a big battle had to be fought; battles were what settled things. The armies had gathered; the line had been drawn. It is impossible to guess how much of the foregoing history these soldiers apprehended, but most of them by then understood they were destined to be part of something very great, and very awful, and that sooner rather than later they were going to see that elephant.
1 This was the 1803 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court established the precedence of federal law over state law.
2 The historian Robert Remini, biographer of Adams and Jackson, described the tariff as both “ghastly” and “lopsided.”
3 For instance, when Texas was admitted to the Union in 1845 as a slave state, so also was Iowa, which came in as a free state in the following year.
4 After the conflict began it was said that Abraham Lincoln, upon meeting Mrs. Stowe, remarked, “So you are the little lady who started this great war.”
5 Many southerners, on the other hand, reacted by sending Brooks replacements for the cane, which he had broken during the fracas.
6 Interestingly, many of the wealthiest southerners were opposed to secession for the simple reason that they had the most to lose if it came to war and the war went badly. But in the end they, like almost everyone else, were swept along on the tide.
7 Neither Ulysses Grant nor William Tecumseh Sherman, who would be so instrumental in the Shiloh Campaign, voted for Lincoln, for fear that his election would lead to war.
CHAPTER 2
YOU MUST BE BADLY SCARED
B Y THE TIME HE REACHED P ITTSBURG L ANDING Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman was a changed man. That is to say he wasn’t “insane” any more, or a “nervous Nellie,” or “flighty,” which was how the press had portrayed him six months earlier when he lost command at Louisville for expressing fear he was going to be attacked and then having the gall to tell Washington that 200,000 Federal troops would be needed to subdue Rebels in the Mississippi River Valley. Instead, after a period of recuperation, Sherman (“Cump,” to his friends since West Point days) regained his confidence: A sharp, bristling personality, he began to channel the staunch singularity of purpose he would demonstrate for the remainder of the war.
For now, though, Sherman seemed to be overcompensating for the Louisville disgrace. From the time of his arrival at Pittsburg Landing he refused even to entertain the possibility of an attackby the large Rebel army known to be converging just twenty miles south at Corinth, Mississippi.
As the senior regular army officer he should have known better. As commander of one of the six Yankee infantry divisions recently arrived at the landing, Brigadier General Sherman was also, nominally, in charge of the day-to-day operations at the encampment, while Ulysses (“Sam” to his West Point classmates) Grant exercised overall control from his headquarters at Savannah, Tennessee, a town located nine miles downstream on the Tennessee River, in an opulent mansion offered to him by William H. Cherry, a wealthy slaveholding planter and Union sympathizer.
Owing to the riparian topography, the Union position at Pittsburg resembled a giant cornucopia of roughly 12 square miles, with its stem, north of the landing, less than a mile wide, and its mouth opening nearly 3 miles wide to the south between the Tennessee River and Owl Creek. By some amazing blunder, the most inexperienced divisions—those of Sherman and Brig. Gen. Benjamin M. Prentiss 1 —were placed in the outer lines at the maw of the cornucopia, close to the Rebel army at Corinth. It was later explained, quite unsatisfactorily, that the encampments were arranged by engineers with regard to sanitation, nearness of water and firewood, and similar conveniences and without concern for their ability to defend the field—in other words, disposed the way a peacetime army might be. The various camps to the south along the cornucopia’s mouth were not even set in a
1 This was the 1803 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court established the precedence of federal law over state law.
2 The historian Robert Remini, biographer of Adams and Jackson, described the tariff as both “ghastly” and “lopsided.”
3 For instance, when Texas was admitted to the Union in 1845 as a slave state, so also was Iowa, which came in as a free state in the following year.
4 After the conflict began it was said that Abraham Lincoln, upon meeting Mrs. Stowe, remarked, “So you are the little lady who started this great war.”
5 Many southerners, on the other hand, reacted by sending Brooks replacements for the cane, which he had broken during the fracas.
6 Interestingly, many of the wealthiest southerners were opposed to secession for the simple reason that they had the most to lose if it came to war and the war went badly. But in the end they, like almost everyone else, were swept along on the tide.
7 Neither Ulysses Grant nor William Tecumseh Sherman, who would be so instrumental in the Shiloh Campaign, voted for Lincoln, for fear that his election would lead to war.
CHAPTER 2
YOU MUST BE BADLY SCARED
B Y THE TIME HE REACHED P ITTSBURG L ANDING Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman was a changed man. That is to say he wasn’t “insane” any more, or a “nervous Nellie,” or “flighty,” which was how the press had portrayed him six months earlier when he lost command at Louisville for expressing fear he was going to be attacked and then having the gall to tell Washington that 200,000 Federal troops would be needed to subdue Rebels in the Mississippi River Valley. Instead, after a period of recuperation, Sherman (“Cump,” to his friends since West Point days) regained his confidence: A sharp, bristling personality, he began to channel the staunch singularity of purpose he would demonstrate for the remainder of the war.
For now, though, Sherman seemed to be overcompensating for the Louisville disgrace. From the time of his arrival at Pittsburg Landing he refused even to entertain the possibility of an attackby the large Rebel army known to be converging just twenty miles south at Corinth, Mississippi.
As the senior regular army officer he should have known better. As commander of one of the six Yankee infantry divisions recently arrived at the landing, Brigadier General Sherman was also, nominally, in charge of the day-to-day operations at the encampment, while Ulysses (“Sam” to his West Point classmates) Grant exercised overall control from his headquarters at Savannah, Tennessee, a town located nine miles downstream on the Tennessee River, in an opulent mansion offered to him by William H. Cherry, a wealthy slaveholding planter and Union sympathizer.
Owing to the riparian topography, the Union position at Pittsburg resembled a giant cornucopia of roughly 12 square miles, with its stem, north of the landing, less than a mile wide, and its mouth opening nearly 3 miles wide to the south between the Tennessee River and Owl Creek. By some amazing blunder, the most inexperienced divisions—those of Sherman and Brig. Gen. Benjamin M. Prentiss 1 —were placed in the outer lines at the maw of the cornucopia, close to the Rebel army at Corinth. It was later explained, quite unsatisfactorily, that the encampments were arranged by engineers with regard to sanitation, nearness of water and firewood, and similar conveniences and without concern for their ability to defend the field—in other words, disposed the way a peacetime army might be. The various camps to the south along the cornucopia’s mouth were not even set in a
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