Captains of the Civil War: A Chronicle of the Blue and the GrayWood, William
History
Captains of the Civil War: A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray
Wood, William
United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Biography; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Campaigns
In the meantime Grant was busier with his own pressing problems
of organization for an advance than with any idea of resisting
attack. He lacked the prevision of Winfield Scott and Lee, both of
whom expected from the first that the war would last for years. His
own expectation up to this had been that the South would collapse
after the first smashing blow, and that its western armies were
now about to be dealt such a blow. He was not unmindful of all
precautions; for he knew the Confederates were stirring on his
front. Yet he went downstream to Savannah without making sure that
his army was really safe at Shiloh.
Pittsburg Landing was at the base of the Shiloh position. But the
point at which, by the original orders, Buell was to join was Savannah,
nine miles north along the Tennessee. So Grant had to keep in touch
with both. He had not ignored the advantage of entrenching. But
the best line for entrenching was too far from good water; and
he thought he chose the lesser of two evils when he devoted the
time that might have been used for digging to drilling instead. His
army was raw as an army; many of the men were still rawer recruits;
and, as usual, the recruiting authorities had sent him several
brand-new battalions, which knew nothing at all, instead of sending
the same men as reinforcements to older battalions that could "learn
'em how." Grant's total effectives at first were only thirty-three
thousand. This made the odds five to four in favor of Johnston's
attack. But the rejoining of Lew Wallace's division, the great
reinforcement by Buell's troops, and the two ironclad gunboats
on the river, raised Grant's final effective grand total to sixty
thousand. The combined grand totals therefore reached a hundred
thousand--double the totals at Donelson and far exceeding those
at Bull Run.
After a horrible week of cold and wet the sun set clear and calm
on Saturday, the eve of battle. The woods were alive with forty
thousand Confederates all ready for their supreme attack on the
thirty-three thousand Federals on their immediate four-mile front.
Grant's front ran, facing south, between Owl and Lick Creeks, two
tributaries that joined the Tennessee on either side of Pittsburg
Landing. Buell's advance division, under Nelson, was just across the
Tennessee. But Grant was in no hurry to get it over. His reassuring
wire that night to Halleck said: "The main force of the enemy is at
Corinth. I have scarcely the faintest idea of an attack (general
one) being made upon us." But the skirmishing farther south on Friday
had warned Grant, as well as Sherman and the vigilant Prentiss,
that Johnston might be trying a reconnaissance in force--the very
thing that Beauregard wished the Confederates to do.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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