"I would not have the anniversaries of our victories celebrated, nor those of our defeats made fast days and spent in humiliation and prayer; but I would like to see truthful history written."--U. S. Grant
On April 6-7, 1862 a battle was fought in Tennessee that prefigured just how bloody and terrible the American Civil War would be, and how, and by whom, it would be won.
The war had been going on for nearly a year, and there had been a number of battles already. However, even the notorious rout at the First Battle of Bull Run had not been as ghastly as Shiloh proved to be. The Union had 28,450 troops at Bull Run, and suffered 2,650 casualties (this includes the total of killed, wounded, captured or missing). The South had 32,230 troops, and 1,981 casualties. Fewer than one in ten of those at Bull Run were casualties, and of those about 850 were killed. Contrast this with Shiloh, where the combined troop numbers were about 110,000, and casualities were just under 24,000, or roughly 1 in 4--and just under three thousand were killed. In one battle. For a bit of perspective the total number of U.S. soldiers killed in Afghanistan is just under two thousand.
Initially the war had seemed to be going the way the South expected, but in January 1862 that started to change. The first major victory for the Union forces came at Mill Springs, Kentucky, where General George H. Thomas defeated Confederate troops under Crittenden and Zollicoffer. Casualties were realtively few, especially by later standards, although among them was Zollicoffer, who was killed, and Crittenden's career (he was accused of being drunk when he had to assume command). The next Southern disasters were in February, when Grant's troops took Fort Henry, and then Fort Donelson. The latter pretty certainly fell quickly due to the incompetent leadership of a pair of "political" generals, who fled to safety leaving the capitulation to a poor regular army general, an old friend of Grant's. All of this meant that the Union had an excellent chance of destroying the hold of the Confederacy on the state of Tennessee and had driven them out of the territory of Kentucky (which had not seceeded, but had been invaded). The Confederate general in charge of the troops in the area, Albert Sidney Johnston, recognized his bad position and had withdrawn from Nashville and had forces concentrated at Corinth, Misssissippi to the South, and Murfreesboro, in eastern Tennessee. Grant intended to go after Johnston's forces in Corinth, and headed down the Tennessee River from Forts Henry and Donelson. They had reached Pittsburg Landing and camped there to await General D. C. Buell's forces before proceeding down to Corinth, about 20 miles away. Grant was so intent on attack that it never crossed his mind the Confederates might come after him instead of the other way 'round. On April 6th Johnston launched his surprise attack, and during the course of a hard fought day the Confederates had a good deal of success, but did not succeed in routing the Union. By the end of the day they had captured the bivouac area, and tents, formerly occupied by Sherman, and had also captured General Prentiss and over 2000 of his men. The fighting stopped at sunset, and the Confederate commanders moved into Sherman's quarters.
There were a mass of disorganized Union "stragglers" milling around at Pittsburg Landing, which looked pretty bad. However, also arriving at the Landing that afternoon and evening were the first of Buell's troops. Furthermore, Lew Wallace's division had gotten lost the preceeding day, but finally showed up, ready to fight after that day's fight was over. So Grant would have fresh troops the following day. He was confident that they would defeat the Confederates. Furthermore, the Confederate commander General Johnston had been killed in mid-afternoon, leaving Beauregard in charge--although Beauregard probably thought he should have been in charge to start with, the death of the commander throws everything off. Also, the Confederate cavalry genius Nathan Bedford Forrest had done a bit of reconnoitering in the evening of the sixth and realized that Buell's men had started arriving, but he was unable to find anyone to report this to.
It turned out that Grant's seemingly irrational confidence was justified: the next day, April 7th, the Union troops did indeed defeat the Confederates. Due to exhaustion they were unable to mount an effective pursuit, but they had won a victory, one that was celebrated in the North, before it began to sink in just how high the cost had been. And the South began to realize that the North would fight, and fight very hard indeed. Their conviction that the Southern fighting man was worth 3 or more of those money-grubbing Yankees had finally met reality, it was a bitter pill to swallow.
Here in 1862 were some fields and a house or two; now there are a national cemetery and other improvements.--Ambrose Bierce, an infantryman at Shiloh
To honor Grant's request for a truthful history, I would like to provide a cautionary tale about just how problematic discovering historical truth can be. To do this I am going to examine one of the most famous anecdotes about the battle, which was recounted by the well-known and well-respected Civil War historian Bruce Catton. In his book, Grant Moves South, he tells us this:
Late that night tough Sherman came to see him. Sherman had found himself, in the heat of the enemy's fire that day, but now he was licked; as far as he could see, the important next step was "to put the river between us and the enemy, and recuperate," and he hunted up Grant to see when and how the retreat could be arranged. He came on Grant, at last, at midnight or later, standing under the tree in the heavy rain, hat slouched down over his face, coat-collar up around his ears, a dimly-glowing lantern in his hand, cigar clenched between his teeth. Sherman looked at him; then, "moved," as he put it later, "by some wise and sudden instinct" not to talk about retreat, he said: "Well, Grant, we've had the devil's own day, haven't we?"
Grant said "Yes," and his cigar glowed in the darkness as he gave a quick, hard puff at it, "Yes. Lick 'em tomorrow, though."
The line attributed to Grant became so much a part of common knowldge that you can find it scattered all over the internet, sometimes with attribution to Catton, sometimes not. It is something that "everyone just knows"--but is it true? That is to say, did it actually happen? How do we know? And does it matter?
If I were to say that it is true, because Catton was an important historian, and if he said it, it must be so, then I would be guilty of establishing truth by authority. This is, or ought to be, a no-no. Informed opinion can be given more weight than un-informed opinion, but that does not mean one must accept it if there is good reason to doubt the truth of the authoritative assertion (and what one wants to be true is NOT a good reason). In this case I started to wonder because I was reading the memoirs of both Sherman and Grant, and that story is not mentioned in either book. So just where did Catton get the story? Unfortunately while I have several of Catton's books, I don't have the one in question, so the obvious thing to do was google the quote. While most of the results simply repeat the quote, sometimes a bit garbled, or paraphrase Catton's story without saying where the story came from, I found a couple of other people who doubted the story. One is a Civil War blogger called "67th Tigers" who believed the quote bogus, having found a citation in a piece by Charles Wingate in 1898, and no trace of it before then, and so believed this was the source used by Catton.
We can assume this is the ultimate source of the soundbite, and we have to assume as Catton was not big on citations....
Thus it appears that the phrase was invented by Wingate ca. 1898, used without citation or verification by Catton in 1960 and has been promulgated unquestioned ever since.--67th Tigers
I found this reasoning repeated in several other places (or perhaps simply copied, there's a lot of plagiarism on the Internet). There's just one problem: that little word "assume"--I'm not prepared to assume anything without a bit of checking. The relevant Wikipedia articles cite secondary sources, all of which are from publications more recent than Catton's book.
Doing history is about like conducting a trial, the evidence is in the form of witness testimony, physical objects, and sometimes the testimony of experts. And just like in a criminal trial these things can be problematic: experts might be wrong, physical objects can be tampered with, and eye witness testimony is notoriously unreliable. The more time that passes between the event and the testimony the more unreliable the testimony becomes. Most of us can remember quite clearly what we had for lunch yesterday. Unless something unusual happened, remembering lunch a year ago is unlikely. In history such things as letters and personal memoirs fill the role of eye witness testimony, with documents--such as posted orders and reports, and contemporary news accounts--being something like a witness and something like a physical object (and thus can be wrong because of lying, error, or tampering). These sorts of things are primary sources. Secondary sources are accounts of the events written by those who have, one hopes, carefully gone over the primary evidence and organized and vetted it for the reader. So I decided to check Catton's book myself to see if he did consult a primary source--and if so what--and walked down to the local college library and got a copy of the book. Unlike the assumption made by 67th Tigers the relevant passage is footnoted. Here's Catton's authority for the story:
p. 242, fn. 41, Interview with Sherman in the Washington Post, quoted in the Army & Navy Journal for December 30, 1893.
Obviously Catton did not check the Washington Post to see if the interview was quoted accurately, nor did he ascertain just when the interview was done. However, since the Post was not founded until 1877 we can be sure that the interview with Sherman happened well after the events being reported. Furthermore, Sherman wrote his memoirs in 1875, and revised them in 1885, and the story is not included in the revised edition. Here's what he had to say about his conversations with Grant on the 6th:
He ordered me to be ready to assume the offensive in the morning, saying that, as he had observed at Fort Donelson at the crisis of the battle, both sides seemed defeated, and whoever assumed the offensive was sure to win. General Grant also explained to me that General Buell had reached the bank of the Tennessee River opposite Pittsburg Landing, and was in the act of ferrying his troops across at the time he was speaking to me.
From all I have read, which is referenced to primary sources, it is clear that Grant was quite confident of victory, and that late that first night he was under a tree in the pouring rain--although whether he was standing is a little doubtful, as his ankle had been severely injured when his horse fell on it and he was using crutches. My guess is that Catton came across the story of the midnight conversation and decided it perfectly, and dramatically, summarized Grant's and Sherman's respective states of mind that night, and used it without further checking. I believe Sherman did talk to Grant, and that Grant reassured him. Indeed, Grant mentions talking to Sherman, and said he told him the story of the recent victory at Donelson. I would guess that after years of telling the story--Sherman was a great non-stop talker--Sherman may well have embellished things to the high polish presented to the Post interviewer. Without access to the archives of the Washington Post it is impossible to know for sure exactly what was said in the interview, nor to guess just when it took place, except that it was at least 15 years after the fact, probably more. In essence the story represents truth, but whether it is literally true or not, well, it's a great story.
Finally, does it matter if it is "really" true? In one Civil War forum a doubter was told he shouldn't "sweat the small stuff." When it comes to things that are supposed to be based on facts, such as journalism and history, then one does need to get the details right. A work of art can present the essence of truth, without being literally accurate, and be admired. But a bit of history or a report of an event is obligated to have ALL the facts correct, in so far as that is humanly possible. If one isn't committed to getting the facts accurately reported one isn't really an historian or a reporter, but a propagandist.