Shiloh: The Battlefield and the Federal Army

The Federal deployments around Pittsburg Landing were ideally suited to resist a surprise attack by mostly green Confederate forces. In an area checkered by streams, farmer's fields, creeks, roads and trails, the lack of consistent layout and entrenchments of the Federal camps, later explained by both detractors and supporters of Grant and Sherman as somewhere between incompetence, negligence and convenience, helped greatly to break up the Confederate attacks of 6 April.

In early April of 1862 the Federal Army of the Tennessee was encamped at Crump's Landing and Pittsburg Landing, on the western shore of the Tennessee River twenty-two air miles northeast of Corinth, Mississippi, where the Confederate forces under Albert Sidney Johnston were concentrated.

Crump's was not suitable for camping the entire Federal army (some 46,000 men total). Most of the army -- five of six divisions, amounting to 39,000 -- was encamped at Pittsburg Landing six miles upriver (south) of Crump's and nine miles from Ulysses S. Grant's headquarters at Savannah. The regimental camps were scattered in a heavily wooded, hilly area, which from the outlying boundaries of the army's camps and pickets to the river was no more than four miles in any direction.

The Pittsburgh Landing site had been made with little thought to connecting unit flanks, erecting fieldworks, clearing fields of fire, or even to regular patrolling. Part of this attitude stemmed from Grant's prior experience in Missouri in 1861, and his stunning successes at Forts Henry and Donelson. After Missouri Grant did not much care what the enemy did or might do, an attitude unusual among Civil War generals.

The dominant terrain feature in the area was the Tennessee River, flowing along the eastern edge of the Federal base. The area was relatively flat, fairly well overgrown with trees and brush, split by several streams and creeks and patched with farmer's fields and the occasional orchards, cotton fields and temporary swamps. Off the numerous trails and roads it was difficult terrain with thick brush and uneven ground.

Grant was convinced that any major rebel attack, unlikely though he considered it to be, would fall on Crump's Landing, and not until 8 April at earliest. He thought that the morale of the Confederate forces at Corinth was quite low after the string of Federal victories so far that year, and any movement on their part was going to be half-hearted, at best. Reports of large rebel forces in the area from prisoners, escaped slaves, local scouts, and his own troopers was discounted.

Both Grant and William T. Sherman of Ohio, his principal subordinate, both thought that a lack of entrenchments would serve to bait the enemy, that trenches could not be built in the area that would enclose the encampment, and that digging ditches would dull the men's fighting edge. This was the position both would take in their memoirs.

Of the Federal units around Pittsburg Landing, Sherman commanded one of two divisions to the west of the Eastern Corinth Road which divided the encampment area nearly in half north-to-south. Sherman was a West Point-trained professional, even though he had been out of the army when the war began. He had commanded a brigade at Bull Run effectively but without distinction, but suffered a breakdown when in command of the forces in the Cumberland Valley late in 1861. He was restored to service only weeks before Shiloh, and commanded the green 5th Division consisting of some 8,500 Ohio and Illinois troops.

The other division west of the road was the 1st Division of nearly 7,000 Iowa and Illinois veterans of the Henry/Donelson campaign, commanded by John A. McClernand. McClernand had been congressman for Abraham Lincoln's district for some twenty years, and had been appointed to appease Democratic political interests. McClernand was pompous and selfish and distrusted professional soldiers. He claimed credit for the work of others (notably Grant), but was bold and intelligent enough to at least look competent as a commander. A major general just under Grant's seniority, his military experience before Donelson had been in the Black Hawk War thirty years before. He also had ambitions, as did many such officers, of using his war record as a stepping-stone to higher political office.

The other three Federal division commanders at th Pittsburgh Landing site, with their commands deployed to the east of the Eastern Corinth Road, were all political appointees. Benjamin Prentiss, commanding the 6th Division, had been a lawyer and Illinois militia colonel. His command was a mixed bag of Michigan, Missouri, Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota troops. Both Prentiss and McClernand had been considered for brigadier appointments at the same time as Grant, but Elihu Washburne, Grant's chief political patron, sent Grant to the head of the list.

Stephen Hurlbut, leading the 4th Division of Illinois and Indiana men, with a few odd Kentucky, Missouri and Ohio boys thrown in, had been an Illinois legislator and had military experience in the Seminole War. W.H.L. Wallace, commanding the 2nd Division, had been with Grant as far back as Belmont, and had been one of his chief critics of that action. He had been in command of his division for less than a month, having taken over the command from C.F Smith. WHL Wallace practiced law in Ohio after his Mexican war service. Six miles to the north at Crump's Landing, Lew Wallace commanded the 3rd Division, made up of men from India, Ohio and Nebraska. Lew Wallace had been a journalist and crusading lawyer before the war.

Sherman and C.F. Smith had selected the Pittsburg Landing site, but very little thought had been given to security, and none at all to entrenchments. The river, streams, woods, and road network in the area made it a good jumping-off point for future operations, but a poor one for defense. Nothing in the layout of the camps betrayed any sign of organization, almost as if they had intended for the camps to be indefensible. The army was laid out in a somewhat rough triangle with one apex pointing north and with one side to the southwest. Sherman's and Prentiss's divisions formed the base of the triangle, and between them they didn't have a single veteran unit. The only veterans in the army were in Lew Wallace's (formerly C.F. Smith's) division at Crump's Landing and McClernand's division at Pittsburgh, and they had fought in but one campaign. The Union generals could not have made their troops less prepared for a surprise attack unless they had stripped them of their ammunition and shot their horses.

As fate would have it, the Confederacy had very little idea of how the Federal camps were laid out, or what the actual terrain was like. Their green troops were about to attack a position that was accidentally tailored by their haphazard layout to aid in the Confederate defeat.