Why Shiloh Matters

Via Tom

The Battle of Shiloh began at sunrise on April 6, 1862 — the Sabbath — as 45,000 Confederate soldiers swooped down on an unsuspecting Union army encamped at Pittsburg Landing, a nondescript hog-and-cotton steamboat dock on the Tennessee River. What followed were two of the bloodiest days of the Civil War, leaving 24,000 men on both sides dead, dying and wounded.

When it was over the nation — two nations as it were, for the moment — convulsed, horrified, at the results. A great battle had indeed been anticipated; at stake was control of the Mississippi River Valley, which would likely decide who won the war. But the Battle of Shiloh was not the outcome that anyone wanted.

Beyond the grisly statistics, Americans north and south of the Mason-Dixon line were suddenly confronted with the sobering fact that Shiloh hadn’t been the decisive battle-to-end-all-battles; there was no crushing victory — only death and carnage on a scale previously unimaginable. The casualty figures at Shiloh were five times greater than its only major predecessor engagement, the Battle of Bull Run, and people were left with the shocking apprehension that more, and perhaps many more, such confrontations were in store before the thing was settled.

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Why Shiloh Matters