Status Updates From Shiloh and the Western Camp...

If Ben Wallace had ignored Grant's urgings & continued his division along his original line of march, he'd have struck the Confederate army on its left flank. At the very least, Johnston would've been forced to divert Breckinridge toward Shiloh Church.

"It's even possible that Wallace might've routed the Southern Army." - one phrase. Full stop. No long editor footnote. Elaborate, my good sirs!

Grant's steamer reached the landing with an additional passenger on board, Ohio war correspondent Whitelaw Reid who quietly slipped in while it was tied up. For years thereafter Grant probably regretted neither he nor his staff had tossed the pushy reporter into the Tennessee river.

The fall of Fort Henry punctured a deep hole in the entire Confederate defensive arrangement in the West, which was straddling Kentucky & Tennessee with only 45.000 effectives between these two states.

The battle of Mill Springs "or whatever it might be called" was the first step in the conquest of the Confederate heartland, significant because of the complete collapse of the right wing on the Cumberland. Hence the way was open for an invasion of East Tennessee (to aid Unionist sympathisers, as Lincoln saw it) or thrust further against the flank of Albert Johnston's line of communications, the line to Bowling Green