day as he had lost on the first. There was no serious attempt at pursuit, owing mainly to the heavy rain and the condition of the roads. The losses on both sides had been enormous. On the National side the official figures are: 1,754 killed, 8,408 wounded, 2,885 missing; total, 13,047. On the Confederate side they are: 1,728 killed, 8,012 wounded, 957 missing; total, 10,699. General Grant says: "This estimate must be incorrect. We buried, by actual count, more of the enemy's dead in front of the divisions of McClernand and Sherman alone than are here reported, and four thousand was the estimate of the burial parties for the whole field." At all events, the loss was large enough to gratify the ill-wishers of the American people, who were looking on with grim satisfaction to see them destroy one another. The losses were the same, in round numbers, as at the historic battle of Blenheim, though the number of men engaged was fewer by one-fourth. If we should read in to-morrow's paper that by some disaster every man, woman, and child in the city of Concord, N. H., had been either killed or injured, and in the next day's paper that the same thing had happened in Montgomery, Ala., the loss of life and limb would only equal what took place on the mournful field of Shiloh.
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General Grant, in the first article that he ever wrote for publication, remarks that "the battle of Shiloh, or Pittsburg Landing, has been perhaps less understood, or, to state the case more accurately, more persistently misunderstood, than any other engagement between National and Confederate troops during the entire rebellion. Correct reports of the battle have been published, but all of these appeared long subsequent to the close of the rebellion, and after public opinion had been most erroneously formed." No battle is ever fought that it is not for somebody's interest to misrepresent. In the case of Shiloh there were peculiar and complicated reasons both for intentional misrepresentation and for innocent error. The plans of the commanders on both sides were to some extent thwarted and changed by unexpected events. One commander was killed on the first day, and his admirers naturally speculate upon the different results that might have been attained if he had lived. The ground was so broken as to divide the engagement practically into several separate actions, and what was true of one might not be true of another. The peculiarity of the position also brought together in one place, under the river-bank, all who from fright or demoralization fled to the rear of the National army, which produced upon those who saw them an effect altogether different from that of the usual retreating and straggling across the whole breadth of a battle line. Then there was the circumstance of Buell's army coming up at the end of the first day, and not coming up before that, which could hardly fail to give rise to somewhat of jealousy and recrimination. And finally this action encounters to an unusual extent that criticism which reads by the light of after-events, but forgets that this was wanting to the actors whom it criticises.
The point on which popular opinion was perhaps most widely and persistently wrong was, that the defeat of the first day arose from the fact that Grant's army was completely surprised. Public opinion, throughout the war, was formed in advance of the official reports of generals in three ways. There were many press correspondents with every army, and the main purpose of most of them was to construct an interesting story and get it into print as soon as possible. The National Government adopted the wise policy of giving the armies in the field such mail facilities as would keep the soldiers in close touch with their homes, and they wrote millions of letters every year. All that a soldier needed was some scrap of paper and some sort of pen or pencil. If he happened to have no postage stamp, he had only to mark his missive "Soldier's letter," and it would be carried in the mails to its destination, and the postage collected on delivery. After a battle every surviving soldier was especially anxious to let his family know that he had escaped any casualty, and he naturally filled up his letter with such particulars as had most impressed him in that small part of the field that he had seen, and sometimes with such exaggerated accounts as in the first excitement had reached him from other parts. Finally, the journalists were not few who assumed to be accomplished strategists, and talked learnedly in their editorial columns of the errors of generals and the way that battles should have been fought. And some of them had political reasons for writing up certain generals and writing down certain others.
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| MAP SHOWING ROADS AND POSITION OF CAMPS BEFORE AND DURING THE BATTLE OF SHILOH.. |
A good instance of innocent misapprehension is probably furnished in what Lieutenant-Colonel Graves, of the Twelfth Michigan, wrote: "On Saturday General Prentiss's division was reviewed. After the review Major Powell, of the Twenty-fifth Missouri, came to me and said he saw Butternuts [Confederate soldiers] looking through the underbrush at the parade—about a dozen. Upon the representation of Major Powell and myself, General Prentiss ordered out one company of the Twelfth Michigan as an advance picket. About 8.30 o'clock Captain Johnson reported from the front that he could see long lines of campfires, hear bugle sounds and drums, which I reported to General Prentiss, and he remarked that the company would be taken if left there; that it was merely a reconnoissance of the enemy in force, and ordered the company in. About ten o'clock I went with Captain Johnson to the tent of General Prentiss, and the captain told him what he saw. The general remarked that we need not be alarmed, that everything was all right. To me it did not appear all right. Major Powell, myself, and several other officers went to the headquarters of Colonel Peabody, commanding our brigade, and related to him what had transpired. He ordered out two companies from the Twelfth Michigan and two from the Twenty-fifth Missouri, under command of Major Powell. About three o'clock in the morning the advance of the enemy came up with this body of men, who fought them till daylight, gradually falling back till they met their regiments, which had advanced about fifty rods. There the regiments met the enemy, and fought till overpowered, when we fell back to our color line and re-formed. General Prentiss was so loath to believe that the enemy was in force, that our division was not organized for defence, but each regiment acted upon its own hook, so far as I was able to observe. The point I wish to make is this: that, had it not been for these four companies which were sent out by Colonel Peabody, our whole division would have been taken in their tents, and the day would have been lost. I shall always think that Colonel Peabody saved the battle of Shiloh."
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| ADVANCE OF THE FEDERAL TROOPS ON CORINTH—GENERAL HURLBUT'S DIVISION FORCING THEIR WAY THROUGH THE MUD. |
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| GENERAL ULYSSES S. GRANT. |
Such was the testimony and opinion, undoubtedly honest, of an officer of a green regiment which there for the first time participated in a battle. The truth was, the generals of the National forces were not ignorant of the near approach of the enemy. Reconnoissances, especially in Sherman's front, had shown that. They were only waiting for all their forces to come up to make an attack themselves, and when Buell arrived they did make that attack and were successful. General Prentiss's division, so far from being unorganized, kept its lines, received the shock of battle, and stood up manfully to the work before it until the divisions on both sides of it drew back, leaving its flanks exposed, when the Confederates poured through the gaps, struck it on both flanks at once, and captured a large part of it. On the ground along its line and in its front more men were struck down in an hour than on any other spot of equal extent, in the same time, in the whole war.
The Confederates were successful