The Civil War at 150: Battle of Shiloh/Pittsburgh Landing

[Rogue 9]

On this date 150 years ago, the Battle of Shiloh (as the Confederates called it, one of the cases in which the rebels' name has stuck to the battle rather than the Union's naming convention) was fought in southwestern Tennessee, along the Tennessee River near Pittsburgh Landing and the Shiloh Church. On the morning of April 6, 1862,the Confederate Army of Mississippi under Albert Sydney Johnston hastened to attack the Union Army of the Tennessee (named for the river, not the state) under Ulysses S. Grant, hoping to defeat him in detail before the arrival of the Army of the Ohio under Don Carlos Buell made dislodging the Union line impossible.

Johnston attacked at dawn over the objections of his subordinate, Pierre Beauregard, who was convinced that they could not have approached undetected. His misgivings aside, the Confederate attack achieved nearly total surprise, but lack of coordination between the Confederate corps commanders owing to Johnston turning over strategic command to Beauregard to take the field personally blunted the effectiveness of the assault. The Union line was pushed back, but neither into the Tennessee River (as Beauregard intended) or cut off from its supply lines from the same (as Johnston had planned). Johnston himself was killed in the fighting around midday.

On April 7th, Grant launched a decisive counterattack all along his line, ultimately driving the Confederate forces back to Corinth. Shiloh was to date the bloodiest engagement in American history, with over 23,000 casualties between the two sides.

[Isolder74]

You forgot to mention the heroic defense of the Hornet's Nest. The part of the battle that led to the death of Johnston.

On the main Union defensive line, starting at about 9:00 a.m., men of Prentiss's and W. H. L. Wallace's divisions established and held a position nicknamed the Hornet's Nest, in a field along a road now popularly called the "Sunken Road," although there is little physical justification for that name. The Confederates assaulted the position for several hours rather than simply bypassing it, and they suffered heavy casualties during these assaults—historians' estimates of the number of separate charges range from 8 to 14. The Union forces to the left and right of the Nest were forced back, and Prentiss's position became a salient in the line. Coordination among units in the Nest was poor, and units withdrew based solely on their individual commanders' decisions. This pressure increased with the mortal wounding of Wallace, who commanded the largest concentration of troops in the position. Regiments became disorganized and companies disintegrated. However, it was not until the Confederates assembled over 50 cannons to blast the line at close range that they were able to surround the position, and the Hornet's Nest fell after holding out for seven hours. Surrounded on three sides, General Prentiss surrendered himself and the remains of his division to the Confederates. A large portion of the Union survivors, numbering from 2,200 to 2,400 men, were captured, but their sacrifice bought time for Grant to establish a final defense line near Pittsburg Landing.

While dealing with the Hornet's Nest, the South suffered a serious setback in the death of their commanding general. Johnston was mortally wounded at about 2:30 p.m. while leading attacks on the Union left through the widow Bell's cotton field against the Peach Orchard when he was shot in his left leg. Deeming the leg wound to be insignificant, he had sent his personal surgeon away to care for some wounded captured Union soldiers, and in the doctor's absence, he bled to death within an hour, his boot filling with blood from a severed popliteal artery. This was a significant loss for the Confederacy. Jefferson Davis considered Albert Sidney Johnston to be the most effective general they had. (This was two months before Robert E. Lee emerged as the pre-eminent Confederate general.) Johnston was the highest-ranking officer from either side to be killed in combat during the Civil War. Beauregard assumed command, but from his position in the rear he may have had only a vague idea of the disposition of forces at the front.[36] He ordered Johnston's body shrouded for secrecy to avoid damaging morale in the army and then resumed attacks against the Hornet's Nest. This was likely a tactical error. The Union flanks were slowly pulling back to form a semicircular line around Pittsburg Landing, and if Beauregard had concentrated his forces against the flanks, he might have defeated the Union Army and then reduced the Hornet's Nest salient at his leisure.

Some historians feel that this one loss was one of greatest setback for the Confederate forces. Boy was that place a real meat-grinder.

[Vehrec]

Right about now, give or take a few hours, this conversation would be happening.

“Well, Grant, we’ve had the devil’s own day, haven’t we?” Grant looked up. “Yes,” he replied, followed by a puff. “Yes. Lick ‘em tomorrow, though.”

[Rogue 9]

This date, April 8th, marks the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Fallen Timbers, in which General Sherman skirmished with Nathan Bedford Forrest while performing a reconnaissance-in-force to determine where the Confederate army had gone after Shiloh. Forrest was wounded by a musket fired point-blank into his side, barely missing his spine. He unfortunately survived the wound and recovered to continue fighting, massacring federal troops at Fort Pillow for having black men among their ranks. I include it in this thread since Fallen Timbers was essentially a continuation of the action at Shiloh.

[CaptHawkeye]

Massacring Yankee troops because they had black men amongst their ranks? My my yet another wonderful Confederate war crime idly glossed over by years of apologist and revisionist history. How about the treatment of Union POWs in Confederate prisons? We're talking concentration camp level shit with that one.

[Sea Skimmer]

Union prisoner of war camps were often not vastly better. 20% of the Confederate population at Fort Delaware died for example, against 28% of Union troops at Andersonville which at one point sent union prisoners to a union fort to go free, only to have them sent back as the forts commander would not accept responsibility for them fearing his own supplies would run out. Starvation was less prevalent certainly, but starvation in certain southern camps was also linked into the general collapse of all transport in the south, and the south would have been very happy to continue prisoner exchanges throughout the war and avoid the entire problem. Some confederate prison camps had the highest POW survival rates of the war, a few basically were concentration camps but it would be false to generalize that to all of them.

[Steve]

True. On the other hand, the massacres of any Union troops fighting alongside blacks still stands as a Confederate atrocity, motivated entirely by their virulent racism and the ideological need to defend slavery.

[Rogue 9]

Union prisoner of war camps were often not vastly better. 20% of the Confederate population at Fort Delaware died for example, against 28% of Union troops at Andersonville which at one point sent union prisoners to a union fort to go free, only to have them sent back as the forts commander would not accept responsibility for them fearing his own supplies would run out. Starvation was less prevalent certainly, but starvation in certain southern camps was also linked into the general collapse of all transport in the south, and the south would have been very happy to continue prisoner exchanges throughout the war and avoid the entire problem. Some confederate prison camps had the highest POW survival rates of the war, a few basically were concentration camps but it would be false to generalize that to all of them.

The South was entirely happy to continue exchanges of white prisoners of war. Black ones were sold into slavery, even ones that had been born free in the North, and the Lincoln administration refused a prisoner exchange system on those terms while Jefferson Davis' government would accept no others. The South threatened to execute black POWs for the crime of servile insurrection, but the threat of reprisal against their own captured officers mostly stayed the official hand (the response to which was sometimes massacres of surrendering troops in the field, Forrest's being the most famous).

At any rate, I recorded this on the 6th. My voice was getting tired by this take, but it was the best one that my camera's battery didn't die in the middle of, so apologies for the quality.

[Sea Skimmer]

The South was entirely happy to continue exchanges of white prisoners of war. Black ones were sold into slavery, even ones that had been born free in the North, and the Lincoln administration refused a prisoner exchange system on those terms while Jefferson Davis' government would accept no others. The South threatened to execute black POWs for the crime of servile insurrection, but the threat of reprisal against their own captured officers mostly stayed the official hand (the response to which was sometimes massacres of surrendering troops in the field, Forrest's being the most famous).

Hun, somehow I thought the exchange of POWs ended before the Union was fielding black troops and that was even an issue.

[TC Pilot]

Black units started being organized in early to mid-1863, while prisoner exchanges didn't end until mid-'64.

On the matter of Andersonville, both sides were aware of how bad conditions were getting. The Confederates even released several Union officers with a signed petition asking for the system to be reinstated. The Union argument was that the Confederate prisoners would just go back into the army again and drag out the war into "extermination."