Grant’s Rough River Road to the South
April 6–7, 1862: The Battle of Shiloh
Doug Niles
As the Civil War commenced, Ulysses S. Grant had to be rated as very unlikely to become the most famous and successful commanding general of Lincoln’s armies. Born in Ohio in 1822, he had been a mediocre student with no fondness for working in his father’s tannery. He managed to earn an appointment to West Point, though the application process somehow converted his given name of Hiram Ulysses Grant into the cognomen he would make famous as a soldier, a commanding general, and eventually a two-term United States president.
None of this future greatness was heralded by his term at the military academy, where he finished ranked twenty-first out of a class of thirty-nine. About the only area where he displayed mastery at West Point was horsemanship. He served as a young officer during the Mexican War, and while he didn’t cover himself with glory, neither did he make any significant mistakes as he participated in nearly every major engagement of that conflict. He finished the war as a captain, winning several citations for bravery under fire. (Whatever faults, and there were many, that would be charged to Grant during the rest of his life, cowardice was never one of them.)
Following the war, he spent most of a decade in mundane army garrison duties on the west coast. Separated by distance from his beloved wife, Julia, he displayed a serious weakness for alcohol. He was mediocre in performance of his duties on the coast, and his decision to resign from the army in 1854 was at least in part motivated by a desire to avoid the prospect of impending court-martial for drunkenness.
He spent the rest of the 1850s in Missouri, where he failed as a farmer and bill collector, and in Galena, Illinois, where his father finally hired him to help in a family-owned leather and harness shop. He was barely scraping by when the secessionists of South Carolina bombarded Fort Sumter in April 1861. Like many of his countrymen, he accepted the challenge of President Lincoln’s call to arms. For several months he served as a clerk in Illinois’s military mustering process, organizing recruits into training units. After serving as commandant of the militia’s camp of instruction, he was eventually promoted to colonel in command of an Illinois militia regiment, the 21st Illinois Volunteers.
The impression he made upon his new men was, to say the least, rather underwhelming—which was to be the common first impression of Grant pretty much everywhere he went, even as he gained in experience and reputation. He was slightly shorter than average, and tended to dress in plain clothes, either civilian or military. He was not loquacious, merely smiling tightly when he was pleased, or frowning when his mood was the opposite. Still, there was something in his manner that commanded attention, and within a few days the men of his regiment—who had earned a reputation as vandals and carousers under their previous commander—were shaping up and behaving like soldiers.
At that time, more and more western regiments were gathering at the southern Illinois town of Cairo. Because it was located at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and both were important avenues for military maneuver, during 1861 this city was the most strategically important Union position in the western theater of war. Promoted to brigadier general during the summer, Grant quickly earned command of the more than 10,000 recruits from Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, and other (at that time) western states. When the Rebels violated Kentucky’s neutrality by taking the Mississippi River city of Columbus, Kentucky, Grant on his own initiative sent a force across the Ohio River to occupy and hold Paducah, Kentucky, in early August. This protected the Union position at Cairo and denied that key river town to his Confederate opposite, Major General Leonidas Polk.
In November, Grant took command of an understrength division (two brigades) and struck a Rebel encampment across the Mississippi River at Belmont, Missouri (just opposite Columbus). Utilizing navy gunboats in support, Grant’s force took the enemy by surprise and inflicted damage before withdrawing in some confusion and disorder. The general’s personal courage under fire went a long way to rallying his men in the battle, and the fact that he proudly proclaimed the battle a victory (it was really more of a draw) did wonders to the morale of his now-not-so-raw recruits. In addition, this early example of the smooth coordination between the army and river-based navy units would become a staple of Grant’s operations in the western theater.
Ceding control of the important river junction to the Union, Polk determined to follow a defensive strategy designed to block the northern forces from using Kentucky as an avenue to invade the Confederacy. Columbus was a natural strong point on the Mississippi, with a bluff some 150 feet high. A series of earthen forts crowned the bluff, and rings of artillery formed positions lower down, including a rank of batteries right at river level. Manned by some 17,000 Rebels, the position was called the “Gibraltar of the Mississippi” and was in fact strong enough to deny river passage to any hostile ship trying to navigate on the Father of Waters. Crowning the defenses was a 128-pound rifled cannon, known to the Rebels as “Lady Polk.”
Two more deep, navigable rivers offered routes through western Kentucky into Tennessee, however: the Cumberland and the Tennessee. Two well-garrisoned fortified positions, Fort Henry on the Tennessee and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland, commanded these rivers. Each fort was located just south of the Tennessee–Kentucky border, and as the year 1861 came to an end, those forts and the position at Columbus effectively blocked any Union attempt to use the waterways as paths of invasion to the South.
Northern operations against Kentucky and Tennessee were divided between Grant’s immediate superior, General Henry Halleck, and General Don Carlos Buell, who was in charge of areas east of the Cumberland River. Halleck, disapproving of Grant’s widely reputed drunkenness, was suspicious of his subordinate—and also concerned that Grant’s accomplishments and reputation might somehow eclipse Halleck’s own. Nonetheless, he gave the junior general authority to commence operations.
Now Grant’s most significant military attribute came to the fore: if there was an enemy position within reach, he would figure out some way to attack it. Ably supported by United States Navy Flag Officer Andrew Foote, who commanded a fleet of riverines and gunboats affectionately known as the “brown water navy,” Grant moved against Fort Henry in early February 1862. His infantry, transported by river, were landed some distance away from the enemy position and began to close in over difficult terrain.
In the meantime, the brown water navy went to work, bombarding Fort Henry from armor- and timber-clad gunboats on the Tennessee River. The fort proved to be poorly placed, lying so low that the barrage of Foote’s gunboats was able to overwhelm the defending batteries and essentially flood the fort. After little more than an hour of this shelling, the Rebels abandoned the fort and fled eastward over the neck of the land between the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers. Grant’s men were not yet in position, so nearly all the enemy troops reached Fort Donelson. Still, the result was a signal victory for the Union.
Grant followed up immediately, moving his men overland and surrounding Fort Donelson while Foote’s gunboats steamed down the Tennessee, a short distance up the Ohio, and then up the Cumberland, until they were in position to strike at Fort Donelson. The Confederate garrison was under the overall command of Major General John Floyd, assisted by fellow Major Generals Gideon Pillow and Simon Bolivar Buckner. Pillow led an expeditionary force that struck Grant’s troops in a desperate and nearly successful attempt to break out of the trap. The failure to anticipate any Rebel thrust was a lapse that almost resulted in disaster.
The lack of preparation was compounded by a vacuum in command. At the time of the attack (February 14), Grant was absent from his headquarters, consulting with Foote on his own intended offensive, and he had neglected to delegate any of his subordinate officers to command in his place. Furthermore, he had ignored warnings about the lightly held right flank of his position, and it was here that Pillow’s attack fell. After some savage fighting, the Rebels had achieved their breakthrough. Still, in confused fighting in the tangled, gullied forests, several Union formations—most notably the division commanded by General Lew Wallace—managed to stem the tide until Grant arrived on the scene.
Realizing that the enemy was attempting a breakout, Grant refused to characterize the Rebel attack as a success—rather, he portrayed it as an act of desperation by men who knew their position was hopeless. Also, he surmised that Floyd must have weakened his own right flank to make such a strong attack with his left. Bolstered by his calm self-assurance, the Union troops charged forward against the enemy’s right flank and soon found themselves advancing into the ramparts of Fort Donelson. On the other flank, the counterattack sealed the breach, though not before the Rebel cavalry under Nathan Bedford Forrest made its escape—as did Generals Floyd and Pillow. But the rest of the garrison, and the fort itself, had fallen into Union hands.
When General Buckner asked for terms of surrender, Grant issued his famous reply, stating that “no terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted.” Buckner, an old friend and army comrade of Grant’s, had no choice but capitulation. With Fort Donelson, Grant took some 16,500 prisoners and captured large quantities of supplies as well as fourteen siege guns and forty-three pieces of field artillery. It was, by a large measure, the most astonishing Union victory of the war to date, and it propelled Ulysses S. Grant to immediate national prominence. Many pundits suggested that his initials stood for “Unconditional Surrender.”
With the Cumberland River open to allow for naval support, the brown water navy moved on Nashville. General Buell marched southward from central Kentucky and quickly occupied the Tennessee capital with troops. The next step was clear to Grant: he should move down the Tennessee River to divide the western part of that state from the remainder and stab a wedge into the heart of the Confederacy.
For a short time, however, politics intervened to put a hold on this advance. Envious of his subordinate’s success, General Halleck used imaginary accusations of disloyalty and unfounded rumors of drunkenness to remove Grant from command. However, President Lincoln was not about to shelf the only general in his army who displayed a willingness to vigorously prosecute an offensive, and after less than two weeks Grant was restored to command of the force that was now named the Army of West Tennessee. He immediately traveled down the river to join his forces at Savannah, Tennessee.
In fact Grant, while undoubtedly an alcoholic, seems to have spent the entire war—with the possible exception of one rumored incident, well away from the front—stone-cold sober. In this he was supported by a loyal aide, a former lawyer named John Rawlins who served with Grant throughout the war. Though he performed valuable service as an aide-de-camp, his most significant contribution to the war seems to have been a sincere, and successful, attempt to make sure that his commanding general never had the chance to succumb to the temptations of alcohol.
Still driven by his offensive mind-set, Grant moved his army another nine or ten miles down the river, putting the men ashore at a place called Pittsburg Landing, just a short distance north of where the Tennessee River flowed from the state of Mississippi. He was ready to march into Mississippi, where the Rebels were reported to be gathering at Corinth, but Halleck ordered Grant to wait until Buell could join him from Nashville.
At Pittsburg Landing, Grant’s army numbered nearly 50,000 men, organized into six infantry divisions. Lew Wallace’s division was some six miles north of the rest of the army, posted there to ensure that the Rebels didn’t post a battery that could command the waterway. The rest of the army, including the divisions of Sherman, Prentiss, Hurlbut, McClernand, and W.H.L. Wallace, was encamped in the area of a small church named Shiloh.
Displaying again the trait that had almost led to disaster at Fort Donelson, Grant seemed to give no thought to what his enemy might be up to. Instead of positioning his troops for defense, he placed them in a sprawling camp where they had room to drill and practice while they waited for Buell’s 18,000 men to arrive. Grant himself supervised these drills until a riding accident, in which his horse fell on top of him, temporarily disabled him. After the fall, he took up quarters on a gunboat based up the river at Savannah.
Indeed, the Confederates had a plan of their own. Commanded by General Albert Sidney Johnston, seconded by General P.G.T. Beauregard, the Rebels who gathered at Corinth took the field with some 47,000 men as the Army of Mississippi. They marched on April 3, with Johnston hoping to move the twenty miles to Pittsburg Landing in time to attack Grant on the 4th. In the event, the movement did not go as smoothly as planned, and it was late on the night of the 5th that the Confederates moved into position. Still, they were barely two miles from the Union positions, and the Yankees had absolutely no expectation of an immediate attack. Nor had they yet made any attempt to prepare defenses, or even to scout and picket the approaches to the large camp.
Johnston’s plan was to strike hard at the Union left, separating the troops from their base and line of retreat at Pittsburg Landing. The plan was audacious, but sound—had it succeeded completely, Grant’s army could have been shattered, the remnants forced to retreat through a tangled region of swamps and creeks and dense underbrush. But Beauregard, who commanded the forces following the initial attack, lacked a clear understanding of his superior’s intentions. Furthermore, the subordinate general was not enthused about the attack to begin with, preferring to wait for Grant to make an offensive move.
In the early morning of April 6, the Rebels attacked with almost complete surprise, emerging from the forested terrain to the south and southwest of the Union position in full battle order. With the exception of the warning provided by a small scouting detachment from General Prentiss’s division, every Yankee formation was taken by complete surprise. General William T. Sherman’s division, on the far right of the Union position, was driven hard, as were, subsequently, the divisions of Generals McClernand, Prentiss, and Hurlbut.
However, the tactical finesse of Johnston’s plan became lost in the confusion of the desperate fighting. Instead of a solid punch with the Confederate right, the attack evolved into a straight linear attack along a front almost three miles long. The Rebels had the distinct advantage of surprise, and many Federal troops were killed or captured in the first minutes of fighting. The rest of the northerners were pushed back, though their fighting mettle began to show as the morning progressed.
Sherman was the initial commander on the scene, as Grant, still recuperating from the fall, remained about ten miles north of Shiloh. Though he couldn’t move without crutches, the commanding general heard the sounds of the guns and quickly ordered the gunboat that served as his quarters to steam southward. He arrived at Pittsburg Landing before 9 A.M.
By that time, Prentiss’s men, supported by some of W.H.L. Wallace’s division, had taken up a position along a (barely) sunken road, where they resisted sternly. Instead of bypassing the site that would become remembered as the “Hornets’ Nest,” the Confederates pressed a series of frontal attacks with increasing desperation and ferocity. The stubborn Yankees held out for many hot hours, despite the loss of General Wallace and many hundreds of men. It wasn’t until mid-afternoon, when the Rebels massed some forty cannons to smash the Hornets’ Nest, that the position was finally taken. By then the staunch defenders had given Grant enough time to form a final redoubt right along the river at Pittsburg Landing.
At about the same time, the Confederates suffered a grievous loss when General Johnston was shot in the leg. Disdaining medical attention, and unaware that an artery had been severed, the Rebel commanding general quickly lost consciousness and died from loss of blood. Beauregard took command from the rear, but by then the weight of the attack had begun to dissipate.
Furthermore, instead of driving the Yankees away from their base, the encircling pressure of the Confederate attack had served to push the Union divisions into a strong defensive position on the bluff above Pittsburg Landing. Here Grant had mustered some fifty guns, ably supported by two gunboats on the river itself. Late in the day Lew Wallace arrived with his division (after a meandering march that caused his reputation to fall several notches in Grant’s estimation) and the first of Buell’s troops were ferried across the river to bolster the Union line. By 6 P.M., with darkness arriving within the hour, Beauregard called off the attack.
The Rebels were in possession of almost all of the Union camps, and had taken many prisoners. Beauregard cabled President Jefferson Davis to announce a “complete victory” and proceeded to make plans to reduce the small Yankee bridgehead the following day. He did not take into account the fact that his men were desperately tired, low on ammunition, and disorganized, and had suffered more than 8,000 losses, many of them in the brutal and unsubtle attempts to reduce the Hornets’ Nest. He further discounted a report from Forrest’s cavalry that Buell’s men were reinforcing Grant.
In fact, the Army of the Cumberland was across the river and solidly melded into the Union position several hours before dawn. Nathan Forrest’s cavalry scouts spotted and reported this movement, but the news either did not reach the Rebel commander or was discounted as inaccurate. In the event, Beauregard and his men were in the midst of planning a deliberate resumption of the offensive when they were surprised themselves as the Yankees attacked at first light.
Once again battle raged across the fields and woods around Shiloh Church. On the second day of the battle, it was the Rebels who stubbornly gave ground, the Union that grimly attacked. Both Grant’s and Buell’s men pressed the offensive relentlessly, and though the Confederates mustered some counterattacks and established a line of batteries near Shiloh Church, Beauregard could not stem the Yankee advance.
By the end of the second day, the northern men had regained control of the ground they had held before the battle, but were too exhausted to pursue the withdrawing Rebs. Grant, as senior officer in command, and Buell, who was determined to retain control of his own army, argued about how to follow up the battle. Meantime, Beauregard’s men fell back to Corinth. And in truth, it seems likely that neither army possessed the morale or energy to immediately resume combat.
In fact, the Battle of Shiloh was the bloodiest battle to date in the American Civil War. Union losses were more than 13,000 men, including 1,700 killed; the butcher bill for the Rebs was some 10,700, also with 1,700 dead. These casualties, added together, exceed the battlefield losses of all previous American wars, combined! The numbers were shocking to the nation as a whole, and resulted in a lot of people in the North calling for Grant’s removal from command. Lurid tales of Yankee boys bayoneted in their tents—exaggerated in the press, but based on kernels of truth—led to a crescendo of blame directed at the army commander.
While in fact Grant’s army had been taken by surprise, and was poorly positioned to receive an attack, it was the general’s steadiness and determination that had proven invaluable in salvaging victory from potential disaster. As he would many times in the future, he would simply shake off the memory of the losses, reward those subordinates who had performed well (notably William T. Sherman, in this case), and move forward to the next campaign.
Abraham Lincoln himself put to rest all the recrimination, the criticism, the cries for Grant’s head. In one of his characteristically blunt and very well-remembered statements, the president merely said:
“I can’t spare this man. He fights.”