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welcome to books of our time brought to you by the massachusetts school of law
and seen nationwide
today we shall discuss shiloh eighteen sixty two
the book discusses the civil war in general and the battle of shiloh
in particular
its author is winston groom
acknowledged widely to be one of america's
finest writers
he is a pulitzer prize finalist and he's the author
of the famous book
and movie
forrest gump
joining me today to discuss his work is winston groom
usually as you know my guest
joins me in the studio at the massachusetts school of law in andover
massachusetts
but because of scheduling difficulties for this interview
it's being conducted long-distance
with mr. groom in alabama
and me in andover
and i am of course the regular host of books of our time dean lawrence r. velvel
of the massachusetts school of law
winston thank you very much
uh... for being with us glad you are were sitting for this interview yes 0:01:21.410,0:01:24.050 and uh let me begin
by quoting
uh... you called it the epagraph i think
you find this in a lot of books
but rarely do i uh... have I read one as
striking
as the one you've put in the front of your book i'm gonna read it it's just four
lines
for romans in rome's quarrel spared neither land nor gold
nor son
nor wife
nor limb nor life
in the brave old days of old
and that's from macaulay
uh... on the roman civil
wars maybe you could explain
uh... the relationship
of that quote to the american civil war
and perhaps
to the battle of shiloh in particular
well i think it's generally
acknowledged that
uh... civil wars are the most terrible of wars
because
you do pit brother against brother friend against friend and for some reason
the animosity i don't know why that is
but the animosity in civil wars becomes
quite terrible
uh... it certainly did in the american civil war
and of course at shiloh you did it was one of the
the battles that did in fact pit brother against brother because you had
uh... many regiments from kentucky
and from
uh missouri
uh... who were
uh... both regiments in the confederate army and regiments in the union army
and
it just there's just something
particularly
mm satanic almost about
fighting your own kind about eating your own dead so to speak
when mccaulay speaks here
sparing neither land nor gold
nor son nor wife nor limb nor life shiloh as i understand it
was the first time that grant and sherman understood
that that's what this war was going to be like
yeah it I mean I think it it certainly instructed them that
uh... because uh... before shiloh i think everyone
uh... just about everybody
uh assumed that there was going to be one great battle and that was going to end the war
and uh...
whether it was in the east or the west or both
and events in the east and shiloh in the west
certainly demonstrated that this was not going to be so
that uh there were going to be many many battles like shiloh and shiloh was quite terrible it was an enormous
shock on the american
public on both sides
yep shiloh was april sixth if I remember
of eighteen sixty two yes 0:04:02.489,0:04:04.059 and and antietem
which was just as bad and had certain
uh graphical similarities on the battlefield some
there were some major differences
uh... was september seventeenth may june july august
five months later five months and ten days later
and these two battles
were unlike any both of them were unlike anything americans had ever seen in
terms of
casualties and
just sheer horrificness
well before shiloh
uh... the only major battle in the civil war had been
the battle of first bull run or manassas
and there were I think forty five
hundred casualties and
that was terrible to the american people on both sides
but comes along shiloh there were twenty four thousand casualties
and people were were
horrified they couldn't imagine that many
and especially when you consider the the relative population at that time
uh... it would probably today translated I'm just making a guess into
two hundred thousand casualties or more right in one fight right
something like the back of the bulge perhaps
uh you mentioned manassas you know
here's a little-known
fact that should go into ripley's believe it or not
the only battle in this civil war named after a jewish person is the battle of
manassas the guy owned a tavern or something uh there
uh you know one time i was in washington uh…I was a journalist there
but I had been asked to be on a panel at the university of virginia along with willie morris
that was my late great friend
and so i drove him down there we were on with arthur ashe
great tennis player
I've forgotten why we were but anyway we were driving down willie was a great fan of the civil war history
and
i was driving on the interstate and I said willie here's manassas there was big sign that said
manassas
he said was that first manassas or second manassas
there are
four protagonists at shiloh
to whom you pay a a great deal of attention of course there were many protagonist
but
you pay a lot of attention to grant and sherman
and albert sydney johnston who was killed at shiloh
and beauregard who was johnston's second-in-command and took over
after johnston was killed
maybe you could just briefly
go through the
life and military histories and the views
of each of these four people starting with uh... ulysses simpson grant
uh... well there
there've been many books written about each one of them
yes indeed but
uh... surprisingly few about sherman
that's true he was the most fascinating of all those characters I think
but grant uh...
he was
a most unlikely
candidate to be
ultimately the commander in chief of the union army and president of the united states for that matter I mean
when they sent him to west point
uh... the people of his his town said they were embarrassed
that they had sent such a creature
uh... he he was essentially an indifferent student he was at the bottom
of his class not the total bottom but he was down there
and uh...
he did in fact perform very well in the but he was a quartermaster
uh... they wouldn't
give him a
top infantry or cavalry jobs
but he was very brave and then he
of course continued in the army and he wound up out in california
uh... drinking a lot and it got him in trouble and he essentially had to resign from the
army and then he
sort of bumbled along in a series of jobs
real estate salesman
failed farmer
and he wound up working for his father in a leather goods store in ohio
and uh...
and when the war broke out he he
could not seem to get a commission in the regular army but the
governor of the state gave him a commission
to train recruits and he did it so well that they gave him more recruits
until finally he had what constituted a brigade
and that required a brigadier general
and suddenly grant is a general now general when once you've reached the rank of general you're
up in the
the stellar
group of commanders it's
quite different from
jump from colonel
to general and general's have essentially commands of their own they do what they
want to do within reason
and grant clearly saw
uh... where some of the other union commanders did not see that ah...
an offensive forceful move
uh…out of
cairo illinois which was the sort of jumping off point
uh... down somewhere down the mississippi
river valley either the mississippi river or the tennessee river one of those rivers
grant was determined
that he was going to have an amphibious operation and this was almost unheard-of
uh... but he got along well with the navy and
um... they they had the transport to take his army
hundreds of the vessels and they had iron clad boats to protect them
sherman was brilliant
uh... I read his writings and i marvel at them he's sort of like lindburgh he really had a
gift for gab or a gift for writing
and
he was a very smart guy he was an intellectual
uh... but he essentially
he didn't show it
uh...
I mean he was gruff
he he wasn't a pretentious intelectual
sherman uh...
he married well and
but he to got out of the army uh...
because he couldn't make a living in it
wound up he was a president of a bank that failed and then he was a
president of a streetcar company but when the war came along he immediately
was made a colonel
in the regular army and fought at
uh... manassas first manassas
and wound up
uh... unfortunately
make making a statement that got him in a lot of trouble
the secretary of war was visiting his command in kentucky
and the secretary of war asked him how many people do you think it will take to subdue
this
uh... rebellion in the mississippi river valley and sherman told him he thought it would take two
hundred and fifty thousand men
there weren't two hundred and fifty thousand men in the entire army at that point
and
and this news got back through the secretary of war
to the newspapers uh…having the secretary of war suggest that this
was a crazy idea and the newspapers seized on that and said sherman was crazy
and that he was insane and so on and it literally drove him
from his command and he
he wound up getting his command back uh... as a quartermaster essentially
what grant used to be but he was so good that grant they they they functioned very
well together and grant then made him his second in command
uh... at at shiloh
and we go to sidney johnston albert sidney johnston he was sort of the model
of the american soldier he was a tall handsome striking man with a big handlebar mustache uh very good record at west
point good record in the mexican war
um... he was destined probably to command the army
he and lee
or lee
somewhere
but uh when the war came along he was man he was from kentucky
and he was then living he had made his home in texas he was in california
on an assignment but he went with the south
uh people expected great things of him uh...
jefferson davis did
uh... i think sydney johnston perhaps was not as
as wise a commander as everybody thought he was a doggone good division commander
whether or not he could command an army
the question is became mute because he was killed
and his job was taken over by beauregard
who talked a good game but turned out to be overly cautious
and as a result he
backed away from what many people thought could have been a victory at shiloh
um... and he still gets
a certain amount of disregard
uh... in the south because of that
he had made his name as the man in charge of bombarding fort sumter
yes well it well also at first manassas
and at first manassas yes
also the battle of bull run he was one of the two
he and uh johnston were the two generals there and beauregard was credited actually with the
victory right 0:13:00.190,0:13:02.510 that was joseph johnston
and then beauregard was second in command under albert sydney johnston
who as you say
was jefferson davis' beau ideal of a soldier
it but beauregard had made a pest of himself there in richmond after the war and
he'd gotten on uh
jefferson davis' bad side
and it has been suggested that he was sent west to get him out he was a burr under
davis' saddle he was writing letters to the newspaper and things like that
he was uh... ejected from richmond and sent west
to annoy johnston you know it always has fascinated me winston in that
i know of no other war
probably my ignorance
in which generals
and other high officers
felt free to disregard orders
and or to say that the people above them were out of their minds
you just don't get that very you don't get that very much today 0:13:54.850,0:14:01.130 and I don't know any other war where you did there was some of that in world war one that I remember in particular in the british 0:14:01.130,0:14:02.330 army
uh... because it was so tragically bogged down in flanders and on the western
front
and but
these generals they would not do it publicly oh no you'd be
court-martialed if you did that publicly but there was a lot of sniping
it's pretty much open in the civil war people knew about it as i understand it
and certainly there's been a lot of writing about it
you talk in the book you explain
the uh...
antagonisms
and how they manifested themselves
between north and south in the eighteen forties and eighteen fifties
maybe you could go through that a little bit
since
that seems to me to be a period of history that our history courses
seem to ignore rather considerably
it's an extremely complex
time in american history I think there was slavery in all of the the colonies
I think except massachusetts
and there may have been slavery there in the beginning
uh... after the revolution
the state's uh.. many of the northern states began to abolish slavery
uh...
it was not abolished in the south
it was on the way out in the south I think because it was uneconomical
uh...
but all of a sudden came a long cotton
and cotton was extremely labor intensive
and essentially you couldn't have planted cotton without slaves
there there were no tractors of course
and cotton was so huge it became so huge so quickly
you have to remember that by eighteen fifty nine eighteen sixty cotton accounted for
eighty percent of all the trade revenues of the united states it was enormous and it wasn't just
a few planters
who were wealthy everybody was getting rich on cotton the guy that ran the steamboat
the lawyers doctors
the druggists the guy who owned a warehouse
uh... all of these people the entire south was driven
by cotton
i think many people in the south knew they essentially were riding on the back of the
tiger
with slavery
but they didn't know what to do about it
and the abolitionists came along
beginning in the eighteen twenties uh...
from new england
and
they essentially preached that
uh... slavery was
uh...
an inefficient thing and it should be abolished but
then
after four five years they began to preach that it was a moral wrong
and uh
so there was a lot of name calling
and the name calling was not one sided it went back and forth I mean
people wrote pamphlets in those days and
uh…and
you also have to understand that the people
back then they didn't go around calling names like they do today because somebody would
challenge you to a duel or something
they were still and you had to be rather careful and people were shocked by this and astonished and it escalated
and escalated
the war of the newspapers
then of course the telegraph came along where you got instantaneous news all of a
sudden
by the time the
eve of the civil war
uh...
everybody was so
angry
that that it almost immediately that there was a
true
hatred between the north and the south
as a matter of fact
there was a theory that was
rather popular actually i think jefferson davis subscribed to it
uh... admiral semmes and some of the southerners
that that what they called the yankees were an entirely different race of people from
that uh... they had been
descended
uh... from the roundheads of cromwell in england and uh... disturbed the peace
in england by murdering king
charles and then they
disturbed the peace of holland when they went there then they came back uh
went to new england they were humorless
they were money grubbing and so forth this was
uh…the theory as opposed to the southerners this theory went
who were descendants of the glorious
the restoration
uh... and they landed in jamestown in virginia and there was some truth in that
that matter of fact my ancestors
landed in jamestown they came they migrated to north carolina
then from north carolina when slavery came in they migrated
to the interior states alabama and georgia and mississippi
that's sort of a brief history of it uh... the uh... rancor between
the states that
almost
by the eighteen sixty could have been soled by nothing else but war
you point out that
southern what they call southern yeoman the small farmers
they had been trained to think that the northerners were their enemies and
evil
so they fought like banshees in the confederate armies even though they didn't own
slaves
and to a significant extent didn't have that much at stake although as you point
out the entire southern economy was pitched around the plantation so they
had something at stake
well they did I mean even the small farmers they they could grow a bale of cotton
and make several hundred dollars which was worth lot of money in those days
uh... but
yeah i they had they had been raised to to
think of yankees as their enemy and when the uh... the northern armies began to
invade they began
they thought of this as an invading army the the very much like uh...
you know france would have thought of the germans as an invading army 0:19:36.790,0:19:41.330 uh... shelby foote used to to love to tell a story about a
union colonel who was questioning a uh…confederate private after having captured him
and he asked him why
why these southerners were fighting
why are you fighting us we're your fellow and he said we're fighting you because you're here
right you know what what a story that i had
no idea about before i read it in your book
revolves around the fact that a senator from uh... ohio named
benjamin wade
who was a uh... famous or some would say infamous and notorious abolitionist
and with along with charles sumner was one of the people in the senate who used
to castigate
mercilessly verbally
you know the the southern uh...
people and the slave holders and so on
that nobody would challenge him they would challenge other people
but nobody would challenge him to a duel the south had what was called the
code duello if I remember correctly that's it 0:20:34.799,0:20:39.330 and uh... nobody would challenge him because he was a crack rifle shot
and they knew if they challenged him he had the choice of weapons
and he would choose a rifle
that's it you know that's all she wrote
he was he was a baiter he baited the the southern fire eaters
called them all sorts of names
and dared them to challenge him
uh... so you did get all these political
attempts at compromise they all failed
the hatred grew
and there are those who say that the politicians are fundamentally
responsible for the war because instead of trying to compromise
they acted
as they acted do you have an opinion on that
when lincoln was elected
the problem with was that
the south didn't believe him he said
I don't want to disturb slavery in the southern states where it exists
he said i do want to limit it
from expansion
but the southerners didn't believe him and one of the reasons they didn't believe him was because of
all this abolitionist literature
that was coming out of the republican party
and
the literature coming out of the republican party didn't square with what lincoln promised
and they thought that lincoln was basically an abolitionist
and he was going to take their slaves of course
some of these southerners had a tremendous amount of capital tied up in slaves
lincoln actually had
suggested that the the
the government purchase the slaves but nobody paid any attention to that either
it had just gotten so far that
everything seemed to be exaggerated
and
the south finally had had just made it's decision when lincoln was elected
south carolina was the first state to secede
and then the southern the deep south state and then when uh
lincoln called for volunteers
to put down the rebellion virginia
tennessee the northern southern states
began
to secede and
it was sort of too late to stop it i think the politicians might have
stopped it somehow
uh... but
lincoln was determined the south sent a delegation to lincoln to try to make it a
peaceful
seperation
and lincoln wouldn't see them because he was gonna brook no separation
southern planters
as you were indicating
had so much
money tied up in slaves
that uh...
you know they were among the wealthiest people in fact i think they were the wealthiest
people in the united states
pierce butler of south carolina and wade hampton and wade hampton's family
these were immensely wealthy people back in those days were they not oh sure they
were of course in the north you had uh...
especially in new england
you had these industrialists and they were quite wealthy as well but
wade hampton
you know had uh..I think ten thousand slaves or something
an enormous number
you know up until the time of shiloh
what was the state of war and the thinking about military strategy
including albert sidney johnston's line
in kentucky to the mississippi river lincoln was very very distressed
at the way the war was progressing
uh... both in the east and the west uh...
in the west in particular he wanted somebody to do something and hillock wouldn't do it
he was extremely cautious and he saw
ten confederates behind every tree
uh... lincoln
uh... kept prodding him and prodding him and he got nowhere
then grant
more or less on his own
went down the river and he captured fort henry and fort donelson
on the uh...
tennessee uh... and the cumberland rivers
respectively
that opened up an enormous highway into the south
by river navigation when you could put
uh... three hundred troops on each troop transport you had a hundred troop
transports or more
and steam down these rivers and land them anywhere you want into the heart of the south
so that was a
great encouragement
right
on the eve of the battle
uh grant had assembled uh…after fort donelson and fort henry
uh... he went
pushed further south
and was intending to destroy
albert sydney johnston's army
which had after the uh... the battle of
fort donelson fort henry had moved
all the way back from the kentucky border
to the tennessee the lower tennessee border
moved the line of battle
and they had assembled at corinth mississippi
which is
about I believe twenty miles roughly from
from shiloh
shiloh was selected all but by accident uh...
sherman
had been sent down there to destroy the railroad the southern railroad because it was to keep them
from
moving troops back and forth from the east to the west
he
accomplished virtually none of that because
the river rose up on him and he almost got drowneded and so he
they didn't know what to do so they went back and they found this
plateau
uh it was called pittsburg landing it was a
hog and cotton landing
a very poor uh... area there
maybe twelve square miles
and it was bounded by the river on one side and a swamp on the other side
it's sort of a cornucopia I described it more or less of a triangle
and but but it did have it had fresh water
and it had some
uh... areas that were suitable for army encampment they began to
grant began to assemble his army there uh... sherman was sort of the man on the
spot
grant had his headquarters
back about nine miles from a little town called savannah
uh... there was a
uh... union sympathizer there
mr. cherry
and he had a mansion
right there on the water
and so grant
establishes for some reason I don't know why he wasn't with his men
had better control from there or something
or maybe just more comfortable for him
i've always sort of suspected the latter
living in this guy's mansion beat camping out on pittsburgh landing
is the land around shiloh
winston anything like
the land around vicksburg
in the sense of the ravines and the cut-up nature of it and all that
that yeah it's a junior vicksburg it's not as bad as vicksburg
vicksburg
i think one old soldier described it he said when god had gotten through making the earth
he had a lot of old scraps left over
and he threw 'em down on vicksburg
because vicksburg is just one big ravine after the other that river
has carved out so much around there over the eons
uh shiloh
was not the same kind of terrain but but much
the excavations weren't as deep
but they were there and it was heavily wooded and broken by farm fields
uh...
a handful of
of farmers settlers in there
and i think there there were probably some fields that were created by these giant tornadoes that blow through there
every so often
but essentially it was a wooded area
cut up by streams and
some ravines and
broken by these farm fields
and it made it
really the the the
it was better much better for defense than it was
for attack
i have seen the land around vicksburg and to somebody who's never seen
anything like that
this is just staggering
so shiloh is kind of a minor league vicksburg I can understand you know a
little better after having seen vicksburg
what it might be like
you know to go back to for just a moment
you were talking about grants use of the rivers to go south
and uh... you you pointed out in the book that ah... the union navy
which built all kinds of what were called timber clads and then tin clads and then finally the iron clads
that it
used to go down those rivers and bombard bridges and bombard
the shore and so forth
it struck me that
in grant's conception those rivers were very much like
the way we regard interstate highways today
or the way the germans
uh... regarded their autobahns hitler regarded the autobahns
in the nineteen thirties as
routes for moving people back and forth you know from one front to another
in this case it was in the case of the civil wars
a route to go south
or you know in those days you really had to modern means of transportation one was
railroad
and the other was the steamboat
and
other than that you just you had to fight it through with wagons and you
know
that was to move an army
that way took a long time
but you could move an army overnight
by steamboat 'cause steamboat you know could go around the clock
they could go two hundred miles a day if it got the water these big iron clads were
virtually indestructible they were
huge boats they fished one out of the uh... river there down there by
vicksburg
and made it into uh
re-did it and it's in the park there and if you look at it it's a it's a monstrous thing a
hundred
seventy feet long and
that there were virtually no cannons that the south had that could
uh... that well they did have a few at fort donelson but it wasn't
didn't have enough
to uh... stop these things they were they could go all the way to the south and blow everything to bits if
they wanted to
shiloh itself today
i gather from you've said
is pretty much in
pristine
form it's as it was
a hundred and fifty years ago as opposed to say fredericksburg and chancellorsville
and even gettysburg for that matter
but i gather that *** pittsburg landing today shiloh today
is still way out in the boonies and there's not been much development around it
shiloh is one of the I think
finest preserved of all the civil war battlefields that and vicksburg 'cause they got to vicksburg
early
uh... at the end of the nineteenth-century and
beginning of the twentieth century they bought up all the land
and that that was a big help
do you do you
believe the story or agree with the story
that at vicksburg there was a confederate
what they called in those days sharpshooters today we would call them
snipers
who had
who had grant in his sights and something prevented him from pulling
pulling the trigger
you know you know why snipers are called snipers by the way
no i don't know
the snipe is the most difficult bird to shoot back in the old days
of the market hunters
when this was in europe in
england we called them sharpshooters over here it wasn't until the first world war they were called snipers
but these guys were market hunters and they didn't like to waste a lot of shots
but the snipe is a valuable market bird
and other hunters would be sitting there at the at the market
uh... having sold their whatever they'd shot and they'd see this guy come by with a string of 0:32:09.460,0:32:10.630 snipe and they'd say
†here goes a sniper
that means he was a crack shot
that that bird that snipe
will corkscrew and stuff
interesting little side line
yeah there's a lot of interesting
history which i have read
about the development of the kentucky rifle or
called the pennsylvania rifle and it was by
dutch and german immigrants
to those parts of the country who
were fundamentally responsible for
the development of the long range highly accurate american rifle
used in the eighteen hundreds
yeah they were good metal workers yes yeah 0:32:44.730,0:32:46.870 davis's strategy
you might compare I mean one might compare this with hitler's
one might contrast it with hitler's
strategy in defending what the germans called feasting europa which meant the
european fortress you know
davis
felt you could not permit any
inroads anywhere you had to stop them at
quote the water's edge so to speak
uh... everywhere whereas you know hitler they pulled back and they waited to see
where the allies come in and so on
but davis's strategy was
well it was an impassable strategy wasn't it what's interesting about it was he was a military
man he was a west point graduate he had been the secretary of war the US secretary of war
uh... and he had always been on the committee's in the congress
uh... military affairs so he should have probably known better than
that but on the other hand
he was suddenly forced to be a politician because his big interest
and he knew he knew the difficulties he faced
his his
greatest task as he saw it was to bring england and france into this conflict
and it was his mindset
that in order to be a nation
uh... you had to be able to defend your territory all of it
that if you had these big union armies coming down into the deep in your territory
these european countries are gonna say well these people can't control they're not a nation they're
just a bunch of rebels
and so that was his theory
and he operated on it until it was too late 0:34:14.879,0:34:19.859 there were southerners as i understand it who said
apropos of a differing theory I guess
that the north can never conquer the south because the
the amount of territory to be conquered is equivalent to the uh…to europe and
the atlantic ocean to the ural mountains in russia
whoa that's a lot of territory to have to conquer it certainly was 0:34:39.079,0:34:41.339 why did halleck uh
relieve grant of command the first time
and came close to arresting him and in fact got a letter from mcclellan
saying you are authorized to arrest grant
well it I mean nobody knows exactly
uh... but I think all the reading that i've done i think halleck was jealous
the first time was after fort donelson
uh...
and halleck had been sending messages
uh... demanding to know things like uh
what is the status of your troops how many
what's your morning report look like these kind of things
and he got no response from grant
and he became angry
and he'd heard rumors that grant had gone to drinking
um...
again
and so he wrote mcclellan complaining
but i think
some it had to do with
uh...
grant got all the credit for taking fort henry and fort donelson
and halleck is sitting back in
in uh... uh... illinois riding a desk
and he didn't get any credit
and so
uh... he
took grant out of the picture temporarily and gave the army to cs smith
and uh...
then he restored grant actually lincoln was the guy who restored grant because
all these rumors ultimately cameo lincoln
and lincoln essentially told halleck at that point
uh
well he told
some of his cabinet
he said I can't spare that man he fights talking about grant 0:36:24.279,0:36:28.460 uh... and he told halleck to put up or shut up if you've got a charge you want to make against general grant
make it if you don't restore him and he did in fact restore
him to command
didn't halleck
send james mcpherson same name as the current as the current 0:36:41.249,0:36:44.079 great author of the civil war
halleck sent him to spy on grant and later
uh... lincoln sent an editor
who would become a major figure in the department in the defense department
they called it I don't know what they called it then today we call it the defense department
named uh dana charles dana yeah charles dana 0:37:00.879,0:37:05.549 to spy on grant and the irony was that both mcpherson and dana in turn
became great uh... followers of grant uh great aficionados of grant
oh yeah they were they were his closest advisors
behind him
and extremely uh... helpful to him yeah 0:37:18.189,0:37:22.729 didn't mcpherson didn't don't you say that mcpherson actually
suggested and drew up the plans for the attacks on uh... forts henry and forts donelson and
fort henry
yeah I think he did I mean he was an engineer that's who grant would have
consulted as a matter of fact i think it was uh... uh...
that mcpherson was actually the one who put the bug in grant's ear
we need to move south on these
these river highways
uh... that but it's a sign of a good commander to listen to his subordinates
and uh... mcpherson was unfortunately killed he was the highest ranking union officer
killed in the war he was killed at the battle of atlanta
but uh... there was an interesting story that uh...
grant said to sherman
at one point he said i think mcpherson can go all the way meaning he will be ultimately
the commander of the union army
and sherman said that's true
if he lives
that is an amazing story
do think that
sherman somehow had a premonition
or was it the way mcpherson went to the front in battle or it's hard to tell
I mean you know any of these guys who were in
in the whole command were exposing themselves to uh... to being killed every time they had a
fight and uh...
you know unless you were
a three or four star general you had to be out close to the fighting
it must have been a premonition
or it may have been just uh... an off hand
uh... remark uh
but he but he said it by the way grant wasn't grant
hit in the scabbard by a bullet
uh at shiloh
yeah that they said that it knocked his saber uh…up in the air out of the scabbard
and all he had left was a scabbard nobody ever found the saber
but he was he was right in the thick of it grant was i mean they they
it in especially in that
especially in that battle because you could
you could come around a bend and all of a sudden you could have a regiment of confederates standing there
because the way that the
the trees and the cover was
what did shiloh
in your opinion
teach the north or the south
about military tactics or
maybe a better way to put it is
what should they have learned but failed to learn
uh... that's a good
on the one level it taught the north
not to leave themselves unprotected and undefended and it taught the south not to be late
um what what happened at shiloh
uh... that almost cost the north the the victory
was that
sherman
and complicity grant and mcpherson who was the engineer
had not fortified their positionI mean here you had uh...
an army of
what forty thousand men
you had a river on one side you had a swap on the other side and you had an opening
to an entire army of of
forty thousand confederates forty five thousand confederates
only eighteen miles to your north
from your forward most positions
and uh... i mean some of the union
officers uh...
realized this but sherman I think was still suffering from his
uh... accusation
that he
he was uh...
a scaredy cat
and that he was uh crazy
and that he had sherman was determined he was gonna prove he was brave and he was not gonna
fortify back then
uh...one theory was that the fortifications were not uh...
useful and not helpful to an offensive army to an army on the attack
it created a certain fear in men that they wouldn't come out
from behind the fortifications and fight
and uh... that was not dispelled until really
later on in the war in eighteen sixty-four eighteen sixty three eighteen sixty
four
but uh...
sherman had left that army sherman and grant left it completely exposed i mean i
can't i can't imagine it was like
out of macbeth
uh…an entire rebel army of forty five thousand men sneaked up on the union army
and got within two miles of them before they realized they were there
so certainly grant was never surprised again
they didn't send out cavalry to scout
today we would use airplanes
in the second world war you might use airplanes and tanks
they didn't send out cavalry to scout
they didn't send out pickets
and they seemed to have and this is the amazing thing to me
well it's all amazing to me
uh... they didn't seem to have
any conception that instead of waiting for them at corinth
which as you say was only eighteen miles away
the confederates might come marching down the road to uh... as they say steal
a march
an attack them unexpectedly well that's true well uh... the confederates had not
demonstrated in the west at that point
that they were willing to fight you gotta go back and remember uh
they they had evacuated uh... that
fort right
columbus uh...
right south of cairo
uh... without a fight they had abandoned fort uh...
uh... henry
almost without a fight and they fought at fort donelson but then they
surrendered quickly
and they moved their whole line back
and so uh... i think that
that grant sherman and the rest of those officers were thinking you know we're not really going to
get a fight out of these guys they're going to do simply retreat
and certainly they didn't expect to be attacked
that's all a very very
good description I think
of the reasons why
a lot of people in the army of the potomac
when grant went east
said he's never faced bobby lee before
'cause you know bobby lee robert e. lee was a horse of a whole different color in terms of uh
aggression and audacity and
willing to sacrifice life for gain and you know
what he hoped would be gain and so on and so forth
uh... ok in any in any event
uh... i can't remember winston
any similar
case except the battle of the bulge
where americans completely ignored signs
that the enemy was about to attack
because you know as you say sherman guys would come in and say they'd seen
cavalry they'd seen pickets they'd seen scouts he'd say you're scaredy cats
and uh...
at the battle of the bulge they saw they heard tanks engines
rumbling
the airplanes noticed that the roads there was no snow on the road which is a
sign that there have been engines running over them and and uh... and
melting the snow
those are the two great examples i think of america in american history where they
just ignored that's a very good example and uh... an interesting comparison
uh... see
at shiloh they were instructed
by halleck
and then by a grant in turn
and by the other officers
do not bring on
a battle
uh... until everybody there shiloh they were waiting for general
buell who was marching from nashville
not nashville toward nashville
uh... he was coming from kentucky
uh... with another army of twenty two thousand twenty four thousand men
and they wanted then they could combine these armies and they would have like seventy
thousand men
and would be invulnerable to anything the confederates could throw at
them and so they were instructed don't bring on a battle
they didn't realize the confederates had received no such instructions
uh but they
the people like sherman
had had instilled
in their subordinates
uh... this notion of don't bring on a battle so thoroughly that
uh... they were frightened to bring on a battle because they would get in trouble
and so they ignored they they they they deluded themselves essentially they they
would send out until the very end
uh... they sherman said well
all that's out there is a regiment of confederates and some artillery
turned out it was a whole confederate army
they had 'em that much fooled
you know that to has a comparison
that's very much like what lee told harry heath and others
before gettysburg
do not get involved in a big battle you want to go get shoes okay but don't get
involved in a battle
next thing lee knows it's the battle of gettysburg
easier said than done
easier said than done absolutely
now initially in the battle because of surprise
I gather the confederates were just sweeping all before them oh they were
they were sweeping all through the union encampment
they they had these uh I guess you could call it divisions there
uh... consisting of about ten thousand twelve thousand men apiece
and they you know all their tents they had if you'd think about it in a
twelve square mile area they had five thousand of these enormous eight man ten man
tents white tents that stuck up in the air
little conical things
and the confederates in most cases
swept right through these in the beginning
because they had total surprise almost total surprise
and
uh... then the confederates because they had
it had taken 'em two or three days to uh... march from corinth down to
to uh the battlefield at shiloh they'd eaten up their rations and they were hungry it was time for
breakfast and they couldn't cook their breakfast before the battle 'cause the union people would see
the smoke and smell the bacon frying
and so they stopped and ate breakfast at the union tents they caught the union
soldiers at breakfast and that was not good for the
for the assault
'cause that just enabled
the union to pull back a little bit and you know form more lines
whatever uh...
meanwhile union soldiers and grant saw this this when he came up
as did buell the next day when he or that night when he arrived with when
he finally arrived with his soldiers
these guys had gone down some kind of big bluff and they were congregating by
the river underneath the bluff
where frankly they would've been sitting ducks if the confederates had ever
gotten to the edge of the bluff
all yeah
it it I mean what what
what happened was it was it was almost
uh... like the bull in his corridor
when you put a bull in the ring he always he tries to get out of the
ring the same way he came in
and the union troops when they were overrun they were terrified
both sides had never fought a battle
some of the union troops had never even uh... some of them didn't
have weapons some of them didn't have ammunition for their weapons they never shot their
weapons
and suddenly they were rushed at by these people with *** in their eyes
and it terrified them and they ran you can't really blame 'em they were 0:48:19.719,0:48:23.389 green completely green troops had not been trained they came right from the
recruiting station
and they ran back to where they came from to the steamboat landing and got into
the protection of the bluff because
there was so much artillery flying around
I mean big iron balls every which way
they were hitting trees and knocking the limbs down a limb would kill you
uh... it
was said I think that
buell counted he said fifteen thousand deserters
uh... under that bluff i don't know if that's quite accurate
but it's probably around there ten to fifteen thousand
which would be
a third of grant's army ran away
those days I mean that army an awful lot of the young men were eighteen nineteen kids
that'd be that'd be eighteen was probably the average age eighteen nineteen
the average age of that private
wow
that that's you're dealing with kids
i guess the most famous
you know if you could if you could say that the battle of shiloh consisted of many
individual battles
the most famous one of them would be the hornets nest which strikes me as very
similar at antietam it was the sunken road
where people just got mowed in droves
and that uh
and a here it was the hornets nest and both of them were like
farm roads
anyway the the hornets why don't you describe the hornets the battle at the
hornets nest just a little bit
well the hornets nest was really the sunken road
was more or less part of the hornets nest it was an old wagon road and it wsn't
really deeply sunken like the road there at antietam
but it provided some
fortification for the union uh...
regiments it was general prentiss' division
and prentiss was really he wasn't most of these generals
were militia generals
they were not west point trained generals
in the union army
uh such as grant and sherman
uh... they were
you know from their state militias and a lot of that was politics
uh but grant had told prentiss to hold his
line at all hazards is the way they described it all hazards meaning to death 0:50:28.299,0:50:31.979 and prentiss took him at his word and
uh... the result was that he got himself surrounded and captured a whole division
or what was left of it
but he stood and he fought all afternoon in that uh... all morning and
all afternoon
in in that
what they called the hornets nest which was
you know
called because there were so many
uh... bullets going back and forth like hornets the
bullets would make a zinging sound
uh... in the air
six hours i think you said that battle lasted
and ultimately the confederates
overran it only by having three other major
figures
uh... breckinridge
and uh... was it johnston and I forgot who they all were
lead a charge
yeah uh general
general johnston he was having trouble
with a tennessee
uh... regiment
somebody came back and said this this regiment
doesn't want to fight
it was one of breckinridge's regiment
and so breckinridge went down there
uh... breckinridge uh... had been oddly enough the vice president of the united
states
that he was a confederate general
uh he went down there to see what he could do and he discovered it wasn't just a regiment it was a whole brigade
by that time that didn't want to fight because they thought they were being sacrificed and they keep charging this hornets nest they would lose 0:51:53.539,0:51:56.269 uh... a hundred million men and then they'd
the the the soldiers would only go as far the the they knew when to
quit
they knew when there were people falling all around they weren't going to stand there and they weren't suicidal
uh...
in any case johnston went down there
and
he talked to the men he rod on his horse up and down the line and he said men
will you follow me I'll lead this charge
and breckinridge said the same thing to
his men and so
they did indeed johnston led that charge out there and
uh... he gotta 'em he gotta 'em going he gotta 'em moving and then
either as he was coming back or when he was turned around whatever he was
talking to someone
one of his aids I think the aid said general are you alright
and he said I'm fine
and a moment later he began to sort of topple in his saddle
and the then he lost consciousness and the aid uh
was on his horse
uh... somehow held onto horse and him and got him back out of
the line of battle
and down from the saddle
and they
kept trying to find out what was wrong with him they couldn't find any bullet holes they
found some holes through his his uh
clothing but what was happening at that point what he had been
shot behind the knee
of all places into that that
artery major artery and
he was bleeding to death in his boot
uh they he couldn't tell it
until it was too late
and it only took him about fifteen minutes to die
i think you said in the book that uh johnston had been hit in something
called the popliteal artery
uh... if he'd had his surgeon there
he had he had a personal surgeon
uh... he would have lived because the surgeon would have immediately known
to tourniquet tie a tourniquet
and stuff that flow of blood
uh... but he had sent the surgeon off to tend some
wounded yankee prisoners
of all ironic things
and so the
actually the one of the aids was the governor of tennessee isham harris
and he didn't know what to do
and suddenly
the commanding general of the confederate army is is is dead
and the command devolved onto beauregard
for a long time beauregard was accused
of throwing away the victory
because in the evening
after jonhston's death of beauregard had assumed command
he did not send forces
forces on beauregard's far right that would've been the far union left
right next to the river
'cause the point would have been to cut off
the union army from pittsburg landing and the steamboats
and drive it back into a bunch of swamp but you're of the impression i gather
that even had beauregard
attempted this
it would have failed because of the situation
that had arisen by the time of the early evening
the situation was this by the by the evening by that I mean it was getting to be twilight
the
union army had been pushed back about as far as it could go without going into the
river or the swamps
general buell had arrived on the other side of the river and of course uh...
if the confederates
could have taken the landing they could have prevented him from landing
and uh simply had grant to
deal with
but by the time
all of that occured the what was left of the union army had drawn itself up uh
like a rattlesnake
uh... they had
uh... a number of big siege guns which these these guns were taller
than a man they weren't the regular
twelve pound napoleon cannons
uh... they had been
uh... designed uh... to lay siege to corinth they had big
you know the balls on that were about like this big exploding balls and so they loaded
these things with
with what amounted to buckshot they call it grape shot
canister-shot
so that they were like a giant shot gun and they had just almost hub to hub
line of
artillery
that uh... sherman
and some of these other union commanders organized a grant
by that time those guys who were manning that line
they proved they weren't gonna run away this was the best that the union army had left
they did have a
ten thousand or maybe fifteen thousand stragglers
or deserters down below the bluff but these guys were gonna fight it out and
the confederates
made two charges
they were both unsuccessful
it was just about dark
uh...
beauregard
part of beauregard's problem was that he was two miles away from this action
he didn't he was at shiloh church which is the
battle field is named for a little 0:56:47.009,0:56:48.839 uh... methodist chapel
called shiloh which in hebrew means
place of peace of all things
but uh...
he sherman I mean beauregard remained back there instead of moving up he was ill
um
he he got an operation
on his throat which in those days was
a serious thing
they said he had a high temperature he wasn't feeling well so you can
forgive
for that but he
he thought look we've got grant cornered look what we've done today we pushed the whole army
union army back
and
so on
captured a whole division we can finish him off in the morning I'm gonna
I'm gonna order the confederate army to pull back to
uh... the old union encampments
and he did and of course this infuriated
uh general bragg general beaure uh... uh...
breckenridge
who were there because they thought one more push would do it
my personal opinion is i walked over I looked at it
that'd be a awful tough nut to crack if they had had another
couple of divisions there
maybe it would have been possible
but with the men they had on hand which i'm i'm making a guess they had probably
five
six thousand at that point
counting the casualties
uh...i don't know if they could have taken that position they they it's
conceivable they'd taken everything else that day
but uh... it I I think that those people who blame beauregard
uh...
saying he cost us the civil war and all that that's a bunch of BS
I mean he this guy
he was fighting as hard as he knew how to fight he just thought that we could he could win it
the next day
but the interesting thing is
that that evening
uh... nathan bedford forrest whose name appears uh
much later in the civil war
he was a colonel and he had the calvary
and he sent
a bunch of his people he collected
uh... uniforms from dead union soldiers and he dressed his
soldiers in uniforms of the dead
uh... yankees
and they went down to the river
and they saw buell coming across
that evening
and he went back and tried to report it and couldn't find anybody to try to report it to
there was a huge rain storm number one
and you have to understand shiloh is such a dense dark place anyway
um with the woods and everything but
he found a couple of generals I think he told general hardy who was a core commander of the
confederates
buell was crossing if you don't stop him now we're going to lose in the morning
and hardy just said you go tell beauregard well he couldn't find beauregard
and as a result they woke up in the morning beauregard I mean buell was there
winston thank you very much great book
it's been a pleasure meeting you
yeah and thank you very much
I I
wish I'd had time to come up there
to boston I like boston
right to the audience thank you for being with us and be with us again next time