Battle of Shiloh: The Devil’s Own Day

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When Sherman arrived at Grant’s headquarters later that evening, he found the general–broken sword and all– chewing on a soggy cigar in the rain, which had begun soaking the battlefield.

‘Well, Grant’ Sherman said to his friend, ‘we’ve had the devil’s own day, haven’t we?’ ‘Yes,’ replied Grant, ‘lick ‘em tomorrow, though.’

The Confederates, by comparison, were considerably weaker than they had been at the start of the battle. Beauregard still believed he could re-engage the next morning. A dispatch from Colonel Benjamin Hardin Helm led him to believe that Buell was en route to Decatur, Ala., away from Grant’s army. The report was entirely inaccurate, but Beauregard believed it. One Confederate officer knew better. Cavalry Colonel Nathan Bedford Forrest had observed Buell’s men crossing the river by ferry. He frantically tried to warn Beauregard, but was unable to locate the Confederate commander.

Night was a time of reorganization and reappraisal. Grant prepared to renew the battle with an attack by seven divisions, four of them fresh and at full strength. The Confederates tried to find rest and food for the coming day, when they believed they would shatter the Union army, once and for all. Thanks to the enemy gunboats, however, they did not have a restful night. The Tyler and Lexington kept up a harrassing bombardment throughout the night, hurtling shells into the rainy darkness at the rate of two every 15 minutes.

When dawn broke on April 7, US. Grant was ready. At 7 a.m., he launched his counterattack, with Wallace’s fresh 3rd Division on the right, three fresh divisions of the Army of the Ohio on his left, and two battered divisions in the center. The Confederates, although not expecting a Northern counterattack, resisted stubbornly. Sherman, for one, later commented that the fighting was more intense on the second day than it had been on the first. But gradually the outnumbered Confederates gave ground. By 2 p.m., Beauregard realized he was beaten and gave orders for a fighting withdrawal to Corinth. By 4 p.m., the withdrawal was complete.

The Union forces were reluctant to give pursuit, partly because they were as battered and exhausted as the Confederates and partly because Maj. Gen. Henry Halleck, Grant’s superior, had forbidden spirited pursuit. Despite this, Sherman collected a number of troops the next day and moved down the road toward Corinth. At an abandoned lumber camp called Fallen Timbers, he ran into a rear guard conducted by the brilliant Forrest and broke off contact.

The butcher’s bill was still to be counted. Casualties for the North, including killed, wounded, captured and missing, numbered more than 13,000. For the South, nearly 11,000 men had become casualties, and the much- respected Johnston had been killed. To put the battle into perspective, more men fell in the battle than had fallen in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812 and the Mexican War combined. The ferocity of the battle stunned both regions.

Despite fewer casualties, the South had lost the battle. The Confederates had failed to destroy the Army of the Tennessee, prevent it from linking up with the Army of the Ohio, or hold the territory they had captured during the first day’s fighting. The loss at Shiloh put Memphis in an untenable position, opening the Mississippi as far south as Vicksburg. The cutting in two of the South became only a matter of time.

As critical as the battle had been for the South, it was even more critical for the North. Had the Union lost, western Tennessee and Kentucky would have been recaptured and the vital Mississippi waterway secured. An invasion of the North through southern Illinois or eastern Missouri would not have been out of the question. More important, a Union defeat at Shiloh would have eliminated two of the North’s three best generals–Phil Sheridan was the third. Even if they had avoided death or capture,-Grant and Sherman would have been disgraced for losing at Shiloh and would have had no further impact on the Northern war effort.

Thus, in a must-win battle for both sides, the North had prevailed. Small wonder that the Confederate defeat in the woods surrounding an obscure Methodist meeting house in rural Tennessee caused New Orleans writer George Washington Cable to lament, ‘The South never smiled again after Shiloh.’

This article was written by Christopher Allen and originally appeared in the January 2000 issue of America’s Civil War magazine.

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Tags: 19th Century, America's Civil War, American Civil War, Historical Conflicts

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