Bloody Shiloh's 150th Anniversary...

[dudalb]

April 6th and 7th mark the 150th Anniversary of the Battle of Shiloh,one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War.
Wikipedia is not to be totally trusted, but the article on Shiloh is pretty good:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Shiloh

Shiloh was the first real bloodbath of the Civil War. The casaulaties were staggering on both sides. The number of casualaties were more then America suffered in the Revolutionary war, the War of 1812, and the Mexican War combined.
The Union won the battle,but the shock of it made the Union Command cautious,and that caution caused them to miss several opportunites in the next few months to end the war west of the Applachains in the summer of 1862;instead the fighting would drag on west of the mountains until the end of the war.
There is a slogan that after Shiloh the South never Smiled again;the same goes for the North.

 

[Giz]

April 6th and 7th mark the 150th Anniversary of the Battle of Shiloh,one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War.
Wikipedia is not to be totally trusted, but the article on Shiloh is pretty good:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Shiloh

Shiloh was the first real bloodbath of the Civil War. The casaulaties were staggering on both sides. The number of casualaties were more then America suffered in the Revolutionary war, the War of 1812, and the Mexican War combined.
The Union won the battle,but the shock of it made the Union Command cautious,and that caution caused them to miss several opportunites in the next few months to end the war west of the Applachains in the summer of 1862;instead the fighting would drag on west of the mountains until the end of the war.
There is a slogan that after Shiloh the South never Smiled again;the same goes for the North.

Also could have ended Grant's career - he (and the USA) were lucky that he was given another chance after being caught less-than-fully prepared on the first day.

 

[dudalb]

And it did end Albert Sidney Johnson's career.
He was considered to be one of the most promising generals in the Confederate Army. Certainly he would have been better then the series of losers the Confederate Armies in the West did have with the likes of Braxton Bragg.......

 

[Giz]

And it did end Albert Sidney Johnson's career.
He was considered to be one of the most promising generals in the Confederate Army. Certainly he would have been better then the series of losers the Confederate Armies in the West did have with the likes of Braxton Bragg.......

Oh god yes... what was it with the Western command of the confederacy... terrible!

I have always wondered about Albert Sidney Johnson... many other initially highly regarded generals flopped... would he too have failed to live up to expectations, or would the confederacy have had another R. E. Lee? (In which case, might the North have sued for peace... until Sherman took Atlanta, Lincoln was perilously close to losing the election to a peace platform democrat ticket)?

 

[dudalb]

Oh god yes... what was it with the Western command of the confederacy... terrible!

I have always wondered about Albert Sidney Johnson... many other initially highly regarded generals flopped... would he too have failed to live up to expectations, or would the confederacy have had another R. E. Lee? (In which case, might the North have sued for peace... until Sherman took Atlanta, Lincoln was perilously close to losing the election to a peace platform democrat ticket)?

In the West, the Confederacy was in the same situation the Union was with the Army Of The Potomac until Grant (and maybe Meade) came along...a constant stream of failed generals. They finally did get a decent commander with Joe Johnston..who understood that the most important thing was to keep the Condefderate army intact and in the field and hope that war weariness in the North would cost Lincoln the 1864 election,and it was smarter to give up territory then wreck the army..but Davis relieved Johnston and put in John Bell Hood...and within a few months Hood had wrecked the Western Armies so they became almost a non factor in the war. Hood's tactics at Franklin make the Charge Of The Light Brigade a few years before look like an intelligent military operation.....

 

[catsmate]

Somewhat appropriate that's I've started Tsouras' Britannia's Fist series, and alternate history of the US Civil War.

 

[Garrette]

I don't know if Johnston would have been a great general if he had lived, but it is unlikely that he would have won at Shiloh where Beauregard did not. His performance wasn't perfect there, and he was the one who held back the immediate Confederate advance after Prentiss' initial collapse; that one moment is the only one, imo, that offered any real chance for Confederate victory, and Johnston was in charge then (though in some sense it was only nominal because he had ceded responsibility for moving troops and supplies to Beauregard).

This article is a short and easy read for addressing the popular misconceptions about Shiloh.

The "Sunken Road" myth is an interesting one. After I visited the battlefield, I came away thinking that it actually existed but in a different sense. The road that bears that name today isn't sunken, but on the Union side of the road it drops immediately by two to three feet into a wooded area; the Confederate side is open and sloping upwards. That slight drop on the Union side of the road could have provided both some cover for Union troops and the name, mistakenly applied to the road. That's just speculation, though; I have no real evidence of it.

I find the six months immediately after Shiloh in the western theater to be about the most fascinating of any war. The Union was poised for quick victory after Shiloh but squandered it (this was Halleck's fault). The Confederacy should have been in a panic, but Braxton Bragg performed mightily, and by transporting the bulk of the Confederate Army by rail from Corinth down south and then back north to Nashville, he reversed the picture entirely. Suddenly Kentucky was threatened and the way to Louisville and Cincinnati was open; the Union might be split.

Bragg formulated an excellent plan to take advantage of the situation, but Jefferson Davis refused to grant him theater-wide command. His colleagues, especially Kirby sitting in West Virginia, threw their wrenches in the works. The result (after a tremendous drama in both north and south, resulting in the murder of one Union General), was Confederate loss at Perryville, Kentucky. After that, it was only a matter of time in the west much as it soon became in the east.

 

[Hutch]

I live about a 2.5-3-hour drive from Shiloh, and am thinking seriously of riding over there tomorrow (Saturday).

Unlike many Eastern battlefields of the Civil War, which have been covered over by development, Shiloh is still pretty much pristine and has no city/town abutting it, so you can get a better 'feel" for what occurred. Antietam, Chickamauga, and Gettysburg are about the only other ones like that, and Gettysburg is overrun by tourists and monuments, IMHO.

If I do go I'll try and remember to take a camera and get some pictures.