Dr. Timothy B. Smith
Appearances
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
It breaks down, of course, in between the two where you have to go back to the old fashioned wagons and horses, you know, moving the same way Julius Caesar did 1862 years before kind of thing, you know. So, it does delay the Confederate advance. Beauregard, the Confederate second in command, is absolutely convinced that the enemy will know they're there.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
Says, let's turn around and go back to Corinth. Johnson says, no, we're going to do this. We came. This is the great gamble. We have to fight Grant before Buell arrives. So, they launch the attack, and miraculously, it is more of a surprise than Beauregard predicted. Right. But again, their definitions of surprise strategically or operationally, it is very much a surprise.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
No federal woke up the morning of April the 6th thinking that they were going to fight the largest battle in American history that morning, that it was that much of a surprise. Now, you get down to tactical level on the battlefield itself.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
The Federals are, of course, not expecting to fight the battle, but there is a patrol that's sent out to, you know, a skittish Union brigade commander sends a patrol out. That uncovers the Confederate advance about a mile out from the camp. And as a result, they have warning and they are in line of battle, ready to meet the enemy as they're coming toward their camps.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
Well, yes, it's never intended to be a battlefield. It's a staging area. But I've always said if you have to get surprised and caught and ambushed and play the defensive, Grant couldn't have picked a better place to do it because of the terrain in the battlefield. And so essentially the way the battle will play out on the first day, and it's a mirror image on the second day, but the first day,
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
Grant will fall back gradually from creek system to creek system, using those as defensive areas in an effort, basically the old cliche is to trade space for time. So he's falling back, trying to eat up daylight. He'll hold the initial major line at the initial camps at Shallow Church, for instance.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
Then he'll fall back to the major line where we get the famous areas such as the Hornet's Nest and the Peach Orchard and the Crossroads, Bloody Pond, all of that. Eventually, he'll fall back behind another set of creeks called Dill Branch and Tillman Branch. These are huge ravines that the Confederates will have to go through if they're going to attack the last line of defense.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
It's a much more compact line that allows Grant to defend this position. The reason the line is there, however, is that he still will hold Pittsburgh Landing as well as the Snake Creek Bridge on opposite sides of the battlefield. And that's the key. He's falling back, trading space for time, eating up daylight so that reinforcements can arrive.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
And of course, Buell will come in at Pittsburgh Landing. Lou Wallace will march in over the Snake Creek Bridge. And so by the time nightfall comes and those reinforcements start coming in, Grant is in a position to win the battle. A lot of historians say he's won it at this point. He could have still lost it. He could have pulled a McClellan and retreated and thrown it away.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
But the decision to stay and fight a second day gives Grant the victory.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
Absolutely. He knows what he's doing. He lets his generals fight the tactical action while he gives the overall direction. And he'll trade space for time. And you get that very famous incident, of course, when Sherman and a lot of others are counseling retreat during the night. Let's put the river between us and them. We're beaten.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
And so Sherman comes to Grant's headquarters and Sherman, of course, enters a room mouth first kind of thing. He just blurts out, well, Grant, we've had the devil's own day today. And Grant responds, yeah, lick them tomorrow, though. And so he chooses to stay and fight.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
And this kind of brings out for the first major time, Fort Donaldson notwithstanding, this Grant under pressure that he's not going to give up. He's not going to give in like so many other Union generals did and hightail it northward. He's going to stay and fight it out.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
Lots of them came out of the Mexican War and will learn a lot from the mix. This is the only experience really that they have in the field. And, you know, the field experience, this is this is why we send, you know, education majors out to do student teaching to get some experience. And this is their student teaching in the Mexican War.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
And Francis Grant learns, he watches Zachary Taylor and he watches Winfield Scott. And he takes the best of both. He takes Zachary Taylor and kind of his nonchalance and, you know, don't worry about pomp and circumstance and all that. But out of Winfield Scott, who's very much pomp and circumstance, he takes kind of the manner of fighting, flanking out, maneuvering the enemy, that type stuff.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
So Grant learns a lot. Sidney Johnson does fight in the Mexican War, particularly at Monterey. Fortunately, Johnston doesn't learn from Mexican war experience and proves to be, I think, a lesser general. He's just not really fitted to be a good general. You have to have a little bark and a little bite to make people do things that you need them to do. I like Albert Sidney Johnson.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
I think he's just too nice of a guy. He's too lean, too methodical probably to be a good commander. And so when he's killed at Shiloh, I'm not sure that his death at Shiloh really makes that much difference at the battle itself due to the terrain situation that the Confederates are facing.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
But I think it does have a larger impact later in the war because, as you say, nobody really ever replaces him. in a way that everybody takes the new commander to be the head and shoulders above everybody else. In fact, what they wind up doing is promoting one of the corps commanders from Shallow above the rest of them, which institutes a lot of jealousy. And that's Braxton Bragg, of course.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
And the three main enemies that Bragg later has are the three other corps commanders at Shallow that didn't get the promotion. So Beauregard being one of them, right? Well, Beauregard is the second in command, and he's got a whole lot of other issues with Jefferson Davis. They don't like each other. And so when Beauregard gives up Corinth after Shallow, that basically ruins it for him.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
Beauregard will never hold a major army command the rest of the war. So there's more than just military ability involved here. There's politics, there's personality, a lot of things involved.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
Yes, Buell and Wallace combined will provide Grant with about 24,000 fresh troops. And when I say fresh, that means not engaged the day before. And they have marched a long way the day before. So they're not totally fresh, but they weren't engaged the day before. The Confederates, on the other hand, get one regiment of reinforcements. 47th Tennessee, that's 741 men.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
So 741 men on one side, 24,000 on the other side. You can see which way this thing is going. And it's not a hard decision then for Grant to decide, yeah, we're going to stay here and we're going to fight it out. That certainly helps. But even if you compare this with other commanders, I often think if George McClellan had been in command of the Union Army here, what would he have done?
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
Given what he did at the peninsula and other places, you know, and the failure to pursue at Antietam, I'm not sure what he would have gotten out of there. Joseph Hooker at Chancellorsville, you know, would Hooker have fallen back? And again, people are counseling Grant to do this. But Grant said, no, we're going to stick and fight it out. And that's where he wins the battle.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
That last line of defense at Shiloh, there's some 50 pieces of artillery in the first third of a mile inland from the river. And you've got the two gunboats, Tyler and Lexington, in the river itself firing up Dill Branch Ravine. The area is so strong. And this is one of the key things for battlefield preservation. And the federal government did it a long time ago in the 1890s.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
The American Battlefield Trust is a wonderful organization still doing it today. But to be able to go to those battlefields, And to see the terrain, you really can't understand it until you go there. You know, there are a lot of people that argue, oh, the Confederates have just had one more hour of daylight.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
Or if Johnson had just lived, they would have swept over Grant's last line of defense and won that battle. And I dare say the vast majority of those folks that argue that have never been to shallow and looked at Dill Branch Ravine and looked at the terrain. You can go out there and cross that thing on foot and put yourself in that position facing 50 cannons
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
in front of you and the gunboats to the side and all of that, and this thing filled with backwater and the steep fields and all that, there is absolutely no way. And so I've quit arguing with people until they go out there and actually see it. And then we can discuss, you know, from a level playing field kind of thing.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
But if you go to Shiloh and actually see this, you're really not in a place to even comment on it, really.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
Yes. Day two is very much a mirror image of the first day, just in reverse, because they're fighting back over the same areas. And so for all practical purposes, the Hornet's Nest Peach Orchard, all those same areas that become so famous on the first day become famous on the second day.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
But what is really remarkable, I think, about the second day is really the fight that the Confederate Army that fought all day yesterday puts up. And in fact, they will stop cold turkey.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
The vast majority of the Union advances, even by Buell's fresh army, if you call it fresh, all across the battlefield except on the extreme Confederate left where they are outflanked not once, not twice, but three times by Lew Wallace's division. And so Lew Wallace is really the fulcrum of
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
that puts the pressure on the Confederates and forces them to fall back incrementally, just like Grant had fallen back incrementally the day before. But the Confederates will continue to resist, and even as they fall back off the battlefield, even on April the 8th there, you mentioned Forrest, and kind of this rear guard action a little bit that I think sometimes gets blown out of proportion.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
You hear a lot of this thing about Forrest gathering one of the Union soldiers and pulling him up on his horse and using him as a shield as he rides away and all that kind of stuff. I'm convinced that's a bunch of hogwash, that there's no...
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
evidence whatsoever i found a lot of manuscript material in writing the book that described fallen timbers this little battle on the 8th and nobody mentions this if i had seen that in real time i think i would have mentioned that to mama as i'm writing home to her you know but nobody mentions it i'm convinced that's a fabrication the band would have done a big number about that one
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
Shallow will be the real fight for Corinth in the railroads. Later in May, when Hallett comes down and gets on Grant for not folding his letters correctly and all that kind of stuff, he will move on southward to Corinth. The Confederates will retreat without a battle. And this is part of what dooms Beauregard.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
Just days before, Beauregard has sent a message to Richmond that says, if defeated here, we lose the Mississippi Valley and probably our cause. And this days later, he retreats without fighting a battle. So Jefferson Davis is thinking, if Corinth is so important, why don't you fight for it? And so he'll remove him for other reasons as well. But this ends Beauregard's career in a lot of ways.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
At any rate, so shallow, yes, is the battle for Corinth and for those railroads and the largest battle in the Mississippi Valley campaign. So that is extremely significant. Also significant, of course, is the cost of this thing. We mentioned the 23,000 casualties. There's some evidence that that's even higher than that.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
Those are the reported numbers, but the evidence points to even larger casualties maybe. But what this produces is the first really big battle of the war. I often say, you know, America collectively gasped. at the casualty figures of Shiloh, because we've never seen anything like this in American history.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
The Revolutionary War, the War of 1822, the Mexican War battles, these are more casualties than really the size of armies. Winfield Scott didn't have an army this large, as large as the casualties at Shiloh in the whole Mexican War. So it's a huge shock to the nation. The only thing Americans have to compare this to are Napoleonic battles.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
And so they referenced Napoleon and Austerlitz and Waterloo and Yena and Wagram and some of those. So this absolutely gets the nation's attention. And instead of this whole, you know, three months and the war is going to be over type thing, they start figuring out we have got ourselves into a mess here and we don't see any way out of this anytime soon.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
And indeed, it'll take another three years to get out of this.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
Well, there are a lot of rumors about Grant. He had left the Army before the Civil War, of course. Rumors of drunkenness. He had failed in his attempts to even support his family. You know, he tried real estate. He tried farming. He tried everything in the world and failed. But at the beginning of the war, he's working for his father in Delena, Illinois. And so, you know, he was down and out.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
But, you know, this is the old idea, do people make great events or do great events make great people? Both ways, of course. But in this case, the event, and we dare say this about Abraham Lincoln as well, the event made the great person. Because in three or four years, Grant will be commanding the entire Union Army. In seven years, he's president of the United States.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
So it completely changes his fortunes here. But there are some pretty low points in Grant's service here, and after Shallow is absolutely one of those. During the Clark campaign, he thinks of residing and going home, and it's Sherman, by all accounts, that talks him out of it and says, no, you've got to stay.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
And my, how things would have been different had Grant quit and gone home and we'd never heard anything else out of him. But he continues on through the Vicksburg campaign, winning more. He's on a little bit of a short leash even then. But then on through Chattanooga and moving to the east and all that, he makes his name there.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
Yes, I'm actually working on a comparative history of Napoleonic battles with Civil War battles and how they compare and contrast and all that. It's really interesting.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
Sure. At the time of Shallow, we're only a year in. You know, if you compare that maybe with World War II or the Revolution or something like that, this is very, very early in their stages. So April 1862, there hasn't been a lot of Just what I would call huge battles, maybe Napoleonic style battles.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
Yeah, you've got Bull Run and no offense to the Bull Run folks, Fort Donaldson, Wilson Creek, things like that. But these are fairly small revolutionary type battles, Revolutionary War type battles, Mexican War, you know, War of 1812 size battles. And as a result, when you reach shallow and you have this massive battle, This is kind of the beginning of the war a little bit.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
It's when the thing is getting serious. It's starting to move past the early moves, the initial feeling each other out, the initial mobilization type stuff. And what leads to shallow, of course, is the Union forces are moving southward along the Tennessee River, trying to pierce this Confederate defensive line in the west that stretches all the way from
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River across all the way to Indian territory, in fact. And as the Union forces move southward, the Confederates are trying to defend their port railroads, and some of those are near shallow, and that's what brings the armies to that battlefield.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
Spot on. There are different debates over what constitutes the Western theater. Some include the Trans-Mississippi is the Western theater. A lot of historians prefer to call this area Western Kentucky, Western Tennessee, Middle Tennessee, Northern Mississippi is really the Confederate heartland, which kind of gets at the importance and the significance here. All these rivers, all these railroads.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
I used to joke about the movie Trains, Planes and Automobiles. This is literally railroad, steamboat, wagons that connect the two. So the Industrial Revolution has had a huge impact on warfare. And you see this not just in America, the Crimean War before this, somewhat in the Mexican War as well in America.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
But the Civil War, you know, you get into the debate of the first modern war, all that kind of stuff. I happen to believe every war is the most modern war at that point. There is no first modern war. But, you know, the Industrial Revolution absolutely has a significant effect on the Civil War. And we see that vividly at Shiloh.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
He doesn't get a lot of attention, and rightly so. He's not very good. He is America's military theorist. He takes the old Napoleonic Germany mindset and brings that to the fighting men of America. Wrote the book, for instance, you know, the elements of military art and science that a lot of American officers use. So
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
He is very set in his ways, very rigid in doing things the way Napoleon would have done it. And as a result, he doesn't turn out to be a very good general. Grant, you know, that relationship, you always talk about jealousy and all of that. I'm not so sure it's jealousy. Highlight biographer John Marslake basically says that the two spoke two different military languages.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
Alec just didn't like Grant because he didn't do things by the book. He was kind of sloppy. He was not, you know, a rigid by the book kind of guy. Just tell you one interesting story real quick. When Alec shows up after shot, he gets all over Grant for fighting this battle and for not being prepared. You're not ready to fight another battle if we have to, all that kind of stuff.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
And at one point he tells him, I'm getting letters from your officers and they are not folding their letters correctly. You have your officers fold your letters correctly by military style. And I'm sure Grant's thinking, how are we going to win this war if we don't fold our letters correctly? You know, so that illustrates the difference kind of between the mentalities of Halleck and Grant.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
Well, as they say in real estate, location, location, location, of course. Yes, shallow is very much part of the Mississippi Valley campaign, starting up at Belmont, Fort Henry, Fort Donaldson, all the way through Vicksburg. Shallow, in fact, is the largest battle in the Mississippi Valley campaign. So it holds that importance. But what makes the ground at shallow itself important?
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
is basically the landing on the river itself. There's nothing really at Shallow that makes it important in terms of people saying, okay, we're going to fight a battle here. In fact, Shallow was never intended to be a battlefield. It was intended to be a staging area for further Union operations southward against Corinth, Mississippi, and those important railroads.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
So the Union Army will camp there largely because in the spring of 1862, the Tennessee River has risen so much that most of the landings up and down the river are underwater. Pittsburgh Landing being the one or two, there are a couple others around, but the one good one that provides access not only to Corinth, but also good camping areas, good fields to drill the troops, all of that.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
So the lead elements that are exploring this area figure out this is a good place to camp. This is a good place to land the army. And that's the reason the Union army camps there in the days and weeks before the battle. Of course, the Confederates realize, okay, we've got to do something about this incursion. And that's why they march northward from Corinth to attack the Union forces there.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
Well, when Phil Scott, of course, the author of the Anaconda Plan, is ridiculed at the beginning of the war, that's going to take way too long, way too many troops. It's going to be a three-month war, and the thing's going to be done. Well, the basic formula that they win the war with after four years is basically the Anaconda Plan.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
And so here, a year into the war, they are working through the process of strangling the South, as an Anaconda will do. It takes a while to build ship, to implement the blockade, of course. One of the major tenets of the Anaconda plan is to open the Mississippi River, which, again, shallow is very much a part of that.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
It's convenient the way these rivers, you know, we talk about the Industrial Revolution and the rivers and the railroads and all of that. The rivers really play a more important role, at least early in the Western theater than the railroads do because they are pointed directly like daggers into the heart, this art land of the Confederacy.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
And as the Federals move southward, they're trying to move south along the Mississippi River, but they are blocked at Columbus, Kentucky. But conveniently, they can step over 100 miles to the east, move straight down the Tennessee River, and get where they need to go out flanking Columbus, and then step back over to the Mississippi and continue on down to Vicksburg.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
So the rivers are set up perfectly for their operations in the west, and it sets up perfectly to implement this Anaconda plan.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
It is. A lot of Civil War actions depend on speed and surprise. The effort is to surprise the enemy, get in the first punch, sucker punch kind of thing. And you don't need a military academy education to figure that out. If you're going to fight the bully in the third grade, you want to get the sucker punch in. It's not anything new to military history or anything like that.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
In fact, what Johnson is doing, since Buell is coming in from Nashville, Johnson realizes we're going to be way out. We're already outnumbered pretty much, at least parity. And when Buell gets here, we're going to be way outnumbered. And so we better fight one at a time. So it's the classic old Napoleonic central position where you get in between the two.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
You drive a wedge of troops, your army, in between two separate enemy forces and you fight one at a time and that's exactly what johnson is trying to do it's a gamble he says we gotta you know we will conquer or perish this is do or die and he decides to fight grant hoping to rid himself of grant before buell arrives i
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
Grant relies on Sherman a great deal. A lot of historians talk about the friendship that is born at Shiloh. In fact, it goes back a little earlier than that. Sherman is supplying Grant during the Fort Donaldson campaign, sending him troops, sending him supplies. So they lean on each other then. I think it is, though, at Shiloh where this friendship is born in fire almost.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
They really start to depend on each other. It may be overplayed a little bit. I think Sherman, if you know about Sherman, he's kind of a wily guy. I'm convinced that he, even as late as the summer of 1862 and maybe a little bit later when Grant is kind of under a cloud a little bit, Grant stays under a cloud a lot, He's still hedging his bets. He's very friendly with Halleck, right?
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
And Halleck gives glorious letters. He's very friendly with Grant. And so it's almost like Sherman is saying, okay, I'm going to bide my time, be friendly with both until I see which one I need to hook my wagon to, you know, to go farther. But very much developing a friendship here with Grant. And a lot of that comes out of Shallow.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
Of course, he has that famous saying that if nominated, I will not run. If elected, I will not serve. He doesn't want to get involved in the politics, and I can certainly understand that. And he probably is the kind that would have made a much better dictator than president. There you go.
American History Hit
Battle of Shiloh
Well, depends on your definition of surprise. Yes, the Confederate Army is delayed. We talk about the Industrial Revolution and the steamboats and the railroads. All of those work fine during the rainy, wet weather, muddy and all that.