Shiloh: The Hornet's Nest

The April 1862 battle of Shiloh was a line of departure for the US Army. At the encircled salient called the Hornet's Nest, the US Army began a long transformation from a frontier constabulary and citizens militia to a unified, professional army, and set the tone for American resilience under fire.

James Powell and his patrol engaged the Confederates in the early morning hours. To the north and west of this action, troops of William Sherman's Fifth Division fell into line at about 0700, two hours into the battle, just outside their camps in the northeast corner of the Rea field, when Sherman suddenly realized he was under heavy attack.

Some fifteen minutes after this Ulysses Grant, commanding the army, heard the guns while eating breakfast on his headquarters at Savannah nine miles downriver. He ordered William Nelson, commanding a division from the Army of the Ohio, to march upriver to a landing opposite the Pittsburgh Landing so they could be ferried across. Nelson's troops were under the command of Don Carlos Buell of the Army of the Ohio, but Nelson agreed to get his men moving as soon as he could.

To the east, a colonel rode through a camp on a foam-flecked horse shouting that the fighting on the right for over an hour. The regiment quickly assembled and nearly as quickly was firing at Confederates coming through the woods. This was the first that Benjamin Prentiss, commanding the Sixth Division, knew for certain of a general attack.

As the battle increased in intensity, a brigade of Sherman's division collapsed at the Rhea Field sometime around 0930, unhinging the right flank of Grant's army. By 1000 those of Prentiss's men who had survived the first five hours of battle had fallen in along the Sunken Road. Eventually a total of eight field artillery batteries and troops from fifteen regiments from three divisions joined the position that would soon be known as the "Hornet's Nest" because of the intense buzzing of bullets. On the Federal right flank Sherman's remnants joined McClernand's fresher brigades along the Hamburg-Purdy Road. Braxton Bragg ordered one of his brigades to attack the Cotton Field at the Hornet's Nest. This assault failed to get within a hundred yards of the Federal line.

Prentiss, the senior brigadier in the Hornet's Nest yet the one with the least number of intact units, was somewhat dazed by the fury and speed of the Rebel attacks. He suggested that the regiments fight their way back to their camps which at that time, were being looted by the Confederates. As more reinforcements arrived he recovered his reason somewhat.

By this time all 16 Confederate brigades had been committed to combat. Two had been practically destroyed, two others fragmented. Most Confederate troops had not eaten an organized meal since the night before, and some even earlier. As the Federals fell back out of their camps they abandoned ammunition, dress uniforms and even stands of arms and, more important, large medical and food stores. Many Confederate soldiers stopped to eat or to loot the Federal camps. Although it was not as rampant as some accounts had it, the looting cost the Confederates valuable time and troops.

Sherman and McClernand on the Federal right could not hold their position on the Hamburg-Purdy Road much past 1100, and fell back a half mile north to the Jones Field. This withdrawal laid bare the right flank of the Hornet's Nest, leaving it a blue island in a surging sea of butternut.

At about 1130, Sherman and McClernand counterattacked from Jones Field with some success. This took much of the impetus out of the Confederate attack, but only really served to shift Confederate energies to the Hornet's Nest. At about this time Grant appeared at the Hornet's Nest. He told Prentiss that he must maintain his position at all hazards.

Grant's main concern at the time was that the Hornet's Nest position blocked the most direct route to the Pittsburgh Landing. If Grant's army were to survive at all the Landing had to remain out of danger. Prentiss, Wallace and Hurlbut held the key to the survival of the Army of the Tennessee.

At around noon on 6 April 1862 an attack on the southeast corner of the Duncan Field was repulsed by the Federals in a storm of fire. Soon after an attack on the north of the Davis Wheatfield (southeast of the Duncan Field) was similarly blasted back. The gunfire and roar of cannon in the zone was so intense that even four-footed Rebels were affected by it. A rabbit dashed out of some scrub brush and huddled next to a Federal soldier, its fear of man overwhelmed by the horrid din of small arms and crashing of artillery.

Around 1 PM, Sherman and McClernand fell back to Jones Field, their counterattack spent. This left the Hornet's Nest alone, a mile from the nearest Federal units, with their right flank in air. Soon afterwards, one of Hurlbut's brigades that had been holding the far left of the Federal line against almost token attacks from the Confederates finally gave way to retreat north to the Dill Branch Creek. The Hornet's Nest was completely isolated.

Inside, the dead and severely wounded were stripped for ammunition, canteens were shattered for the last drops they provided, and the pond turned vivid red. By 2 PM, communications in and out had ceased, command and control had broken down, and clouds of smoke reduced visibility to nearly zero. Cotton blooms and peach blossoms carpeted the ground on the southern edge of the position with white and pink, interspersed with the dead and wounded that littered the fields.

The battle continued almost without relief: when not under direct attack, a continual bombardment from artillery and sniping from pickets wore away at the beleaguered Federals in the Hornet's Nest. A Confederate attack on the Peach Orchard north of the Sara Bell Cotton Field was driven back, but this attack showed that the Hornet's Nest's left flank was vulnerable. This was important, since more and more Confederate troops were being drawn into the Hornet's Nest fighting. But the Confederate command had almost no overall picture of what was happening on the field. Albert Johnston, the Confederate commander of the Army of the Mississippi, led his battle from the front.

This was not necessarily the case with the Federals. At about 2:30 Grant directed his chief of staff to establish a defensive line from Pittsburgh Landing to Chambers Field about a mile west. This has been called Grant's Last Line, and was to be formed by the remaining artillery that included siege guns, Sherman's and McClernand's survivors, Nelson's arriving brigades of Buell's army, and whatever else could be scraped together.

At about the same time Bragg's Rebels attacked the Sunken Road again, and again was driven back. During this attack Johnston was fatally wounded, leaving the command to Pierre Beauregard.

By 3:00 on the afternoon of 6 April Sherman and McClernand were withdrawing across the Tilghman Branch to the Perry and Russian Tenant Fields, anchoring their right flank on Owl Creek. Shortly after this Beauregard learned of the death of Johnston and shifted the emphasis of attacks from the left side to the right of the Hornet's Nest to avoid the Sunken Road deathtrap. During the shift, Bragg attacked the Sunken Road one last time with predictable results.

Eleven hours into the battle Hurlbut, running desperately short on ammunition and men to fight with, withdrew from the Peach Orchard starting at about 4:00 PM, taking with him much of the remaining artillery that still had horses. Prentiss and Wallace shifted their lines around briefly, turning their left flank back almost due north to south.

Less than two thousand men were still on their feet inside the salient that was becoming a pocket, and many of them were wounded. Casualties lay everywhere, potable water was completely gone, and there were no more medical supplies anywhere.

But Prentiss had no idea that Sherman and McClernand had withdrawn too far to help him, and believed that the last message he got from Grant was still true: Grant had promised that Lew Wallace's Third division was on its way. Prentiss had no notion that Wallace had become hopelessly delayed and wouldn't arrive at Pittsburgh Landing until an hour after dark.

At 4:30 Confederate general Daniel Ruggles commenced firing on the Sunken Road at 500 yards with a grand battery of some 62 guns. Confederate units had been sweeping through the thickets and heavy timber, working their way around the Hornet's Nest's flanks for hours. When Ruggles opened fire they began to converge. In half an hour Prentiss's and WHL Wallace's troops (Wallace himself had been fatally wounded and was presumed to be dead) began to withdraw from Hornet's Nest. Soon thereafter, the Federal remnants began to surrender in large numbers on the north end of the Cloud Field. Prentiss himself surrendered at about 5:30.

By then Hurlbut's remnants had taken up new positions just north of the Dill Branch, and some 20,000 Federal troops manned Grant's Last Line. With the Hornet's Nest eliminated, Bragg attacked Hurlbut and the siege guns across the Dill Branch at about 6:00 and were bloodily repulsed. Shortly thereafter, Beauregard suspended all offensive activity. The sun set at 6:10. Beauregard composed a telegram to Richmond announcing a great victory of Confederate arms.

There had been no equivalent feat of American arms to the Hornet's Nest at Shiloh. Never had Americans fought so desperately for so long in such a small place--after being surprised--with such a spectacular result. Without the sacrifice of a handful of remnants and the courage of a few officers, using their terrain and the poor coordination on the part of the enemy to the best advantage, it is unlikely that the Union Army of the Tennessee could have survived Shiloh. From midday on 6 April to sunset about 2/5ths of the Confederate forces available were involved in attacking the Hornet's Nest position.

The sacrifice of the men who fought in the Hornet's Nest saved Grant's army, his reputation and, arguably, the Union. Confederate victory at Shiloh would likely have disrupted the whole of the western Tennessee campaign by stripping it of an entire army, and by disgracing one of the finest commanders his generation or country had ever produced -- US Grant -- possibly beyond redemption.

In a greater sense, however, the dogged determination of both Federal and Confederate at the Hornet's Nest marked the beginning of a professional American army, for a professional soldier's first duty is to follow orders, even if they mean certain death, and even beyond all reason, and even beyond hope of rescue.

One reason for this is that this one small corner of Hell was, for the most part, the only part of Shiloh that most of the general public and non-military historians knows about Shiloh. Much of the rest of the battle has been relegated to specialists and aficionados. Few realize that, as we will see in later essays, Sherman and McClernand fought a magnificent delaying action with only remnants of several regiments, or that the first tent hospital in history was built ad-hoc at Shiloh.

Even fewer realize just how high the stakes were for the men in a smoky wilderness filled with screaming death. If "the South never smiled after Shiloh," as one phrase put it, it was because a few amateur soldiers to the west of Sara Bell's cotton field took Grant's orders for them to "hold at all hazards" literally, and organized a comparative handful of frightened men to do just that, and begin a tradition of determined heroism in the face of impossible odds that continues for the American Army to this day.

The battle at Shiloh had killed more Americans than every battle combined since 1775, and never again would such a hideous proportion of the American population be lost in a single 2-day event. One of the historian's hardest jobs it so place a given event in a context that gives validity to studying the event itself. In the case of horrific events like Shiloh, that debate is subject to a great deal of interpretation, and to a lot of argument. Suffice it to say that after five generations and two world wars history has yet to decide just where the Hornet's Nest belongs.