Shadow of Shiloh

Shadow of Shiloh: Major General Lew Wallace in the Civil War by Gail Stephens

This is a great book covering perhaps the most controversial general at Shiloh. I've always felt Wallace got a bad rap for Shiloh, that his march was not the mistake we've mostly always been lead to believe. It seems that the scholarship of the last decade or so has also lifted much of the blame from him and has given him a much fairer verdict. This book continues rehabbing his Shiloh reputation and offers a pretty fair assessment of his entire service.

My favorite aspect of the Shiloh section is when the author recounts an excursion when a group of Shiloh scholars actually hiked Wallace's route. They had the benefit of maps and hard roads (made their hike in the fall rather than in a very wet spring) and they ended up being 15 minutes slower than Wallace. The verdict now has to be that Wallace was not lost, he was just not where Grant thought he might be. Or rather where Grant later said he thought Wallace would be as the author has enough evidence that Grant expected Wallace to show up on Sherman's right that there has to be some reasonable doubt as to what road Grant thought Wallace would take that day. Afterwards Grant and his staff do a good job of making it seem like the River Road was always the only option but Grant might have other motives for making this come out as the historical record.

I have one complaint of the book though, the pages are oversize. So much so that there are two columns of text per page. [At my local library it is actually filed with the oversize books that I normally associate with picture books.] I found that a bit difficult to read and wish the size was a tad smaller. One benefit of the larger size though was that the full page maps were wonderful. I liked the large maps so much that the double columns almost were not too terrible to deal with. But after thinking about it I'd rather have slightly smaller pages that had just one column of text.

The copy I read was from the local library but I will certainly add this book to my personal collection as soon as I can. A must read for any Shiloh scholar.

Lew Wallace’s marching formation

When Lew Wallace was informed he was on the wrong road he performed a counter march so that his best brigade stayed at the front of the formation. The first courier to Wallace had said that the Union was doing well but by the time the courier arrived that informed him of the better route (or rather the only route now available) the day had turned against the Union. Wallace was now informed that he might have to rescue the rest of the army from a dire situation. If the army was really in such a dire situation it makes sense to put the best brigade at the head of the column. If he would have had to fight his way across the bridge or go into combat soon after that he would need his best men up front.

His other option was to about face the entire division. If Wallace had been marching straight into combat it would have been important to have the best brigade attack first. If he had performed an about face he would have arrived on the battlefield a little earlier but probably not in time to take part in the battle that day.

Since Wallace stood little chance of seeing combat after taking the wrong road the reverse march does not rate as a critical decision. The net result of Wallace taking the slower method of turning around was just the time lost. Wallace cannot be faulted for his decision to counter march because he had just been told that the fate of the army might rest on his shoulders. Having the best men up front was now more important than the time saved by about facing the entire division.

I would also like to add that even though above I refer to Wallace being on the wrong road I'm not in total agreement with that, see the most recent post about Wallace, as Wallace knew of two roads from his position to the main encampment. One road had already been selected as the route Sherman would take to help Wallace. The shoe was on the other foot so Wallace took that road. Once Sherman has had to abandon that bridge Wallace's route is the worse option. Perhaps if the first courier had said the situation was particularly bad Wallace would have taken the route that put him behind the Union army and would have allowed Grant to place him where ever he needed him. Overall I think Wallace has taken too much grief for decisions that were not bad decisions based on the info he had.

Another thing to note is that, from what we can decipher, Grant's orders were not crystal clear. Everyone was learning on the fly. In the future Grant's orders will be much clearer, this is one lesson he took from Shiloh. If Shiloh had been an 1864, or even an 1863, battle it would have been fought much differently. I don't mean entrenchments and the like, just that command and control issues would have worked much more smoothly, orders would have been better. Veterans at all levels would have behaved differently. This is one aspect of Shiloh that interests me, the rawness of the troops and commanders and how they all acted. A great book on this aspect is Seeing the Elephant: Raw Recruits at Shiloh by Joseph Allan Frank & George A. Reaves.

Lew Wallace taking the wrong road

The area between Savannah and Corinth can be thought of as a rough triangle with Purdy in the northwest corner forming a right angle. Purdy is roughly 22 miles north of Corinth and 20 miles west of Savannah. The camps around Pittsburg Landing are about 25 miles from Corinth along the longest leg of the triangle. Roughly halfway between Savannah and Purdy is Adamsville, one of Lew Wallace's brigades was camped here. Another brigade was two miles east at Stoney Lonesome and the third brigade was two more miles east at Crump's Landing. Savannah is about 2 more miles to the east.

The road network in this area consisted of a few good roads and many small paths utilized by local farmers. The largest road in the area was the Corinth Road which traveled the long leg of the triangle from the landing to Corinth. The Hamburg-Savannah Road went north-south along the river connecting those two points on the river by land and passed right through the Union camps and is also referred to as the River Road. Hamburg and Purdy were also connected and this road was the third major road to bisect the battlefield. Each of Wallace's brigades had a road that lead from their position to the battlefield.

The road from Crump's Landing was the River Road. The road from Adamsville angled to the southeast and joined with the River Road just north of Snake Creek. The road from Stoney Lonesome, called the Shunpike, angled to the southwest until it was clear of Snake Creek, then it turned south and intersected the Hamburg-Purdy Road.

It the weeks before the battle the Union commanders were more worried about the Confederates striking Wallace's exposed division than the major camps. Sherman and Wallace had decided to use the Hamburg-Purdy Road and the Shunpike in case of attack. They had corduroyed sections of the road to keep it dry so that it would be ready for any emergency. When Wallace was given orders to come to the aid of the army he decided to take the path Sherman had intended to take to help him. There is, and was, some debate over whether or not those initial orders stated which road to take. The only copy of the order has long since been lost so that is a mystery we'll never solve. The route Wallace choose would bring him onto Sherman's right flank, as long as he was able to hold onto the Owl Creek bridge. Sherman though was unable to hold onto the bridge and Wallace did not learn that the path was blocked until well into his march. Unless he wanted to try to cut his way through the Confederate army, an idea he later said he thought about (but probably didn't), he would have to back track and take the River Road to reach Grant's army.

Wallace could have taken the river road and arrived closer to the landing. If Wallace had taken the river road he would arrived somewhere around 2-3 P.M. He would have then been able to re-enforce any of the troubled areas. These fresh units might have been enough to prevent the capture of Prentiss’s Sunken Road defenders.

If Wallace had arrived earlier he could have turned the tide of combat on day one. This delay was critical, however, knowing what Wallace knew it was not a bad decision to take the route he best knew.