Dr. Timothy B. Smith
speaker
76 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Dr. Timothy B. Smith’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
So the rivers are set up perfectly for their operations in the west, and it sets up perfectly to implement this Anaconda plan.
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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,
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.
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.
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.
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.
But the decision to stay and fight a second day gives Grant the victory.
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.
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