Why was general grant criticized although he won the Battle of Shiloh Church?

Answer 1

The Confederates planned to attack the Union Army encamped at Pittsburg Landing on April 4, 1862, but it took three days for the Confederates to flounder over muddy roads, through the rain, the twenty-five miles from Corinth to the Union camps. Many Confederates disobeyed orders and fired their muskets to "see of their powder was still dry" after the drenching they had been through for several days. Union scouts and outposts reported the approach of the Confederates, but were ignored. Despite all these warning signs, the Union forces were badly surprised when the Confederates finally launched their attack on April 6.

The Confederate battle plan, devised by General Beauregard, had a very serious fatal flaw. The plan put each Confederate army corps in a line extending all the way across the Confederate line. There were three corps, so the corps were in three lines. As they advanced and the troops in front ran into resistance, the corps following came up and the troops became inextricably mixed. Even if this had not happened the Confederate lines of a corps width were too wide for the corps commanders to be able to see or control all their troops. In every other Civil War battle corps advanced beside one another, so the corps commander could see all his forces and bring up his own reinforcements from behind as needed. The Overall Confederate commander, General Albert Sidney Johnston, was wounded early in the action, did not receive medical attention, and soon bled to death, leaving the "excitable" Beauregard in command. Despite all this, the Confederates had smashing success in the first days battle, all but completely overrunning the Union positions. Thousands of Yankees ran from their units and cowered below the bluffs on the river bank.

Grant's headquarters were across the Tennessee River and eight or ten miles downstream from the Union camps. Grant arrived during the middle of the first day's fighting, by steamboat, but was unable to reverse the disaster. Grant was saved only by the timely arrival of the 30,000 men under Don Carlos Buell (the Confederates had needed to attack on April 4, as planned, to destroy Grant's force before Buell arrived, and the combined Yankee forces became to large to attack successfully) and by the failure of Beauregard to get the Confederate forces well in hand.

So, Grant was criticized for being inexcusably surprised, for not having his headquarters with his army, and for being unable to fight effectively without a huge infusion of reinforcements. With Buell's troops on hand and the Confederates seriously hampered by problems mostly of their own making, Grant did counterattack on the second day and recover his captured camps, and the Confederates withdrew. Grant did not pursue his beaten foe, for which he was also criticized.