Shiloh: The Confederacy's Desperate Situation

By early 1862 Confederate fortunes had plummeted much faster than Union fortunes had risen. Most Confederate forces were pulling back, despite the showy and morale-boosting but strategically meaningless victory at Manassas that had not been exploited. At the same time, Federal forces, using their superior strategic mobility, were appearing as if from nowhere on all fronts, although without any decisive action anywhere. Virginia and Tennessee, the apparent sites of immanent conflict, were full of marching and camping troops from both sides.

President Davis of the secessionist states, a former Secretary of War and a West Point graduate, accepted advice from few and acted on less. Governors of all the states in his nascent country were clamoring for arms, munitions, men, ships, supplies, and salvation from threats real and imagined. From Tennessee to Florida, from Virginia to Texas, the Yankee army and navy seemed to be everywhere, and each governor was certain that his state would be invaded next.

But even though Davis knew his resources were stretched so thin in places as to be non existent, he resisted the temptation to write off everything west of the Mississippi after the disaster at Pea Ridge in March. He knew that if he had, Missouri would never officially secede and join the Confederacy, and that Kentucky would be permanently lost. But of all the battles in the western theater so far, none had held a candle to the scale of the Confederacy's apparent success at Manassas.

In the South it was practically a given that the southern soldier was superior to his northern counterpart simply because of his rural origins and the superiority of his cause. Even though the percentage of deaths from disease in the first winter of the war was worse in the South than the North, this did not seem to matter: Southern commanders were said to be more universally loved and skilled, and the marksmanship and fighting spirit of the men in the ranks was said to be better than those of the hated Yankees.

But the Confederacy was surrounded either by hostile or unsympathetic states, or, like an island, by water. It had no navy with which to defend its long seaward frontiers, or many river highways. Still the South gamely put forth to sea and river with what it could. But her main advantage was known to be on land, if not in numbers, then in martial ardor.

No area of the South was more vulnerable than the western theater, especially the area between the Tennessee River and the Cumberland known as Middle Tennessee. The stunning achievements of Porter and Grant in northern Tennessee cost the Confederacy far more than the Union gained. For although most of the Rebel captives were paroled, their equipment and supplies were lost forever and difficult to replace. Furthermore, the Confederate displacement out of Nashville and Columbus, Kentucky cost them space they could ill afford to lose, as well as considerable manufacturing capacity and railroad track mileage. Occupation of Nashville was a boon to the Union, and the factories a bonus; to the Confederates their loss was a disaster of epic proportions.

With Maryland almost entirely and Virginia partly occupied by Federal forces, the Carolinas under a developing naval siege, governors from Texas to Virginia and Florida to Arkansas were pleading for more troops, more arms, and more of everything else: Confederate President Jefferson Davis well knew that he had nothing much more to give.

The Confederacy as a whole didn't have enough powder on hand to fight more than two Manassas battles. Most of the ammunition that had been captured had already been distributed, and new powder and shot had to be either captured or brought from Europe.

To defend the western theater, Davis placed Albert Sidney Johnston, a Kentucky native who had lived much of his life in Louisiana and Texas, in command of the Western Department. Because of his rank (number two in the Confederate Army), for all intents he commanded everything Confederate between the Alleghenies and the Mississippi. However, because the Confederacy seemed to prefer chaos to order, departmental organization everywhere was unclear. It could shift from week to week or from complaint to complaint.

Nonetheless, Johnston was the top soldier in the area of Tennessee, and to him fell the responsibility for defending the west. He was regarded by many as the best soldier on the continent, and before he resigned from the US Army he was offered the number two spot to Winfield Scott. Including Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama, he directly commanded a force of some 15,000, but as soon as he arrived at his command in January 1862 it started to wither away.

Johnston's second in command was Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard of Louisiana, who had commanded the Confederate batteries against Fort Sumter when it fell, and the Confederate line at Manassas when the Federals were repulsed. But Beauregard thought more of himself than some of his superiors did, and when he clashed with the Confederate War Department he was transferred from Virginia west. Beauregard was a more than able administrator who in the spring of 1862 was a very sick man, bedridden with a respiratory ailment, some said near death.

In March, Beauregard produced a plan to attack the Federals in Tennessee where they had come to a temporary halt at a place called Pittsburg Landing, some 25 miles from the main Confederate force at Corinth, Mississippi. The matter was becoming even more urgent when it was learned that Don Carlos Buell was marching to meet Grant. Separate the plan might succeed, but there was no chance for the plan if the two Yankee armies combined. Speed was of the essence.

Confronted with a frontier to protect longer than that of the first thirteen colonies, his largest combined force at the moment was less than eight thousand men, in Alabama. Without an appreciable naval force to counter the Union's naval supremacy, without an army to speak of, without transport, adequate munitions or food, shoes, accouterments, medical supplies or even horses, Johnston seized at the plan to defeat the Yankee armies so swiftly approaching.

In Beauregard's plan, the Confederates would draw together all the forces in the theater, from Florida to Louisiana, and borrow some from other areas; collect them in Corinth, Mississippi; march swiftly and decisively north and attack Grant's army at Pittsburg Landing, 23 miles away, before it joined with Buell's; crush Grant's army; destroy Buell as he came up; and finally retake Nashville.

Confederate forces that Johnston commanded included those under Braxton Bragg of North Carolina, who commanded some 16,000 in western Florida. John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, a former vice-president of the United States who had run against Lincoln in 1860, had about 7,000 in northern Mississippi. Leonidas Polk of Louisiana had about 9,000 in Mississippi. And William Hardee of Georgia controlled some 6,000 scattered around Mississippi, Alabama and south Tennessee.

On paper the plan made sense. Collected together, his command would have a decided (48,000 or more to 39,000) superiority over Grant's army at Pittsburg Landing, and much better over Buell's if they did not join. With only one plan before him and that one apparently sound, Johnston put out the word on 6 March to all his major commands to send their troops to him at Corinth.

In addition, Earl Van Dorn of Mississippi commanded the Trans-Mississippi Department, a polyglot of competing districts and interests containing some 40,000 men scattered throughout Missouri, Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana. They were far from Tennessee, and there was little hope they could reach Corinth in time, even though they said they would try. But if they did make it the Confederates would have an overwhelming numerical advantage in Tennessee.

Time was one commodity that Johnston lacked. He collected all the arms and ammunition he could find, all the artillery he cold move, and rations for his men for three days, When all were gathered he set them marching north on three separate roads, to meet about five miles southwest of Pittsburg Landing (roughly a mile from the furthest extent of the Federal camps), the supply base and camping ground of Grant's army. They started out in a drenching rainstorm on 3 April, fully expecting to begin the attack on Friday, 4 April.

Problems started the moment the plan went into motion. A polluted water source compelled Johnston to leave some 7,600 sick behind (about as many men as in a Federal brigade, and more than Breckinridge commanded in the battle). Poor staff work, torrential rains, mud, non-existent traffic coordination, and a great deal of other confusion caused one delay after another. Some units had to march nearly forty miles to get to their start point. Some others had not eaten for a week before, and consumed all their rations as soon as they were issued. To maintain secrecy and surprise, fires were forbidden an admonition heartily ignored by soldier and officer alike.

Finally, on the night of Saturday, 5 April, the army was in place for the attack. Johnston told his army that the attack would start at daybreak. But it was two days late, and nearly all the men had already eaten all their rations. Most southern soldiers went into the battle of Shiloh hungry, a battle they simply had to win.