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- Over 30 Large Battlefield Maps, all in Color
Shiloh was not only the first major battle of the Civil War in terms of casualties, with the two armies suffering more casualties in the two-day battle than in all of America's previous wars, combined. But, along with the fall of Forts Henry and Donelson, the battle was also one of the most consequential of the war. It all but sealed the Union conquest of the Confederacy in the western theater, soon leading to total control of all the South's major western rivers, thereby splitting of the Confederacy in half at the Mississippi River and guaranteeing Federal control of the border states of Missouri and Kentucky, as well as allowing for Federal occupation of western Tennessee and large parts of Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana.
And not incidentally, the battle was also the great trial-by-fire of the two Union generals - Grant and Sherman - who would eventually lead the Union to final victory.
The Battle of Shiloh can be difficult to follow because it was fought in a semi-jungle by semi-civilians. This was very different from the later battles such as at Gettysburg or Antietam where the armies more or less knew what they were doing and fought in well-organized ranks on open fields. Except for a few West Point graduates at the top of the command structure, almost everyone on the field at Shiloh was new to the business of war - mostly local lawyers and politicians leading tens of thousands of their hometown boys into the gates of hell. What's amazing is the amount of damage these amateurs were able and willing to do to each other in just 18 hours or so of active fighting.
While Shiloh served as an excellent on-the-job training site for many future war leaders, these amateur combatants, fighting deep in the forests and swamps on the remote Tennessee-Mississippi border, certainly left a mess for those of us writers explaining the battle a century or two later. Possibly for that reason, there are comparatively few books written about this battle, and most of the books that are written tend to discuss the politics and battles leading up to Shiloh in such depth that it's not until a hundred pages or so that anyone fires a shot at Shiloh. In this book I've confined the political foreplay to the first chapter. After that we get down to the tactics and the battle itself. I've dispensed with footnotes, since this work is meant to read like a story - a true one - and is not intended to be a scholarly treatise, though I can back up any part of the book with references if needed - almost all of them came from the books listed in the References section
As with all my Civil War books, this one is loaded with maps, photos, and illustrations. The maps and photos, all in color, allow you to see exactly where that location is on the battlefield, how it relates to the overall battlefield, which way the units were facing, which units were to the left or right, and, if their photos are available, what some of the participants looked like, Hopefully, if you're ever on the modern battlefield, you should be able to use these maps to walk the ground, knowing what happened where and when. For that reason, I've included maps in almost every chapter, all big enough to be visible from Pluto. And since there weren't any photos taken during this or any Civil War battle, I've settled for illustrations, many of which were probably drawn by eyewitnesses.
My goal is that you'll come away with a clear understanding of what happened there, as well as a good understanding of what it was like on the ground for the men and boys who fought in the terrible battle of Shiloh.
Jack Kunkel
