The Shiloh Campaign (Archive Arts American Civil War Book 3)

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Lee, learning the Federals had captured Fredericksburg, divided his force again and defeated them at Salem Church. Hooker gave up the campaign and withdrew on the night of May 5—6. Read more about the Battle of Chancellorsville. Grant on July 4 after a day siege. Grant was placed in command of all Western armies, a prelude to an even greater promotion that would come the following spring. Two massacres marked Connor attacked the camp of Chief Bear Hunter on January Quantrill sacked and burned Lawrence, Kansas, a center for pro-Union, anti-slavery Jayhawkers and Redlegs, killing — men and boys.

His men encountered the Army of the Potomac, now under George Gordon Meade, at a crossroads town in southeastern Pennsylvania on July 1. Capturing the town but failing to take the high ground around it, Lee assailed the Union flanks the next day. On July 3, Lee made perhaps his greatest mistake of the war, ordering a frontal attack across open ground against the Union center on Cemetery Ridge.

Read more about the Battle Of Gettysburg. The year also saw an event unique in American history. Counties of western Virginia had refused to leave the Union when the state seceded in At the end of , both sides still had significant forces, and the Confederates enjoyed good defensive terrain in Virginia and North Georgia. If they could inflict enough losses on their Northern opponents, they might win at the ballot box what they could not on the field of battle: Lincoln was vulnerable and in the elections might be replaced by a Democrat who would make peace with the Confederacy.

Grant, who was put in charge of all Union armies in March Three days later, it collided with Robert E. There was no such clear-cut outcome this time. Lee anticipated the move, and the two armies tore at each other again for two weeks in May around Spotsylvania Courthouse.

The siege of Richmond and Petersburg had begun. Read more about the Battle Of The Wilderness. On July 30, the Union exploded a mine beneath a portion of the Confederate works around Petersburg. A tardy advance by a large number of Union soldiers into the foot-deep crater it created allowed the Southerners time to recover. They poured fired into the densely packed Federals; eventually, the fighting was hand-to-hand. Angered by the blast and the presence of black troops, the Confederates gave no quarter and the Battle of the Crater resulted in 4, Union casualties for no gain.

Read more about the Battle Of Petersburg. After a victory at Lynchburg in June, Jubal A. A desperate delaying action on July 9 at Monocacy, Maryland, by an outnumbered force under Lew Wallace—the future author of Ben Hur—bought the capital time to prepare. Lincoln came out to watch the fighting. When Grant went east his friend and subordinate, William Tecumseh Sherman , took command of the armies of the Tennessee and the Cumberland at Chattanooga. While Grant bludgeoned and sidestepped his way toward Richmond, Sherman was slugging through the mountains of North Georgia.

There, Confederate general Joseph Johnston made superb use of terrain to slow the Federal advance. But gradually, his armies closed in on the rail center of Atlanta. The capture of Atlanta was one of the most crucial events of the war. The Democrats had nominated George B. McClellan, the former commander of the Army of the Potomac, as their candidate. The party made many missteps during the campaign, and for the first time ever, the North allowed soldiers to vote in the field. Sherman left Atlanta November 15 on his march to the sea. He reached Savannah by Christmas, leaving a mile wide swath of ashes, wrecked railroads and utter destruction behind him.

Sherman detached George Thomas and the Army of the Cumberland to deal with him. At the town of Franklin, Hood ordered frontal assaults that after five hours of intense fighting, left his army in tatters; five generals were dead. After an ice storm melted, Thomas came out of his works and finished the job of shattering the Confederate army. Its remnants withdrew to Tupelo, Mississippi. Stories that his men massacred Union soldiers, particularly members of the United States Colored Troops captured at Fort Pillow , a poorly designed Mississippi River fort north of Memphis, gained instant credence in the North, but two official inquiries were unable to reach a conclusion about what had actually happened.

At New Johnsonville, Tennessee, Forrest gained the distinction of commanding the only cavalry group ever to defeat gunboats, when they sunk or frightened crews into scuttling four ships. Farragut steamed into the Battle of Mobile Bay with 18 ships. By the end of , the Confederacy had nothing left but courage and tenacity. The smoke rising above Georgia and the thousands of bodies strung out from Nashville to Atlanta to Petersburg and the gates of Washington said there would be no military victory.

The South would fight on, no matter cost. The noose around the Confederacy was strangling it. The port city of Wilmington followed a month later. When they reached South Carolina, where the rebellion had begun, any bit of restraint they may have shown elsewhere was pitched aside. What remained of the Confederate forces, once more under the command of Joseph Johnston, was far too small to stop the juggernaut.

Before leaving Richmond, the Confederates set fire to the town. On April 9, at Appomattox Courthouse , after discovering Federals had beaten him to a supply cache, he surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Grant. Sherman extended even more generous terms than Grant had but endured the embarrassment of having to go back to Johnston with harsher conditions.

Lincoln died the next morning, the first American president to be assassinated.

Booth was shot weeks later while trying to escape from a barn in Virginia. All those captured who were believed to be his co-conspirators in the plot were hanged, including Mary Surratt, who owned the boarding house where the plotters met. One after another, the remaining Confederate forces surrendered. Only one Confederate was executed, Henry Wirtz, commander of the notorious prison camp at Andersonville. Officially known as Fort Sumter, Andersonville was the largest prison camp in the south and was infamous for its ill treatment of Union prisoners who lacked adequate food and medicine.


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Southerners have long protested that the death rate in Northern prison camps was higher than that of Andersonville, and Wirtz should not have been punished for war crimes. Learn more about the Andersonville Prison Camp. There were numerous causes that led to the Civil War, many of which developing around the fact that the North was becoming more industrialized while the South remained largely agrarian.

Some causes of the Civil War include:. There were over fifty major land battles and over ten thousand skirmishes, engagements and other military actions fought during the Civil War. Several hundred generals were commissioned during the American Civil War in the Union and Confederate armies.

These men led the troops into the battles that would ultimately decide the outcome of the war. Prominent Civil War Generals include:. Weapons were the instruments of war in the Civil War and often played a critical role in deciding many battles. Great advances came in the rifle, muskets, artillery, cannon and bullets, including the Minie Ball.


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Weapons used in the Civil War include:. Women played an important role in the Civil War, playing the role of authors, as was the case of Harriet Beecher Stowe, abolitionists, civil rights activists, and nurses. Prominent Civil War women include:. Some prominent Civil War armies include:. Abraham Lincoln was the central figure of the Civil War.

He led the nation through the troubled years of until his assassination in , just before the war ended. The total number of casualties in the Civil War is not known precisely as records were not accurately kept during the era. Most sources put the total casualties on the Union and Confederate sides at between , and , It is noted not only for its military success but for the sheer destruction inflicted on the south. Delivered soon after the union victory at the battle of Antietam, it freed all slaves in confederate states.

The proclamation proved a great motivator for the northern war effort and gave the war a higher purpose. The Gettysburg Address, written by Abraham Lincoln and delivered after the battle of Gettysburg at the battlefield, is one of the most famous speeches in American History. The common soldier of the Civil War varied greatly. Most were farmers, aged 18 to Most were white protestants though African Americans made up roughly 10 percent of the Union army.

Most earned 11 dollars per month. The uniforms for the soldiers of the Civil War are generalized between the blue for the Union and grey for Confederates, but there were many variations depending on location and time period. The Confederacy is the name commonly given to the Confederate States of American which existed from throughout the Civil War. It was started when southern states seceded from the Union after the election of Abraham Lincoln. Although certain songs were identified with one particular side of the war, sometimes the other would adapt the song for their use.

Battle Of Shiloh Casualties

In an example of the different lyrics, where the Banner had "O say does that Star Spangled Banner yet wave", the Cross had "'Tis the Cross of the South, which shall ever remain". Down with the traitor, up with the star" being changed to "Our Dixie forever! She's never at a loss! Down with the eagle and up with the cross! The Union also adapted Southern Songs. In a Union variation of Dixie , instead of the line "I wish I was in the land of cotton , old times there are not forgotten, Look away, look away, look away, Dixie Land", it was changed to "Away down South in the land of traitors, Rattlesnakes and alligators , Right away, come away, right away, come away".

The music derived from this war was of greater quantity and variety than from any other war involving America. Battle Hymn of the Republic borrowed its tune from a song sung at Methodist revivals. Dixie was a minstrel song that Daniel Emmett adapted from two Ohio black singers named Snowden. The Southern rock style of music has often used the Confederate Battle Flag as a symbol of the musical style.

The Songs of the Civil War. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. History of the United States. Music of the United States. Colonial era to the Civil War During the Civil War Late 19th century — s s s s s s s. Old-time music Western music Latin: Dixie , traditional Blackface song. When Johnny Comes Marching Home. Combatants Theaters Campaigns Battles States.

Army Navy Marine Corps. Chronology of military events in the American Civil War. Smith Stuart Taylor Wheeler. Reconstruction amendments 13th Amendment 14th Amendment 15th Amendment. Taney Monument Robert E. Confederate Memorial Day Ladies' memorial associations U. Presidential Election of War Democrats.

Retrieved from " https: Pages containing links to subscription-only content Good articles. Views Read Edit View history. In other projects Wikimedia Commons. This page was last edited on 25 May , at By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. For days, brigade and regimental commanders had witnessed Confederates near their camps. Several patrols even went forward, but no major Confederate units were encountered. Finally, on the night of April 5, one Union brigade commander took matters into his own hands. Sending out a patrol without authorization, Colonel Everett Peabody located the Confederate army at dawn on April 6.

His tiny reconnaissance found the advance skirmishers of the Southern force less than a mile from the Union front. The Confederates promptly attacked, and the Battle of Shiloh began. The resulting delay in the Confederate assault on the Union camps allowed the Army of the Tennessee to mobilize. Because of the warning, every single Union unit on the field met the Confederate assault coming from Corinth south, or in advance of, their camps.

For decades after the battle, Prentiss was hailed as the Federal officer who took it upon himself to send out a patrol that eventually uncovered the Confederate advance and gave early warning of the attack. Finding himself surrounded, however, Prentiss surrendered the noble and brave remnants of his division. Historians through the years then accepted that report at face value, one even labeling a photo of Prentiss as the Hero of Shiloh.

Portrait of a Battle dramatically paints Prentiss as the chief defender the Union army had on April 6. In actuality, Prentiss was not as involved as legend has it. He did not send out the patrol on the morning of April 6. When he found out, Prentiss told his subordinate he would hold him personally responsible for bringing on a battle and rode off in a huff. His division began the day with roughly 5, men, only to dwindle to by 9: When Prentiss took his position in the Sunken Road, his numbers were nearly doubled by an arriving regiment, the 23rd Missouri.

Prentiss had lost almost his entire division, and could not have held his second line without the veteran brigades of Brig. Prentiss was in an advantageous position to become a hero after the battle, however. Although he remained a prisoner for six months, he was able to tell his story. Peabody and Wallace were both dead from wounds received at Shiloh. Thus Prentiss took credit for their actions and became the hero of the fight.

Battle Of Shiloh | HistoryNet

Prentiss never even mentioned Peabody in his report, except to say that he commanded one of his brigades. Prentiss, the only Federal officer who could get his own record out, thus benefited from public exposure. In the process, he became the hero of Shiloh. The veterans of the various armies vehemently argued their cases after the war. Even Grant and Buell entered the fight when they wrote opposing articles for Century magazine in the s. Grant claimed his army was in a strong position with heavy lines of infantry supporting massed artillery. His effort to trade space for time throughout the day of April 6 had worked; Grant had spent so much time in successive defensive positions that daylight was fading by the time the last Confederate assaults began, and he was convinced that his army could handle those attacks.

Buell, on the other hand, painted a picture of a dilapidated Army of the Tennessee on the brink of defeat. Only his arrival with fresh columns of Army of the Ohio troops won the day.

The Civil War

The lead brigade, commanded by Colonel Jacob Ammen, deployed on the ridge south of the landing and met the Confederate advance. Likewise, the troops were massed in compact positions. Good interior lines of defense also helped, and two Federal gunboats fired on the Confederates from the river. Grant poured heavy fire into the Confederates from the front, flank and rear. Only elements of four disorganized and exhausted Confederate brigades crossed the backwater in the Dill Branch ravine as gunboat shells flew through the air.

Only two of those brigades undertook an assault, one without ammunition. The Confederates topped the rise and faced a withering fire. Orders from Beauregard to withdraw did not have to be repeated. Grant had the situation well under control and could have fended off much larger numbers than he actually encountered. For many years after the battle, former Confederates castigated General Beauregard for his actions at Shiloh. Beauregard, however, called off his Southern boys and thus threw away a victory.

In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. The controversy had its beginnings while the war still raged. Hardee and Braxton Bragg later pounced on Beauregard for calling off the attacks, even though their immediate post-battle correspondence said nothing de-rogatory about their commander. After the war ended, Southerners began to argue that being outnumbered and outproduced industrially were reasons for their defeat, and also blamed the battle deaths of leaders like Johnston and Stonewall Jackson.

Another key element in their argument, however, was poor leadership on the part of certain generals such as James Longstreet at Gettysburg of course it did not help that Longstreet turned his back on the solidly Democratic South and went Republican after the war and Beauregard at Shiloh. The sum of all those parts became known as the Lost Cause. Hardee, Bragg and thousands of other former Confederates argued after the war that Beauregard threw away the victory. Beauregard does bear some blame, but not for making the wrong decision to end the attacks. He made the right decision, but for all the wrong reasons.

The general made his decision far behind his front lines, an area completely awash with stragglers and wounded. No wonder Beauregard argued that his army was so disorganized that he needed to call a halt. Similarly, Beauregard acted on faulty intelligence. Based on such spotty intelligence, Beauregard thought he could finish Grant the next morning. In the end, the decision to call a halt was the right thing to do.

The castigated Creole did not throw away a victory, he merely put himself in a position to be blamed for the defeat already transpiring. Another Lost Cause myth of Shiloh is that Johnston would have been victorious had not a stray bullet clipped an artery in his leg and caused him to bleed to death. The result of both cause and effect situations led to Confederate defeat. To drive the point home, the United Daughters of the Confederacy placed an elaborate memorial at Shiloh in , with Johnston as the centerpiece and death symbolically taking the laurel wreath of victory away from the South.

Even modern scholars have sometimes taken this line of reasoning. Johnston biographer Charles Roland has argued in two different books that Johnston would have succeeded and won the battle had he lived. Roland claims that just because Beauregard failed did not mean Johnston would have. His superior leadership qualities, Roland concludes, could have allowed Johnston to spur the tired Confederate troops onward to victory.

Such a theory of certain victory fails to take many factors into account. First, there was no lull in the battle on the Confederate right because Johnston fell. A continuous rate of fire was not sustainable for several reasons, mostly logistics; ordnance departments could not keep thousands of soldiers supplied to fire constantly. Most Civil War battles were stop-and-go actions, with assaults, retreats and counterattacks. The result was that the fighting at Shiloh did not rage continuously for hours at any one time or place. Instead it was a complicated series of many different actions throughout the day at many different points.

Second, the argument that Johnston would have won when Beauregard did not is also faulty. Johnston could probably have pressed the attack no faster than the surviving Confederate commanders on the right did. Thus Johnston at best would not have been in a position to attack near Pittsburg Landing until hours after Grant had stabilized his last line of defense. As stated above, the heavy guns, lines of infantry, gunboats, exhaustion, disorganization, terrain and arriving reinforcements all were factors — some more than others — in defeating the last Confederate attempts of the day. The myth that the Confederates would have certainly won the battle had Johnston lived is thus false.

While some important fighting did take place at the Sunken Road, the entire story is predicated on the myth of the road being worn below the surrounding terrain and thus providing a natural defensive trench for the Federal soldiers. In fact, there is no contemporary evidence that the Sunken Road was sunken at all.

The road was not a major avenue of travel. What became known as the Sunken Road was a mere farm road used by Joseph Duncan to get to various points on his property. As it had limited use, the road would not have been worn down as many people believe. At most, it might have had ruts several inches deep at various times during wet seasons.

Post-battle photos of the road show a mere path, not a sunken trace. Not one single report in the Official Records mentions the road as being sunken. In reality, that soldier was in no position to see the road.

Battle Of Shiloh Facts

Robertson described a tangle of undergrowth that blocked his view, and even remarked that corps commander Bragg stated he would lead them to where they could see the enemy. The unit thereafter moved forward to the right, thus never allowing the quoted soldier to view how deep the road actually was.


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In all likelihood, the Louisianan was describing the Eastern Corinth Road or possibly even the main Corinth Road, both of which were heavily traveled thoroughfares and thus would have been eroded. Federal regiments were aligned on both roads at times during the battle. Thereafter, veterans began to embellish the story.

The Iowa units manning the position formed a veterans organization that emphasized the Sunken Road. When the national park was established in , the Sunken Road became a major tourist attraction as the park commission began to highlight certain areas to attract attention and visitation. At the same time, the proliferation of veterans memoirs in the s and early s keyed on the growing popularity of this location, which grew deeper with each passing volume, ultimately reaching a depth of several feet.

As time passed and more publications appeared, the myth became reality. Today it is one of the best known Civil War icons that never existed. Over the years, a variety of myths and legends about the battle have crept into American culture, and today are viewed by many as the truth. Several factors account for these falsehoods.

The veterans did not establish the park until 30 years after the battle. By that time, memories had become clouded and events shrouded in uncertainty. Likewise, the original Shiloh National Military Park commission that initially developed the interpretation of the site may have let pride affect its documentation of the Shiloh story. It is regrettable that over the years the truth about the battle has become distorted.

Music of the American Civil War

Hopefully, as more research is published, the oft-repeated campfire stories will be phased out and replaced by the reality of Shiloh, which in itself is much grander and more honorable than any of the myths that have grown up about the battle. After all, truth is often stranger than fiction. This article is adapted from a chapter in Timothy B. Reid recounts the Battle of Shiloh. Reid of the 15th Illinois Infantry scrawled in his diary: Lost four killed and sixteen wounded out of company….