Episode 525: Shiloh

Hello, and welcome to Western Civ, episode 525, Shiloh.

Once victory at Ford Donaldson was a turning point early on in the American Civil War.

The fall of Ford Donaldson absolutely shattered the Confederate defensive lining Kentucky

and Tennessee.

Nashville fell and the Mississippi Valley lay vulnerable.

Over 12,000 Confederates had been captured, the largest surrender of American troops up

to that time.

The North erupted in celebration.

One conditional surrender grant became a national figure overnight.

But the Confederacy did not accept this quietly, and they would put up the ultimate resistance

at the surprise battle of Shiloh.

Before dawn on April 6, 1862, the woods along the Tennessee River were damp with spring

mist.

The men of the Union Army of the Tennessee sat in their camps near a small roughhune

log church called Shiloh, the place of peace.

Many believed the Confederate retreat after the victory at Ford Donaldson was continuing,

and that the Confederates would continue to push south towards Corinth, Mississippi.

Everything was relaxing, and then suddenly the woods exploded.

The battle of Shiloh began not with formal lines drawn and bugle-sounding, but absolute

and total chaos.

And that was actually going to be the majority of our narrative for the battle itself.

The Confederate troops surged forward in a multitude of colors, including gray and

butternut, shouting the wild, high rebel yell.

They crashed into federal pickets, and then into entire regiments that were still half

asleep.

The Confederate Army was now led by Albert Sidney Johnston, considered many in the south

to be their finest commander.

And with him was General P.G.T. Beauregard.

Now their goal was simple, strike before Union reinforcements arrive, and try to destroy

the army under Ulysses S. Grant, regaining the initiative in the west.

Grant's army had advanced deep into Tennessee, after the victories at Ford Henry and Ford Donaldson.

They were in camp near Pittsburgh landing, waiting for General Major Don Carlos' fuel to

join them.

Several miles away when the firing began.

The Confederate attack rolled forward in waves.

Union soldiers stumbled from their tents, some without boots, some grabbing rifles as

shells burst overhead.

Units collapsed under the shock.

Others managed to rally in fragments, forming improvised lines where they could behind

fallen trees and fences.

A young Union soldier later wrote, it seemed as if the very earth had burst open.

By mid-morning, the Confederate advance had pushed the Union army back toward the river.

Yet in one sunken road flanked by tangled underbrush, there was one stubborn line of

federal troops that held firm.

This position would later be remembered as the hornets nest.

Confederate attacks swarmed toward it again and again.

Musket fire crackled so intensely that survivors would later say, it sounded like angry

insects.

Grant had now reached the field, riding calmly along the lines.

He didn't dramatize or panic.

Instead, he reinforced threatened positions and waited for fuels approaching columns.

Meanwhile, the Confederate assault pressed on relentlessly.

Around mid-afternoon, Albert Sidney Johnston ran forward to direct troops personally.

He had been struck behind the knee by a bullet earlier in the day but paid it little attention.

Gradually, unnoticed amongst all the chaos, one of the best generals in the Confederate army

slowly bled to death beneath the tree.

Had one tourniquet, he would have lived.

But instead, the Confederacy lost its highest ranking general.

And so instead, command passed to PGT Beauregard.

Now after the hornets nest finally collapsed after hours of artillery bombardment and encirclement,

thousands of Union soldiers were captured.

And it looked like the Confederate army was on the brink of a spectacular victory.

In fact, by evening on April 6th, Union forces had been driven back nearly to the Tennessee

River itself.

Gun boats, Tyler and Lexington, anchored offshore, fired massive shells over the heads of

federal troops into the advancing Federates.

And that is when the rain started to fall.

At this point, the battlefield was a landscape of wreckage, discarded and broken wagons,

abandoned artillery positions, and wounded, crying out into the heavens.

One Confederate officer would write later that the groans, quote, rose to heaven.

End quote Beauregard, believing the Union army had been beaten, called off further

attacks for the night, and approved to be a fatal miscalculation.

Throughout the darkness, reinforcements arrived, fuels army of the Ohio cross the river.

Fresh divisions joined grants battered men.

Grants stood in the rain that night beneath the tree.

Code collar turned up.

When asked whether or not they should retreat, according to legend, Grant reportedly replied,

no, we'll lick them tomorrow.

At dawn on April 7th, it was the Union army that suddenly advanced.

Fresh federal troops pushed forward in coordinated lines.

Confederate forces exhausted from the previous day and deprived of Johnston's leadership

struggled now to hold their ground.

Fighting flared across the same blood-soaked fields, but this time the direction was different

because the momentum had shifted.

By afternoon, Beauregard was ordering a retreat toward Corinth, Mississippi.

The battle of Shiloh was suddenly over, but the cost was staggering.

Over 23,000 men were killed, wounded, or missing, more casualties than in all previous American

wars combined.

Entire communities would feel the blow.

Families opened newspapers in disbelief at the lists of dead that seemed to go on forever.

The scale of slaughter stunned the nation.

Shiloh, just like the first battle of Manassas or Bulkreek, which you want to call it, shattered

the illusions.

Before April 1862, many Americans still believe that this would be a brief and decisive conflict.

After Shiloh, they understood something else.

This was industrial warfare, fought by mass armies, and it would demand terrible sacrifice

in the North.

Critics called for grants removal, accusing him of surprise and mismanagement.

President Lincoln refused, saying, I can't spare this man.

He fights.

In the south, the loss of Albert Sidney Johnston was deeply felt.

Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, later said, he considered Johnston's death

the turning point of Confederate fortunes in the West.

Strategically, Shiloh ensured union dominance in Tennessee.

The road to Corinth and eventually to the Mississippi River lay open.

The Confederacy would never again fully regain the initiative in that theater.

But beyond strategy and politics, the battle of Shiloh marked something more profound.

Soldiers who entered those woods believing in glory came out changed men.

They had heard the constant thunder of artillery, seen comrades fall in heaps, and smelled

powder and blood everywhere.

War was no longer a game to be played for them in the West.

The church called Shiloh, I guess, maybe ironically, still stood when the fighting ended, almost

untouched, but around it lay thousands of dead men.

The place of peace had become a revelation.

This war was not going to be over quickly, and it wasn't going to be one cheaply.

It would be a test of the endurance, and Shiloh was only the beginning.

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To the south in New Orleans, the war was heating up.

In the spring of 1862, the war for the Mississippi River became a war for the future of the Confederacy.

If the south could hold the river, it could move men, cattle, cotton, and corn across

its vast interior.

If the union seized it, the Confederacy would be effectively cut into.

Texas and Arkansas severed from the eastern states' supplies, strangled communication

fractured.

The idea behind that very strategy had been sketched early in the war by an aging general

in chief, Winfield Scott.

It was derided at first as timid and slow, newspapers mocked it as the Anaconda Plan.

But by April 1862, the Anaconda was starting to squeeze.

General Winfield Scott understood something fundamental about modern warfare.

It was not just about battles, it was about economics, industry, and movement.

His plan had two central pillars, a naval blockade of the entire southern coastline, preventing

cotton exports and choking off imports of weapons and manufactured goods, control of the

Mississippi River, splitting the Confederacy and isolating its western states.

Now critics still wanted one single dramatic thrust toward Richmond.

Scott proposed patience, though, a constricting strategy that would suffocate the rebellion.

And by early 1862, that strategy was becoming a reality.

Union forces had taken for its Henry and Donaldson and Tennessee, as I talked about.

The Mississippi was contested.

And now intention was, of course, turning to the most critical city of all at its mouth.

Because at the southern tip of the river stood New Orleans.

New Orleans was the Confederacy's largest city.

It was cosmopolitan, wealthy, and strategically vital.

It was the gateway to the Mississippi River.

It housed shipyards, warehouses, and international trade connections.

Losing it would be both a military and psychological blow.

The river's entrance, however, was guarded.

Two powerful forts, Fort Jackson and Fort Philip, stood on opposite banks of the Mississippi

about 70 miles below New Orleans.

Having them stretched chains and hulks meant a block passage.

Heavy guns commanded the river.

To break through would require daring and incredible naval power.

And so the man that the Union chose for this task was David Farragut.

The Farragut was about 60 years old at this point, experienced and relentless.

Though born in Tennessee, Farragut had remained loyal to the Union.

His fleet consisted of modern warships and motor scooters under the command of David

P. Porter tasked with bombarding the forts.

And so beginning on April the 18th, 1862, just after Shiloh had been fought, Union mortars

rained shells into Fort Jackson.

For days, explosions shook the river banks, smoke drifted through Louisiana swamps, but

the forts held.

Farragut understood that bombardment alone would not win the city.

He would have to run past the guns.

And so in the dark hours before dawn on April the 24th, the Union fleet advanced upriver

in two columns.

Sailors had cut through the chain barrier, engines thrombed, fireships drifted downstream

toward them, and it lit the Union vessels.

But even when all of this seemed about as bad as it could get, suddenly the two forts

opened fire.

cannons thundered from both banks, shots and shell tore through rigging and hulls.

The river glued right with the flame of the fireships and the landing shells, ships collided

in smoke and confusion.

Farragut's flagship, the USS Hartford ran aground and caught fire before freeing itself.

But one by one, the Union ships pushed their way through.

By morning, most Farragut's fleet had passed the forts and steamed on toward New Orleans.

The river, the Confederacy's great artery, if you will, had now been pierced.

On April the 25th, Union warships appeared before New Orleans itself.

The city's defenses were chaotic.

Confederate general Mansfield level had way too few troops to defend it.

Supplies were quickly burned, cotton was set ablaze to prevent capture and smoke rose

over the harbor.

With no effective means of resistance, the city surrendered in stages between late April

and early May 1862.

The shock was absolutely enormous.

Through Orleans, the south's greatest port was now in Union hands.

Occupation of the city fell to general Benjamin Butler, controversial figure in history.

Butler ruled the city firmly sometimes harshly.

When a local man, William Mumford tore down a U.S. flag, Butler had him executed, sending

a message that Union authority would not be mocked.

His famous woman order, declaring that women who insulted the Union soldiers could be

treated as prostitutes, created outrage across the south and in Europe.

But from Washington's perspective, it was the strategic outcome that mattered the most.

The mouth of the Mississippi River was now secure.

Now the capture of New Orleans was not just a naval triumph, it was a strategic turning point.

The blockade of southern ports, another part of the Anaconda plan, was growing more effective

every month.

British built ships struggled to slip through.

Cotton exports plummeted and southern inflation soared.

Now the Mississippi itself was contested from both sides, Union forces pushing southward

from Tennessee and Farragut's fleas pressing northward from the Gulf.

The Confederacy was starting to feel the squeeze.

The fall of New Orleans, more than anything else, demonstrated the North's industrial advantage

in this war.

The Union could build fleets, transport armies, and sustain operations over vast distances.

Control of waterways, rivers, and seas alike would become decisive.

In less than a year, the Confederacy had lost its largest city and its principal port

at the Mississippi's mouth.

It was a blow to morale as much as it was logistics.

And yet like so many moments in the American Civil War, it didn't end the struggle.

Instead, it hardened the resolve.

Confederate armies will still fight fiercely in Mississippi and Tennessee to prevent the

river from being fully lost.

And Union forces would grind forward, but at a terrible cost.

But in April of 1862, as Union ships lay anchored in the harbor of New Orleans, one

fact was unmistakable.

The war had now become continental, no longer confined to Virginia.

It stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to the Tennessee River.

It was now war of rivers iron and blockade, a war of industry, or of metal and suffocation.

And the Anaconda plan, once derived, had just swallowed its largest prize yet.

Now, next time we do swing back east, and bring on to our chessboard, as we will, one

of our most famous pieces.

Robert E. Lee, the peninsula, campaign.