The Shiloh Campaign. By STEVEN E. WOODWORTH (ed.). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2009. Pp. vii, 168, $24.95 (hbk), ISBN 0-8093-2892-5
This slim volume foregoes a sweeping narrative account of the battle of Shiloh and looks, instead, to assess the Shiloh campaign from multiple angles and perspectives: Union and Confederate; infantry and navy; commander and common soldier, all help to render a sharper picture of Shiloh than one might otherwise glean from a more conventional monograph. An installment in the Civil War Campaigns in the Heartland series (Southern Illinois University Press), The Shiloh Campaign features essays from leading military historians in the field: Brooks Simpson, Charles Grear, and the late Grady McWhiney (to name but a few). The book helps to further the oft-posited claim of military historian Steven E. Woodworth, who argues through this series and other published works for the centrality of the Western theatre of operations in deciding the military outcome of the American Civil War. Shiloh, in the words of Woodworth, merits further inquiry because the battle claimed more American lives in two days than all the battles of previous American wars combined. Strategically, the battle “was also very likely the Confederacy’s last, best hope to turn the tide in the West and save the Southern heartland for the rebellion” (1). The Confederacy, of course, failed in its efforts to reverse the falls of forts Henry and Donelson, it failed to safeguard Nashville, and the Federals’ opening of the Tennessee River allowed Union forces in the West to threaten Corinth (a major rail junction that lay at the center of the Mobile-Ohio and the Memphis-Charleston lines). The South never recovered from the strategic and tactical setbacks suffered in spring of 1862.
The Shiloh Campaign features seven chapters, the first of which details the generalship of Albert Sidney Johnston. Praised and beloved in the Confederacy, perhaps no southern military commander held the same power as Johnston to bolster morale in the field or on the home front. John Lundberg reinterprets Johnston’s retreat from Tennessee to Shiloh, and shows that Johnston’s handling of the campaign “evinced all the potential credited to him by Davis” (8). According to Lundberg, Johnston erred in distributing responsibilities and command decisions to his corps commanders, errors he attempted to remedy at the front through his courageous, if impetuous, leadership. Lundberg defends Johnston from critical historians and holds to the view that this general’s death seriously “lengthened the odds against Confederate success in the West” (25).
Timothy Smith offers a valuable contribution to broader studies of Civil War memory with his interpretation of the Hornets’ Nest in chapter three. Regarded by soldiers who fought there as the fiercest of all combat experienced at Shiloh, Smith demonstrates that this legend owes its origin and perpetuation to those veterans of the Hornet’s Nest best positioned to tell story of the engagement after the war. Smith assesses the broader Shiloh historiography, the written accounts of soldiers, and casualty and burial data to revise the myth of the Hornets’ Nest, a position he considers largely inconsequential to the final outcome of the battle. Gary Joiner shifts focus from soldiers and generals to the big guns that helped to achieve Federal success on the Tennessee River: timberclads A. O. Tyler and Lexington. Joiner shows that despite the limitations of the gunboats’ munitions, the vessels nonetheless took a major psychological toll on Confederate positions at Shiloh. Gunners aboard the vessels “hosed” their targets—they lobbed shells at incremental trajectories, then reversed those trajectories—in order to force the enemy to relocate and reposition his troops through the night. Such shelling inflicted minimal damage, but it deprived Confederate forces of rest and helped to disorganize Confederate movements. Countless Confederate officers (including general Beauregard, whose generalship receives an analytical thrashing from Grady McWhiney in chapter six) mentioned the danger and immense power of the gunboats in their official battle reports. Thus, according to Joiner, “the big naval guns and the terror they wrought immeasurably multiplied Union operational effectiveness.” Joiner concludes, much as he argues in Mr. Lincoln’s Brown Water Navy: The Mississippi Squadron, that in the Western theatre “the Union army and navy worked together…as a very effective joint operations team.”
The Shiloh Campaign assembles an impressive array of robust military history. Its appeal seems sure to lie, not surprisingly, with a readership concerned largely with units, movements, tactics, and the soul of battle. Beginners may look to a more conventional narrative of Shiloh for an introduction to its key players, outcomes, and broader significance, but laypersons in the field of Civil War studies can certainly stand to benefit from the scope and perspective of these pieces. Taken altogether, they help the reader to understand the complexity and multi-potentialed facets of the battle of Shiloh.
MITCHELL G. KLINGENBERG
Texas Christian University
m.klingenberg@tcu.edu