which was why he was given the lead position on the way to Savannah.  Smith, a rigid military man, relied mostly on military men like himself for important operations.  Of the five army division commanders, Sherman was the only graduate of West Point, and only two other commanders (Lewis Wallace and John McClernand) had ever led troops in combat before.  Sherman greatly admired Smith, and Smith respected any man in a volunteer army who was not dreaming of becoming a “political general.”  Thus, Sherman was put in the lead.

On 11 March, the same day the U.S. army began heading south for Savannah, President Lincoln issued General War Order Number Three.  This order consolidated the three military departments west of Knoxville, Tennessee into the Department of the Mississippi, which was headed by General Halleck.  Halleck had been urging both Lincoln and McClellan to give him supreme authority to begin a full-scale offensive in the west, and now he finally had his chance.  Most importantly, this order put Buell’s Department of the Ohio under Halleck’s command, and Halleck immediately ordered Buell to link up with Smith’s army in order to begin a massive thrust into the Deep South.

And so, with everything appearing in wonderful order for the Federal prospects in the west, Major General Smith began moving his Army of the Tennessee out of Fort Henry and further into the heartland of the Confederacy.  With Grant staying behind awaiting an investigation by the War Department, Smith began shuffling his fast-growing force in order to get them aboard steamers en route to Savannah.  At his disposal, Smith had 35,147 infantry soldiers, 3169 cavalrymen, 1231 artillerymen, and 54 artillery pieces.  By order of Halleck, Smith was to take all his artillery and cavalry, as well as 25,206 infantrymen to the new Union destination.

As Smith’s army was heading for Savannah, Buell was agreeing to link up with him there after restoring Federal authority in Nashville.  Confederate scouts knew the Army of the Tennessee was moving almost as soon as it began from Fort Henry.  On 11 March, scouts informed General Polk, who was in Jackson, Tennessee, that 57 of the 65 Federal transports had landed at Savannah.  Polk was busy moving his army down the Mississippi River in order to bring it safely to Corinth.  And he was also busy trying to get along with his new commander, Beauregard.

Polk had positioned a detachment of mounted rifles under Major H.C. King at Paris, Tennessee to watch the activity at Fort Henry.  They saw enough to inform the Confederate high command that the Federal army was on the move, but before they could get full details of the move, they were driven away by Northern skirmishers.  This infuriated Beauregard, who was perplexed as to why there was no infantry support with King as he had ordered.  Beauregard was one of many who felt that Polk lacked the killer  instinct necessary to be an able commander.

Meanwhile, a detachment from Braxton Bragg under General Adley H. Gladden was scouting the Federal landings at both Savannah and Crump’s Landing, four miles south of Savannah.  On 12 March, Brigadier General Lewis Wallace’s division was being deployed there, and that night, General Smith went there to inspect the fortifications.  As he boarded his boat back to Savannah, he tripped and cut his leg on a metal chair.  The laceration was originally insignificant, but it eventually became infected with tetanus, and soon thereafter Smith was bedridden.  As a result of this, Smith was forced to rely on scouting rather than personal inspection, and all the while, he was being scouted by various Confederate detachments.

Through a mix-up of orders, a Confederate division at Eastport, Mississippi under General James R. Chalmers withdrew upon receiving a rather vague order from General Daniel Ruggles at Corinth.  By withdrawing, it allowed Sherman’s division to continue past Pittsburg Landing and arrive there, where it had easy access to the nearby Memphis and Charleston Railroad they were ordered to destroy.  But thanks to a torrential downpour throughout the day and night of 14 March, Sherman’s units were unable to reach the railroad through the swamps and impassable roads.

Upon his return to Savannah, Sherman spotted Pittsburg Landing, an excellent base of operations on the west bank of the Tennessee River.  It was previously occupied by the 18th Louisiana Infantry, which retreated with haste after learning the news of the Federal thrust up the Tennessee.  When Sherman arrived at Pittsburg on 15 March, another Federal division under Brigadier General Stephen A. Hurlbut was waiting there for him, still positioned aboard transports after a full day.  General Smith had already decided to move the bulk of the army to Pittsburg Landing, and he chose Sherman to lay out the Federal camps there.  After his units reconnoitered roads, reinforced and guarded bridges and scouted positions, Sherman’s division positioned itself near a little log meetinghouse called Shiloh Church, a modest Methodist temple.

Shiloh was to serve as a guard to the outer paths into Pittsburg Landing as well as a base from which Sherman could oversee the rest of the Federal encampments that were to follow.  By 16 March, Sherman’s division was fully deployed, and the Union thrust into the Deep South had begun.

CHAPTER TWO:  BASES OF OPERATIONS

The Tennessee River was a potential ruin for the Confederacy.  It ran in the wrong direction, with the current leading from Pittsburg Landing all the way to Cairo, Illinois.  It was a 200-mile river highway which was inviting a Union invasion right into the heart of the Middle South and beyond.  But the Tennessee was wild and unfriendly, and it had previously been bypassed as a major means of transportation.  With the advent of railroads, the Tennessee River no longer had to be contended with in terms of commerce; the dense wilderness surrounding it was quite uninviting to both navigators and explorers.

Pittsburg Landing had at first been a spot of no particular consequence.  Federal gunboats as early as the first of March had steamed up the river to search for suitable landing places for the Union army, and they easily dispersed a Confederate outpost stationed there.  There was a landing place at the water’s edge, with a road climbing to high ground and meandering off through half-settled country, passing a log meetinghouse called Shiloh Church, and going at last to the important railroad intersection town of Corinth, which was a little more than 20 miles from the river.

Brigadier General William T. Sherman took charge, and he was to move his division far enough inland so as to allow the rest of the army room to encamp in the enclosed area which geography allowed them.  Sherman placed his green Midwestern division (comprised mostly of Ohio regiments) on the southernmost edge of camp.  To the east of camp was the Tennessee River.  To the north was Owl Creek, and to the south was Snake Creek, two tributaries which both led to the Tennessee.  The west was wide open and contained many dirt roads that meandered and eventually led to Corinth.  Sherman’s division was primarily positioned in such a way so as to guard these vital roads.

Sherman’s division consisted of four brigades.  Three brigades were placed in the vicinity of Shiloh Church, at the southwest point of camp, in an effort to guard the Hamburg-Purdy road and the main Corinth road.  The fourth brigade under Colonel David Stuart was positioned away from the rest of the division at the southeast part of the Union camp.  Stuart’s brigade was to guard the bridge crossing Lick Creek, as well as the eastern Corinth road.  They were directly adjacent to the roaring Tennessee River.

The Ridge and Monterey roads led from Corinth to a convergence point approximately five miles from Pittsburg Landing, entering the Union camp from the west as the main Corinth road.  There were also three lateral roads that connected Ridge and Monterey before they converged.  Both the Ridge and Monterey roads would play a major role in the upcoming series of operations.

Meanwhile, Major General Henry Halleck was busy issuing orders from his St. Louis headquarters.  On 16 March, he issued Brigadier General Don Carlos Buell marching orders to link up with the Army of the Tennessee from Nashville.  On the same day, Buell’s Army of the Ohio began mobilizing and Brigadier General Alexander McCook’s division led the way towards Savannah.

Buell characteristically moved with extreme caution and left nearly 20,000 of his soldiers in Nashville to retain control of the state capital.  He wired Halleck on 17 March and told him that 26,000 effective troops were now on their way towards Savannah, but many natural obstacles were in his path.  Rains had made rivers and creeks swollen, and roads which were ordinarily difficult to negotiate were made worse.  So Buell’s caution coupled with a rough path ahead still made his link up at Savannah something far into the future.  But he was finally on his way.

Halleck was also busy dealing with U. S. Grant, who was ordered to remain at Fort Henry pending an investigation of his conduct.  Grant requested a court of inquiry in order to exonerate himself, and Halleck knew what that meant.  He did not want to put the Union’s new national hero on trial because he feared the negative publicity he could receive.  And at the highest level, President Lincoln quietly supported Grant.  Lincoln supported any man who was willing to fight, and Grant had quickly become one of the President’s favorite generals.  As a result, Halleck basically informed Grant that the whole matter had been forgotten and he was to return to his army at Savannah.  Grant, as a gracious subordinate, vowed to correct any future deficiencies and do whatever he could to restore the Union throughout the land.  By 17 March, he was at Savannah.

Grant came to Savannah riddled by illness.  He was suffering from a bad cold, and he was plagued with chills and diarrhea.  When he arrived, he found Major General C. F. Smith in not much better shape.  Smith was bedridden after the gash on his leg had become infected, and he had left the supervision of encampments to Sherman.  Grant, who was a cadet at West Point when Smith was the commandant there, held Smith in the highest regard and referred to him for advice on many occasions.  He was satisfied to go along with Smith’s plans that were already under way when he had rejoined the main force.

Grant immediately went to Pittsburg Landing to inspect the encampments there.  It was there where he met Sherman, and a long friendship would result from this meeting.  Grant immediately approved of Sherman’s troop placements, and he, in accordance with Smith’s original plans, began sending two more divisions from Savannah to Pittsburg Landing.  The division commanders were to report to Sherman to receive their placements in the Union camp.  As far as Grant was concerned, Smith and Sherman had handled things well in his absence.

Grant and Smith agreed to leave a division at Crump’s Landing to protect the vicinity of Adamsville and Purdy, as well as the Memphis and Charleston Railroad which ran through there.  This was Brigadier General Lewis Wallace’s Third Division, which was mostly comprised of Indiana and Ohio soldiers.  A portion of the 11th Illinois Cavalry was also part of this division.  General Wallace was a jack of all trades:  A politician, writer, lawyer, historian and soldier.  He had served well in the Mexican War, and his division performed admirably at Fort Donelson.  Wallace’s division had just finished constructing a road from Crump’s Landing to the River road, which led to Pittsburg Landing.  This road satisfied Grant should he need Wallace’s men; they were now ready to move at a moment’s notice.

While Wallace was busy constructing this highway that connected the Army of the Tennessee at all points, Confederate scouts were out in force watching both his actions and those of Sherman at Pittsburg Landing.  By 16 March, Major General Braxton Bragg’s Army of the Gulf had deployed at Bethel, Tennessee, which was a scant five miles west of Crump’s Landing.  Once there, Bragg waited for Polk to move his force from Humboldt, Tennessee, which was approximately 20 miles north of Bethel.  Once Polk and Bragg were united, they were to attack Adamsville and then move on to Wallace’s main force at Crump’s.

Meanwhile, from Corinth, Brigadier General Daniel Ruggles reported that 30,000 Union soldiers had landed at Pittsburg Landing.  After confirmation of the message, Bragg saw the perfect opportunity to attack Wallace as he was isolated from the main force at Pittsburg.  Polk joined Bragg’s force on the evening of 16 March, and Bragg issued his plan to the forces around Bethel.  However, bad weather suspended the attack, and then caution got the best of Bragg, and he finally consulted with General P. G. T. Beauregard at Jackson, Tennessee.  Beauregard and Bragg agreed that it was not prudent to attack until the entire Confederate force could be united at Corinth, and Beauregard issued orders calling for stringent but cautious observance of Union troop movements.  Then Bragg and Beauregard proceeded to take turns pleading with General Albert Sidney Johnston to hurry his force to Corinth.  By 17 March, Johnston’s vanguard was at Tuscumbia, Alabama and moving west as rapidly as weather and caution would allow.

Grant learned on 17 March that the Confederate forces were regrouping at Corinth, and he expressed a bit of surprise to Halleck.  Halleck had urged Grant to execute a raid on the railroad intersection there but to avoid a general conflict in the process.  When Grant learned that the main Confederate Army of the West was assembling there, he knew that to raid the town without provoking a general engagement was impossible.  So he urged an immediate attack on Corinth, believing Confederate morale to be so low that the town would fall much easier than Fort Donelson did.

Smith shared Grant’s zeal for a fight, after all, the Federal soldiers were eager to follow up their victory at Donelson with an invasion of Mississippi.  But once again, Halleck intervened and rejected Grant’s proposal--he vehemently warned Grant not to provoke a general engagement until Buell’s Army of the Ohio arrived at Savannah.  Grant agreed, although he was not happy about it.  The Federal army was itching for a fight, and they wanted nothing more than to bring the war into the Deep South.  But instead they waited and enjoyed the beautiful Tennessee spring in the woodlands of Pittsburg Landing.

Most probably due to the Union mentality at the time, Grant gave no orders for soldiers to either build fortifications or entrench themselves in their camps.  The Union army was going to go on the offensive, and it would only lower morale if the troops were to build defensive positions, reasoned Grant.  Smith shared Grant’s opinion, and he told Grant:  “By God, I want nothing better than to have the Rebels attack us!  We can whip them to hell!  Our men suppose to have come here to fight, and if we begin to spade, it will make them think we fear the enemy.”  In Union camps, peach orchards were blooming and war seemed remote.

Sherman’s reconnaissance reports also set Grant’s mind at ease.  A few Confederate scouting parties were dispersed and prisoners were occasionally taken, and local citizens reported that the major Confederate forces were in Mississippi and waiting for the Union offensive to come to them.  Therefore, Grant accepted Sherman’s reports at face value and decided to put up no breastworks, for Buell was well on his way to Savannah, and then the thrust would begin.  But Sherman was a realist, and although he feared no attack, he knew that his position was potentially precarious.  He was heard mentioning to a news reporter, “The army is in great danger at Pittsburg Landing, but I won’t sound an alarm because they’d call me crazy again.”

On 20 March, Johnston’s vanguard reached Corinth, and his entire force was at the town by 26 March.  Johnston himself arrived on 23 March, and his army was now united in the west.  He greeted Beauregard and Bragg with unrestrained gratitude, thanking them for avoiding a confrontation until he made it there with the main force.  Johnston even went so far as to offer Beauregard the army command while Johnston assumed a departmental assignment—possibly in Memphis or Holly Springs, Mississippi.  However, this gracious act on the part of Johnston was common among contemporary military leaders, known as a beau geste.  It was a courteous, gentlemanly posture to an esteemed colleague (Beauregard had previously offered to serve under Bragg as well).  At any rate, Beauregard chivalrously declined the offer.

The relationship between Johnston and Beauregard was quite delicate.  Beauregard had felt that he was sent west because Johnston had lost his edge in commanding troops in the field, and he believed that the men no longer trusted him.  Beauregard saw himself as the savior of the Confederate hopes in the west, and thus he did not hold Johnston, his superior, in very high regard.  Johnston, on the other hand, felt enormous pressure from the citizens of the South, the Confederate army of the west that had spent the past two months retreating, and the Confederate War Department which had much faith in him but still wanted an explanation as to why he had suffered so many defeats lately.  In short, both men had different goals.  Johnston wanted to exonerate himself and sustain the war effort in the west, while Beauregard wanted to achieve the glory and accolades he felt the South already owed him.

With the Confederate army now united, it numbered close to 45,000 effective troops.  Johnston felt that the only way it would be possible to transform a series of retreats into a counteroffensive would be to attack Grant before he could be reinforced by Buell.  After all, the main reason the Confederate forces were united was to attack the divided Federal forces, reasoned Johnston.  Both President Davis and his military advisor, General Robert E. Lee, expressed confidence in Johnston’s judgment, and the plan was set in motion.  It would not be easy.

The Confederate army had to be organized, trained, disciplined, armed, and inspired in less than two weeks if it was to catch Grant before Buell reached Savannah.  To make matters worse, it was an ill-assorted army, consisting of many detachments from all over the South combined into one force of rugged individualists.  Johnston’s first assignment was to delegate the reorganization of the army to Beauregard, who quickly gathered all the troops in and around Corinth and formed them into the new Army of the Mississippi.  The army contained three corps in Corinth and three reserve brigades stationed at Burnsville, Mississippi on the Memphis and Charleston Railroad.  Most of the cavalry and artillery were under the direct command of Beauregard himself.  According to contemporary military regulation, the army was not big enough to be divided into three corps, but the reason Beauregard divided it in this way was two-fold:  First, it made the army easier to train and discipline by requiring fewer commanders, and second, it enabled enemy intelligence to miscalculate the numbers of the Confederates if there were three corps against them (a corps usually contained upwards of 20,000 men; here, they barely numbered 10,000 per corps).

In the new Confederate Army of the Mississippi, Major General Leonidas Polk commanded the First Army Corps.  It contained two divisions led by Brigadier General Charles Clark and Major General Benjamin F. Cheatham.  There were two brigades per division, and they were led by Brigadier Generals Stewart and Johnson, and Colonels Russell and Stephens.  Polk’s corps was comprised almost entirely of Tennessee regiments, except for two Kentucky units, a Louisiana and a Mississippi regiment.  There were officially 9,136 effectives in the First Army Corps.

Major General Braxton Bragg commanded the Second Army Corps.  It contained two divisions led by Brigadier Generals Daniel Ruggles and Jones Withers.  There were three brigades per divisions, led by Brigadier Generals Gladden, Anderson, Chalmers, and Jackson; and by Colonels Gibson and Pond.  Bragg’s corps was comprised of troops from New Orleans, Mobile, and Pensacola.  There were officially 13,589 effectives in the Second Army Corps.

Major General William J. Hardee commanded the Third Army Corps.  It contained three brigades led by Brigadier Generals Hindman, Cleburne, and Wood.  There were officially 6,789 effectives in the Third Army Corps.  Major General George B. Crittenden commanded the Reserve Corps.  It contained three brigades led by Brigadier General Bowen, and Colonels Trabue and Statham.  There were officially 6,439 effectives in the Reserve Corps stationed at Burnsville.  The cavalry was led by Brigadier General Frank Gardner, and there were 4,382 effectives in the Confederate cavalry.

In creating this system of organization, Beauregard made two errors.  First, he gave Braxton Bragg nearly one-third of the army, which was sure to cause confusion in regards to loose leadership and overlapping commands on the battlefield.  Second, he put George B. Crittenden at the head of a corps.  This man was nearly court-martialed for his disaster at Mill Springs in January, and he was generally held in low regard by most of the army at the time.  Eventually, the second error was rectified by the new chief of staff for the Confederate Army of the Mississippi, recently appointed by Johnston.  This was Major General Bragg.

Bragg was a compulsive worker who delighted in details.  Johnston probably asked too much of him by making him chief of staff and keeping him as a corps commander as well, but the other commanders, Hardee in particular, thought the arrangement was admirable.  Bragg believed that the army needed dictatorial measures to make it a fighting force, and he was ready to administer those measures.  Bragg was an unfriendly pessimist who was a rigid disciplinarian.  His efforts at organization and discipline caused many complaints from his own troops, and his tactlessness offended many Southerners.  As a result, he gained many enemies throughout his life.

Bragg saw the task ahead of him and knew it was enormous.  He wrote later, “There was more enthusiasm than discipline, more capacity than knowledge, and more valor than instruction.”  Bragg immediately created detachments to dig trenches, fell trees, and build defenses.  The colonel of the 4th Louisiana Infantry protested directly to Bragg that his unit could not be expected to do such work.  Asked why, the colonel replied, “They are gentlemen.”  Bragg set him straight immediately.  “Oh!  Well, you get your gentlemen a suitable number of spades and see that they dig trenches as fast and as frequently as possible.”

With Bragg’s appointment came the customary controversy in an army driven by large egos.  Some complained that Polk ranked Bragg, while others cited that no Confederate law provided for an army to have a chief of staff.  With the promotion, Bragg immediately jumped ahead of Polk, and Colonel Thomas Jordan, Johnston’s adjutant general, later explained the appointment:  “Bragg was nominally appointed chief of staff, a position borrowed from European armies, even though there was no such position provided by law.  This appointment gave Bragg the authority to give orders on the field in the name of Johnston should exigencies arise.”  No one needed to worry that Bragg had any concern for high rank or political influence.  He was nothing more than a firm, rigid, grim soldier by nature.

On 31 March, Bragg relieved George B. Crittenden from command for drunkenness and neglect of duty when General Hardee found him and a subordinate intoxicated while on duty.  This dismissal was a risky proposition, for it went against a traditional military axiom that commanders should not be replaced just before a battle is to be fought.  But Bragg defied tradition, guessing that it would have been more damaging to do nothing.  He had Crittenden placed under arrest and Beauregard appointed Brigadier General John C. Breckinridge to succeed him as the Reserve Corps commander.

Breckinridge was a prominent Kentucky lawyer before he entered politics.  By the time the Civil War broke out, he had been a Kentucky state legislator, a U.S. congressman, a U.S. senator, and the vice president of the United States under James Buchanan.  With Breckinridge, the Confederate army added yet another military and/or political legend to its roster.  A former vice president of the United States, the hero of Fort Sumter and Manassas, a soldier of three republics who played a vital role in the independence and annexation of Texas.  And then there was also Major General William J. Hardee.

Hardee graduated from West Point in 1838, and he was brevetted in the Mexican War.  As a commandant of cadets at West Point, Hardee wrote several military textbooks, including Light Rifle and Infantry Tactics, the handbook used by hundreds of non-West Point educated Civil War generals in combat.  Hardee moved his forces from Arkansas to join Johnston’s command at Murfreesboro, and he followed him to Corinth.  Hardee was known as “Old Reliable” by his peers, and he had a nearly flawless reputation.  With these kinds of commanders, the soldiers in the Confederate army doubtless felt a certain amount of confidence, no matter how ill-trained they happened to be.

As far as ill-trained forces go, the soldiers fighting for the United States at Pittsburg Landing were not much better off.  Many units were entirely green, and a lack of discipline ran rampant.  Men seemed to enjoy firing their weapons at random, if for no other reason than they had never heard them go off before or they wanted to see if they would fire in the rain.  But discipline was not foremost on the commander’s mind, for General Grant was busy arranging for the arrival of Buell and reorganizing his own army for the future offensive on Corinth he was sure he was going to make.

When Grant received information on 17 March that the Confederate army was at Corinth, it was the first news he ever received to suggest that the Confederate army may be regrouping.  He had never before realized that they were in the process of making a junction there.  To turn a retreat into a counteroffensive is possible one of the most difficult feats in warfare, and neither Grant nor his other commanders ever dreamed that Johnston could do it.  Instead, the Union forces were busy readying themselves for an attack of their own.

Grant had four divisions encamped at Pittsburg Landing from the Tennessee River to Shiloh Church, and they were arranged like a rough parallelogram.  Sherman’s three brigades remained on the southwest of the camp near Shiloh, and his fourth brigade kept its position near Lick Creek and the Hamburg road, guarding the bridge there.

Northeast of Sherman’s main body was the division of Major General John A. McClernand.  Like President Lincoln, McClernand was born in Kentucky and later practiced law in Illinois.  He had enormous political ambitions, and as a War Democrat favorable to Republican military policy, he had a direct line from the war’s front to the White House.  He was distrusted by Grant because he was not a West Pointer, but on the whole his combat record was good.  He had served well at Fort Donelson, and now his First Division was camped near Tilghman Creek, with eight veteran regiments out of 10.

Northeast of McClernand’s division was the reserve Second Division commanded by the untried Brigadier General William H. L. Wallace, successor of Major General C. F. Smith.  Wallace was a veteran of the Mexican War, and he was a promising Illinois officer.  His division was held in reserve near Pittsburg Landing, and only three of its regiments had ever heard a gun fired in anger before.  The Fourth Division was commanded by Brigadier General Stephen A. Hurlbut, a prominent Illinois politician appointed commander by President Lincoln himself.  His division was camped along the eastern Corinth road, due east of Sherman’s main body and northwest of Colonel Stuart’s brigade.

Along with these four divisions, Grant was receiving more reinforcements from St. Louis, and thus he created a Sixth Division to keep them under effective command.  This new division was camped at right angles across the eastern Corinth road, between Sherman and Hurlbut.  The new commander was Brigadier General Benjamin M. Prentiss, a direct descendant of the Mayflower settlers.  A veteran of the Mexican War, he was also a prominent Illinois politician, and his combat record in Missouri was adequate.  His division was entirely green, and like most untried troops, they were eager for a fight.

While all this was happening, Major General Lewis Wallace’s Third Division remained near Crump’s Landing and Adamsville.  His division was comprised mainly of Indiana and Ohio soldiers, much like the make-up of Buell’s Army of the Ohio.  And it was Buell who, on 26 March, reported to Halleck that his army would be delayed due to the rising Duck River that was unable to be forded.  By 1864, this would not have been a problem, but with relatively green troops, the task seemed impossible.  Also, for personal reasons, Buell was not too anxious to hurry along and meet with Grant, so he took his time in dealing with the problem.

But one of his subordinates did not want to take his time.  Brigadier General William Nelson was an intimidating 330-pound Kentuckian who was the only naval officer from either North or South to become a full-rank army general.  Nelson saw this problem of fording the Duck River as an opportunity to grab some glory for his division, so he decided to cross the river ahead of the rest of Buell’s army.  On 28 March, he issued orders to his division which called for the manner in which the river would be crossed; the orders were rather strange.  They included the demand that men strip off their pantaloons and hang them on the bayonets of their muskets so as to not get them wet as they waded across.  All excess baggage was put aboard special wagons, and on the morning of 29 March, Nelson’s division began to cross the Duck River.  When the other division commanders saw that it could indeed be done, they all followed, and once again Buell’s army was on the move towards Savannah.

Meanwhile, as the month of March was drawing to a close, General Albert Sidney Johnston was getting anxious for a fight.  He knew that he did not have much more time to spare, for scouts were reporting daily that Buell’s army was crossing the Duck River and was now within 30 miles of Savannah.  Johnston tried to equip, train, and impress all the soldiers he could.  He secured local citizens as scouts, but he forbade the use of guerrillas to cut the Federal supply lines.  Any movement on the Union army was to be done according to the rules of warfare.  No troops were used that were not schooled in either the articles of war or within regular military organization.  He had no trouble until he tried to impress local slaves as cooks and servants while the regular cooks and servants were impressed into combat duty.  Local planters refused to give up their slaves, and this angered Johnston.  He was overheard fuming to a member of his staff, “Those people have given their sons freely enough, but it is folly to talk to them about a Negro or a mule.  These people do not seem to be aware how valueless would be their Negroes were we beaten.”

Chief of Staff Braxton Bragg offered a different opinion.  In a letter to his wife, Bragg complained of the undisciplined ways in which Confederate soldiers and officers tried to impress the local civilians.  In regards to the local townspeople refusing to give up their slaves or mules, Bragg wrote, “Such has been the outrageous conduct of our troops that the people... prefer seeing the enemy.  Polk and Johnston do nothing to correct this.  Indeed the good Bishop sets the example, by taking whatever he wishes.”

At Bragg’s urging, Johnston ordered Major General Earl Van Dorn to bring his trans-Mississippi force to Corinth from Little Rock, Arkansas.  Van Dorn’s force had just been routed by a Federal force at Pea Ridge on 8 March, and it was of no use to the state of affairs in Arkansas.  But Van Dorn was unable to get his force to Corinth by 31 March, and by then, he was no longer of use to the Army of the Mississippi.  Johnston also took commanders from Fort Pillow, Tennessee, and Island Number Ten on the Mississippi River and brought them into the ranks.  Bragg offered to send his corps to defend these garrisons, but Johnston refused to allow that.  All told, by 31 March, Johnston’s Army of the Mississippi had nearly 50,000 effective troops in which to wage war on the Federal invaders.

Johnston was ready to strike the Federals at Pittsburg Landing by the end of March, and he was preparing a plan for an offensive.  But after a close inspection of the troops and after hearing the advice of Bragg and Beauregard, he had no choice but to delay the advance as much as possible.  His army was just not ready for a major battle.

Meanwhile, Beauregard was busy emptying garrisons and commandeering arsenals throughout Mississippi and Louisiana.  He took command of the arsenal at Corinth and from there many rifles and muskets were made available to the Confederate troops.  Beauregard also pleaded with local churches to give up their bells so that they could be melted into cannons.  The churches were only too happy to oblige their heroes, and soon the army was well supplied with artillery.  Blockade runners in the Gulf of Mexico were also able to break through and get various supplies to the army from Europe; a reward for avoiding the Federal navy.  Slowly but surely, the Confederate army was becoming prepared for a major move, but it was happening much more slowly than the Confederate War Department would have liked.  On many occasions, President Davis, Johnston’s immediate superior, wired Johnston asking when the army would be able to move.  Due to the mutual respect they shared, Johnston and Davis showed much patience and trust in one another, for it would not be much longer.  It could not afford to be.

Meanwhile, Grant visited Pittsburg Landing every day and chatted leisurely with officers and men.  The army was encamped in vast open fields that were well suited for drilling, but they were also susceptible to attacks.  But being attacked was not a possibility that occurred to the soldiers there.  Men were enjoying the Tennessee spring in good spirits; most of them had never been this far south before, and they were in awe of the warmth and beauty of the flowering vegetation.  They played cards, picked lice, fished, and cooked suppers.  The picket line was a rope fence strung through trees and bushes approximately 100 yards from the camps.  Artillery caissons, wagons, ambulances, mules and horses were parked at the line, which was guarded by pickets.  Of course, there was nothing to guard against.

CHAPTER THREE:  NOW IS THE MOMENT TO STRIKE

Towards the end of March, the Confederate war machine in the west was beginning to roll.  General P. G. T. Beauregard requested and received several detailed reconnaissances of the country from Corinth all the way to Crump’s Landing, including Pittsburg.  The Rebel forces were quickly converging around Corinth, and they were being trained, armed, and instructed with as much haste as could be afforded.  Eastport had been abandoned, a brigade of infantry remained at Monterey, Tennessee led by Brigadier General James R. Chalmers, and a brigade was posted at Bethel, overlooking Lewis Wallace at Crump’s, led by Brigadier General Bushrod Rust Johnson.  Every other unit that could be had was rushed to Corinth to be assigned to a corps and organized into a fighting force.  Also, General John C. Breckinridge’s Reserve Corps was awaiting orders at Burnsville, Mississippi, 10 miles from Corinth.

The way from Corinth to Pittsburg Landing was not an easy path for an inexperienced army to travel.  There were only two main roads by which army columns could march upon.  The road to the west was called the Ridge road, and it led from Corinth to a farmhouse called Mickey’s before it became the Bark road and led past Shiloh Church and ultimately to Pittsburg Landing.  The road to the east was called the main Corinth road and it led northeast to Monterey, the halfway point between Corinth and Pittsburg Landing.  This road continued on until it joined with the Bark road two miles from Pittsburg.  From Monterey, there were two more roads that led north.  One led to Savannah after intersecting the Ridge road at Mickey’s, while the other road led to Purdy after intersecting the Ridge road west of Mickey’s.  Also, there were many roads that ran west to east intersecting the two roads and joining them at various points as they led north.

The commanders at Confederate headquarters concluded from reconnaissance and expeditions that the main Federal force was at Shiloh Church.  This force, they believed, was centered between two creeks, approximately three miles from the landing.  They estimated that the Federal right was anchored on Owl Creek, and its left was on Lick Creek.  The creeks were swollen from spring rains, and this made Confederate flanking maneuvers impossible in an attack formation.  Also, dense woods and undergrowth surrounding the area where the Federal army was encamped rendered cavalry virtually useless.  If an attack was to be made, reasoned the Rebel command, then it would have to be a frontal assault, and a frontal assault could only succeed if it was a tactical surprise in force.

The Confederate high command was also aware that Buell’s Army of the Ohio was well on its way to effect a junction with Grant at Pittsburg.  As much as the Confederates wanted to wait in order to effectively train their green troops, time was running out if an attack was to be a successful one.  Still unaware of the Union plan once the junction was made, the Rebels kept a watchful eye on any movements the Federals might have been making.  The Confederate brigade at Bethel played a vital role in this surveillance.

Bushrod Johnson’s brigade at Bethel was in a perilous position because it was hopelessly outnumbered by Lew Wallace’s division at Crump’s Landing, and if Johnson’s force was discovered it could have been easily annihilated.  But Beauregard did not want to lose that position at Bethel, mainly because it provided an excellent vantage point for enemy observation.  So Beauregard informed Polk that Johnson should be reinforced, and Major General Benjamin F. Cheatham was sent there with the rest of Polk’s Second Division.  He arrived at Bethel on 1 April.

Meanwhile, the Union troops at Pittsburg Landing were enjoying the mild Tennessee spring as Grant was preparing to begin an offensive as soon as Buell arrived.  The gunboats Lexington and Tyler were stationed and waiting on the Tennessee River, and on 31 March, the armored gunboat Cairo arrived at Pittsburg Landing, ready to lead an expedition into the South.  Also, Halleck forwarded 50 heavy siege guns to Grant, and they arrived at Pittsburg near the end of the month.  With nearly everything in place, Grant was left to wait for Buell and in the meantime tend to some staff work within his army which needed his attention.

In mid-March, Halleck announced that John A. McClernand and Lewis Wallace had been promoted by the War Department to major generals of volunteers.  This meant that both men now ranked Sherman, who was in charge of the Union camp at Pittsburg.  Grant did not regard either McClernand or Wallace to be worthy of supervising an entire army camp, but he knew that McClernand and Wallace would find it difficult following orders from a subordinate.  There had been a precedent for this type of infighting:  McClernand had protested bitterly when C. F. Smith was placed in charge during Grant’s leave of absence; McClernand found it “degrading” to follow orders from his equal.  As a result, Grant by the end of March began spending more and more time at Pittsburg, and he had planned to move his headquarters from Savannah to Pittsburg and take over the camp himself.  He wrote to Halleck that he would move his headquarters as soon as Buell arrived, so it all came back to waiting for Buell.

Twenty-two miles south of the Union camp, Johnston and Beauregard were frantically organizing their makeshift army in order to attack Grant before Buell could arrive.  The Confederates were depending upon Buell’s methodical and reluctant mode of soldiering, and it did not let them down.  Beauregard made the widest sweeping transformations of the force, including renaming it the Army of the Mississippi.  Also, Johnston made a few changes, one of which was to name the effective staff officer Colonel Thomas Jordan the Confederate adjutant general.

Jordan graduated from West Point in 1840, where he was a roommate and friend of William T. Sherman.  Jordan served admirably in Florida against the Seminole Indians, and he served well in the Mexican War, too.  He was a very talented writer, and he wrote a treatise on the South in 1860 before resigning his commission to join the Confederacy.  He served as Beauregard’s adjutant at Manassas, and he moved west with him at the end of 1861.  Jordan was a well-respected and trusted confidant of both Beauregard and Johnston, and he served in his capacity with the utmost zeal and diligence.

It was Jordan, Beauregard, Bragg, and to a lesser degree Johnston who handled all the staff work in reorganizing the rag-tag forces into the now-formidable Army of the Mississippi.  However, all the work in the world could not rectify the general disarray of which the army was still a victim.  Weapons for the troops were by no means standardized, so there was an abominable mixture of Enfield, Springfield, and European rifles, and even shotguns brought from private homes.  Because of this, there was no way the Confederate War Department could know which type of ammunition was needed and how much was needed.  Also, uniforms were in very short supply.  When the 2nd Texas Infantry arrived in Corinth on 1 April without standard wares, they were given the only uniforms that the War Department could spare.  They were undyed white coats and pants, causing a private in the regiment to wonder aloud, “Do the generals expect us to be killed and want us to wear our burial shrouds?”

All in all, the Confederates made do with what they had.  They were able to accumulate 18 smoothbore artillery batteries, with each battery containing six guns.  The army was organized into corps, and it was promptly gathered around the vicinity of Corinth.  The troops might have been green, but with the exception of a few units, the Union troops were just as ignorant about the demands of war.

For instance, Sherman’s division was entirely green.  They were mostly Ohio troops who had never heard a gun fired in anger, and except for a few expeditions, they had never even been on the move before.  Now, in the end of March, Grant sent them on another expedition to Eastport.  When they arrived, they found the place abandoned, and it confirmed what Grant, Halleck, and Buell had assumed for the past few days—the Confederate army was concentrating at Corinth.  Eastport was considered a good base for future operations, but once again, Halleck warned Grant to make no movements until Buell had arrived.  By the beginning of April, Buell was still crossing the Duck River with his army.

By 1 April, Johnston felt that he could not delay any longer.  He issued special orders preparing the army for active operations, and he then went to a troop review on the outskirts of Corinth.  He apparently did not like what he saw, for he rescinded his orders on 2 April and stressed that more training was needed before an offensive could begin.  However, by the evening of 2 April, the matter would prove to be out of Johnston’s hands.

Upon Cheatham’s arrival at Bethel with his Second Division, he personally led a detailed reconnaissance of Wallace’s force on 2 April, and Union pickets spotted his detachment.  They believed Cheatham to be a dangerous threat, and as a result, Wallace ordered his division to mobilize.  Cheatham, unaware that he was spotted, believed that Wallace was mobilizing to attack Purdy, a vital intersection between Crump’s Landing and Bethel.

On the evening of 2 April, Cheatham notified Polk of the aggressive activity on the part of the Union army.  Polk informed Beauregard of the movement near 10 o’clock that night, and Beauregard immediately endorsed Cheatham’s note.  It was not determined by the Confederates the size of Wallace’s force, so Beauregard concluded that Grant had completely divided his army between Crump’s and Pittsburg Landings.  Beauregard guessed that the force at Crump’s would feint a move on Bethel and Grant, once Buell arrived to help, would move west and attack Memphis.  So Beauregard sent the fateful message to Colonel Jordan, “Now is the moment to strike the enemy at Pittsburg Landing.”  The offensive was about to commence.

Jordan brought the message to Johnston, whose headquarters were located within the home of a widow named Howell in Corinth.  Johnston wanted to inform Bragg of the situation, so he and Jordan walked across the street to Bragg’s headquarters and roused him out of bed.  Jordan then gave the two generals all the information that he had about the Union army.  Jordan said that the army was in a cul-de-sac, meaning that it was wedged between two creeks with the Tennessee River to its back.  A surprise attack in force would be the most effective way to advance, Jordan remarked, and it was near certain that Grant was not entrenched.

Johnston immediately consented to an attack, but Bragg was a bit more reluctant.  He commented that the troops were still not ready for a major offensive, but he did finally concede that the Confederacy had to do something now, or Buell would reinforce Grant, and the opportunity would be lost.  The three men agreed that an attack must be made.

Jordan sat at a table in Bragg’s chamber and penned a circular order to be distributed to all the corps commanders.  The order was for the army to move out of Corinth at 6 o’clock on the morning of 3 April.  Copies of the order were made by one of Bragg’s aides-de-camp, and couriers delivered the orders.  Polk and Hardee received them at approximately 1:30 in the morning, and Breckinridge received them via telegraph at Burnsville.  In the meantime, Beauregard stayed up through the night writing formal orders dictating the arrangement of both the march and battle.  Near sunrise, Jordan went to Beauregard’s quarters and found him sitting in bed writing orders on the backs of envelopes and telegrams.  Jordan took a copy of these notes and used it as a basis for both the march and battle directives.  He also relied on a precedent for the upcoming offensive:  Jordan had with him a copy of Napoleon’s orders for the Battle of Waterloo, a scheme which Beauregard attempted to emulate at this time.

Jordan wrote up a final draft, and he and other staff officers made copies to distribute them to corps commanders.  Meanwhile, Johnston and Bragg were at Beauregard’s headquarters by sunrise.  A little later, Hardee and Polk also arrived there, and before he finished writing the orders, Jordan also attended the makeshift conference.  Beauregard discussed his plans in detail, insomuch as describing that there should be three parallel lines in the march with Breckinridge in reserve to the rear.  Johnston approved of these rough plans, and there seemed to be no immediate objections.  Jordan commented that it would take time to prepare written orders, and so it was decided that the march would begin on verbal orders.  It was near 10 o’clock in the morning when the conference adjourned, and verbal instructions were to be given by noon.  The written objectives were to be delivered to the corps commanders later in the afternoon, during the march towards Pittsburg Landing.  It was determined during the briefing that Grant had approximately 37,000 troops encamped between Owl and Lick Creeks near Pittsburg Landing on the west bank of the Tennessee River.  It was agreed that maneuvering would be difficult, but a tactical surprise could even the odds.

As the corps commanders left to ready their units for the march, Johnston wired President Davis in Richmond.  The ideas as to how the battle would be fought were still sketchy, for nothing was written down yet.  As a result, Johnston only gave a brief overview of what was about to happen:  “Buell is in motion... Give battle at Pittsburg Landing... Hope to arrive before Buell can effect junction.”  And then he gave Davis the rough order of battle:  “Polk the left, Hardee the center, Bragg the right, Breckinridge in reserve.”  It would come to pass that this expectation of Johnston’s as to the order of battle would differ greatly from the actual written order that was distributed by Beauregard later in the day.

At Johnston’s direction, a memo was written by Jordan explaining the ultimate objective of this offensive.  The corps commanders were told that the army was to drive the Federal left flank away from Lick Creek and separate it from the Tennessee River.  The Confederates were to pin the enemy against Owl Creek where, as Jordan put it in the memo, “he will be obliged to surrender.”

The next order of business for Johnston was to distribute a general proclamation to be read by all the regimental commanders to all soldiers.  In it, Johnston tried to give his troops an idea of how noble their task forthcoming was, and how confident the Confederate high command was that “with resolution and disciplined valor the Confederate Army would defeat the agrarian mercenaries that have been sent to subjugate and despoil the South.  The eyes and hopes of eight millions of people rest upon this army, which must show its worthiness of its race and lineage.”  This proclamation was intended to boost the morale of troops who had been retreating for nearly two months now.  With this final word, it was now time for action.

Twenty-two miles to the north, the Union forces were unaware of any activity by the Confederates.  Grant was busy preparing for the arrival of Buell’s army, ordering expeditions, and making adjustments in his divisional alignment.  On the evening of 2 April, Grant ordered Sherman to snare some Confederate pickets that were reported to be in the vicinity of Monterey.  Actually it was an entire brigade under James R. Chalmers, but due to the commencement of the Southern offensive, Chalmers was recalled to Corinth to rejoin the main body.  Thus, Sherman’s detachments found nothing when they arrived in Monterey.  It set Grant and Sherman’s minds more at ease.

Grant also issued general orders reorganizing the artillery and cavalry into divisions.  This caused a bit of confusion, for the cavalry and artillery had been independently commanded up until now.  This rearrangement would require at least a few days and some patience, and Sherman even delayed the movement in his division until 5 April.  This would prove most unfortunate for the Union defense.

There was also a new commander learning how to organize Major General Smith’s Second Division.  William H. L. Wallace was transferred from McClernand’s division and made commander by Grant.  Wallace was a competent and obedient soldier who had grown depressed about the prospects of war and tended to look more directly at the harsh realities.  He was a veteran of the Mexican War, and he was respected by Grant because of his lack of political ambitions.  Wallace’s Second Division was held in reserve near Pittsburg Landing, north of Hurlbut’s Fourth Division, and northeast of Prentiss’ division.  McClernand’s First Division was west of Wallace, and northeast of Sherman’s units.  And of course, Stuart’s brigade under Sherman was camped east of Hurlbut.

Lick Creek was on the south side of the Federal camp.  It flowed northeast, and it entered the Tennessee River south of Pittsburg Landing.  Owl Creek was to the north of the Union camps.  It flowed into Snake Creek, and the Snake flowed into the Tennessee north of Pittsburg Landing.  Near the river, the distance between Owl and Lick Creeks was five miles.  Where the Federal army was generally encamped, the distance was three miles.

The terrain between the creeks was inconsistent.  Most of the primary roads ran east-to-west, which would make communications for an invading force rather difficult.  The land where Union encampments were was a rolling plateau, rising up to about 100 feet above the river at parts.  Most of the land was covered by brush, ravines, and heavy timber.  With the exception of Pittsburg Landing itself, the Tennessee River was lined with bluffs that would make it extremely difficult for anybody to desert the army.  If someone was to desert, he would have to go down the only road that led directly to Pittsburg Landing, where Grant’s headquarters boat was usually stationed.

Meanwhile, the Confederate forces were having problems getting out of Corinth.  The verbal orders proved to be insufficient, and finally, Hardee saw the futility of trying to move and so he waited for the written orders.  They did not arrive until nearly 3 o’clock on the afternoon of 3 April.  Bragg had instructed Hardee to move whenever practicable, for Hardee was to lead the army out of Corinth.  But Hardee gave up, and Bragg was having problems of his own.  His main complaint was that the artillery was extremely disorganized.  There had been no artillery chief appointed, and many artillery pieces were scattered among various brigades and divisions.  This meant that if a battle began, they could not concentrate when needed.  Drill manuals of the day directed that the artillery should be organized by battalions, but there was no direction stating that the battalions should be bound together in any way.  This made Bragg quite distraught, and he set about to rectify the situation.  He eventually saw the futility in the project and simply set about to move out of Corinth.

There was virtually no movement at all until the written orders were distributed at 3 o’clock.  Beauregard was upset about this initial delay, and he blamed Polk at the outset, commenting that “... Instead of moving forward upon full verbal instructions... he held his corps under arms and with its trains blocked the way of other troops.”  When Polk got out of the way for Hardee to proceed, it was almost nightfall.

The order of march was quite complicated, and it was not handled well by the raw units.  Actually, the order was probably suitable for only experienced troops.  Hardee was to march out on the Ridge road, and then bivouac at Mickey’s farmhouse on the night of the 3rd.  This was the halfway point between Monterey and Pittsburg.  Bragg was to march down the Monterey (main Corinth) road until he reached Monterey, and then his corps was to split into two columns.  The first column under Daniel Ruggles was to take the Purdy road to Ridge road, while the second column under Jones Withers would take the Savannah road to Ridge road.  Bragg’s corps was to remain behind Hardee.

Clark’s division of Polk’s corps was to follow Hardee on the Ridge road and then bivouac short of the intersection with the Monterey-Purdy road.  The next morning, after allowing Bragg to move into the Ridge road ahead of him, Clark was to form a reserve line on the Bark road.  Cheatham’s division of Polk’s corps was to move by the Purdy-Monterey road and join Polk’s main force from Bethel.

Breckinridge’s corps was to assemble at Monterey after Bragg cleared out.  They had a much longer march ahead of them; it was over 20 miles from Burnsville to Monterey.  On the morning of the 4th, Hardee was to deploy his corps in line of battle from Owl Creek to Lick Creek at 3 o’clock.  Bragg was to form a second battle line behind Hardee, and Polk and Breckinridge were to be the reserve units.  Polk would form behind Bragg’s left, while Breckinridge was to form behind Bragg’s right.  The orders specified that if Hardee’s right wing was not long enough to reach Lick Creek, then as many units as necessary would move up from Bragg’s corps and join the first line.

This plan was typical of the type of order that the flamboyant Beauregard loved to give, but it soon proved to be too intricate to develop properly.  Hardee was supposed to reach Mickey’s farmhouse, seven miles from Pittsburg, on the evening of the 3rd, but he was blocked from leaving Corinth by Polk.  Thus, Hardee reached Mickey’s on the morning of the 4th, 12 hours late.  The others were even slower.  As a result, Beauregard moved his plans up 24 hours, and the attack was scheduled to begin at dawn on the 5th.

Later in life, Beauregard was still convinced that his march and battle orders were flawless.  He defended his plans in two ways.  First, he put Hardee’s corps in front because they were the best and most experienced troops, and he put Bragg’s corps second because he guessed that the near completely green units would fight well behind the veterans.  Second, he made the advance in a parallel arrangement because the army was unfamiliar and not adaptive to the unknown terrain.  Beauregard’s battle plan of attacking in three successive waves differed greatly from the plan Johnston wired to Davis earlier in the day.  It may have been possible that Johnston objected, but felt it too late to change the plans at the time.  However, the most plausible explanation as to why the two generals differed so greatly was that each man was simply unaware of what the other was doing.  At any rate, the Confederates camped well short of their intended destination on the night of the 3rd, and plans were moved up a full day to combat these discrepancies.

Meanwhile, Confederate cavalry continued to reconnoiter the Union camps and rugged terrain.  Sherman’s pickets spotted a few cavalrymen and took random shots at them, but not much was thought of it.  Grant spent the day of the 3rd inspecting camps at Pittsburg and continuing to reorganize his forces.  That night, as he rode back to the landing to take his steamboat back to Savannah, his horse slipped and fell, pinning Grant’s leg to the ground.  His leg did not break, but his ankle was severely sprained.  He could not take off his boot when he got back to headquarters.  The injury was symbolic of the fact that things were not all well in the Union camps; unknown forces were quietly conspiring against them, and hell’s fury would soon be unleashed.

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