Battle of Shiloh

The Union Army had a distinct advantage during the Battle of Shiloh. They outnumbered an inexperienced and poorly armed Confederate Army.

The Union Army of the Tennessee was commanded by Major General Ulysses S. Grant on April 6, 1862, the first day of the battle. This army would be reinforced by the Army of the Ohio under the command of Major General Don Carlos Buell the evening of the 6th and Grant took overall command of both.

The Confederate Army of the Mississippi was commanded by General Albert Sidney Johnston on the first day until he was killed, then command of the army fell to General P.G.T. Beauregard who commanded for the remainder of the battle.

At first, Marty is just kind of a coward, ya know. Later, man, he's brave and is ready to be tough 'n' gritty! He is also a love-guy or a guy who loves. Marty loves his family and he loves Shiloh. Also, he becomes determined to save Shiloh. Determined is another trait, man.

Change all the stuff if ya 'ave to, man. It's just my way o' talkin'.

of course not, if the south won the war than the U.S. would be a slave state.

In the two months prior to the Battle of Shiloh the Yankees had captured the western two-thirds of Tennessee, including Nashville. Nashville was one of the largest cities in the Confederacy and one of the few with an iron mill capable of casting cannon. The Confederates hoped to reverse this tide and start recovering west Tennessee beginning with winning the Battle of Shiloh. When the Confederates instead lost the battle these hopes were dashed.

Perhaps even more important was the death of the Confederate commanding general, Albert Sidney Johnston. Johnston was one of the best generals the Confederacy had, and was the second-ranking Confederate general, just ahead of Robert E. Lee on the seniority list. The Confederate's western army never had a satisfactory commander after Johnston's death, and went on to lose most of its battles, and probably the war.

Shiloh Church was a tiny settlement on the West bank of the Tennessee River, near Corinth.

The Federal Army of the Tennessee commanded by Ulysses Grant defeated the Confederate Army of the Mississippi led by Albert Sydney Johnston at Shiloh.

The Battle of Shiloh, fought in April 1862, involved several key figures. Union General Ulysses S. Grant led the Union forces, while Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston commanded the Confederate troops. Johnston was killed during the battle, and General P.G.T. Beauregard took over command for the Confederates. The battle was significant in the Western Theater of the Civil War, highlighting the high casualty rates and the intensity of the conflict.

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.

it gave the Union greater control of the Mississippi River valley.

Their own unpreparedness. Neither Grant nor Sherman had thought there were any Confederates within striking distance.

When the enemy attack came, half the Union divisions were not in place, and a big force under Buell had been delayed reaching the scene. The entire Union army was nearly pushed into the river.

Only Beauregard's decision to suspend the operation, and dig in for the night, saved the Union army from total destruction.

• kjnhuihyuh76

The Union.

Pittsburg Landing

The capture of Confederate forts Henry and Donalson were a key to the battle of Shiloh that would occur later in 1862. The loss of these two forts allowed an opening for the Union troops to use river boats to move into the Confederate state of Tennessee.

Since more Union solders were killed that Confederate Solders, and Grant was driven off, it is generally considered to be a Confederate victory. It prevented General Grant from heading south and trying to capture Vicksburg, Mississippi, so instead he captured Tennessee and made both it and Southern Kentucky useless to the Southern cause. The South could no longer use the guano from the caves of Kentucky to make gunpowder. The Confederates lost General Albert Sidney Johnson, one of their best. In the short run, it was a tactical Confederate victory. The South got what they wanted. In the long run. Grant took an important part of the South away from the Confederacy which cost the Confederates dearly. The Confederates probably would have been better off if they had lost!

IMPROVEMENT.

Shiloh was a Union Victory because:

- the Confederate didn't succeeded either in destroying or scatter Grant's Army or drive off them from the vital position of Pittsburg Landing. In other words they failed to reach their main tasks.

- the Confederate was forced to retreat from the battlefield on Apr.7th before being overwhelmed by the attacking Union Army.

- the losses were:

Confederate - 1723 killed, 8313 wounded 959 prisoners and missing.

Unionists - 1754 killed, 8408 wounded 2285 prisoners and missing.

Furthermore I would like to point out:

- soon after Shiloh the Federals carried on their advance southward to capture Corinth, which was then abandoned by the Confederates, thus extending the control of the Mississippi River to the height of Memphis in cooperation with the Union gunboats.

- At the time when the battle of Shiloh was fought, Vicksburg had not been fortified yet and therefore didn't constituted any military importance for the moment.

- Vicksburg was fortified starting from Apr. 20, 1862.

Hurhh3hh3h

The Battle of Shiloh, fought in April 1862 during the American Civil War, involved approximately 63,000 Union troops and around 44,000 Confederate soldiers. This made for a total of about 107,000 troops engaged in the battle. The conflict resulted in significant casualties, highlighting the brutal nature of the war early on.

Anything available... mostly privately owned arms for the south.

The Union really used no tactics at all, and were extremely fortunate to escape with the victory. There was a force under Grant camped at Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River, near Shiloh Church. There was another force, under Don Carlos Buell, marching to join Grant. The Confederates, under Albert Sidney Johnston, knew they needed to defeat Grant before Buell could arrive, and the combinned force became too big to handle. The inexperienced Confederates took three days to cover the 25 miles to get into position to attack Grant's force. They had planned for one day. This delay was to prove fatal. It rained heavily during those three days, the roads were a sea of mud. Many Rebels disobeyed orders and fired their guns, just to see if their gunpowder was still dry. With all this banging of guns in the woods just south of their positions and with numerous reports of scouts that a sizable Rebel force was drawing near, Grant's force was STILL surprised when the Rebels finally did launch their attack. Johnston had let his subordinate, Beauregard, make the plan of attack. Beauregard screwed this up as thoroughly as it could possibly be done. There were three corps to the Rebel army, and instead of placing them side by side, where each corps commander could watch over his own section of the line and bring up reinforcements as and where needed, Beauregard placed the three corps in three lines, one behind the other and each stretching the entire width of the battlefield. Thus when the troops got into action they became inextricably mixed as the first line, then the second halted to fight and the lines behind caught up and mixed in with them, and none of the corps commanders could see more than a portion of their widely spread commands. Johnston, already fuming from the long delay getting the troops up the road to Pittsburg landing, was asked when he learned of Beauregard's faulty dispositions whether he wanted to call off the attack. "I would fight them if they were a million" Johnston grimly replied, and the attack went ahead. Then Johnston stopped to aid a wounded Union officer, and left his own doctor to attend to him. Shortly after Johnston was shot in the leg, and before anyone realized how serious the wound was, he bled to death. A simple tourniquet would have saved him, but his doctor was still behind attending the wounded Yankee. This left command of the Rebel army in the hands of the "excitable" Beauregard. Despite all these Rebel blunders, they soon drove the Yankees from all areas of the field except one. Some Yankees held out in a stand of cedar trees, forever after called "The Hornet's Nest". It took some hours for them to run out of ammunition and be forced to give in. Thousands of other Yankees abandoned their units and ran for the dubious safety of the river bank, where they cowered for the rest of the day by the Tennessee River. Only the confusion following the death of Johnston prevented the complete annihilation of Grant's army. During the night after this day of bitterly intense action, Buell's army arrived, having had time to get there with the three day delay of the Rebels in launching their attack. So the next day, the tactics the Union forces used were just to attack all along the line with these thousands of fresh troops, against the still disorganized Rebels. They soon recovered their lost camp, but made no effort to pursue when the Rebels broke off the action and withdrew back whence they had come.

To be the fastest to attack

they used: muskets ,sharp rifles, gatling guns, and cannons

The Battle of Shiloh had three major impacts on the war: 1) General Albert s. Johnson was killed 2) Ulysses S. Grant learned not to underestimate his enemies 3) It proved to both the North and South that the war was not going to be as quick and painless as they originally thought

On the Tennessee River, north of a major rail junction at Corinth, near Shiloh Church.

The Union troops under U.S. Grant, who defeated the Confederates and killed their highly-respected commander, Sidney Johnston.

It was the first significant Union victory, and it was the beginning of the end of Confederate domination of the Mississippi valley.