Susan in NC’s Reviews > Grant > Status Update

“ At this perilous moment for Grant’s reputation, Lincoln kept the faith and saved him for future service. Long before setting eyes on him, Lincoln was steadfastly loyal and fair-minded to Grant, perceiving his sterling courage, competency, and unusual willingness to do battle. This was to prove an essential partnership needed to win the war.”

“ After Shiloh, Grant was vilified in the press with a fury that surprised him. He was shocked that the northern press construed the battle as a Union loss…Grant adopted a sensible policy on censorship, giving reporters the liberty to report on past actions while preventing statements about future troop movements. In areas conquered by the Union army, he shut down pro-Confederate papers hawking treasonous views.”

“ For Grant, Shiloh represented a personal victory. He had rescued his army from his own errors, showing a gumption and an audacity that altered the battle’s course. He had shown coolness under fire and a willingness to take monumental gambles. The battle also instilled lasting confidence in the Army of the Tennessee, shattering anew the fighting mystique of rebel soldiers.

“Before Shiloh, Grant had nursed hopes for a titanic battle that would triumphantly crush the rebellion. Now, stunned by the combative spirit of his foes, he knew there would be many more bloodbaths in a long, grinding war of attrition. This began his conversion to a theory of total warfare in which all of southern society would have to be defeated.”

“Shiloh peeled away any lingering aura of romance from the war, showing the sheer destructive power of modern combat…technical advances, such as the conical minié ball that ripped through flesh and bone or rifled muskets and cannon that displayed greater accuracy and range, ensured bloodier battles than ever before…Combat had been pushed to extremes of cruelty that banished any remnant of civilized behavior.”

“Everyone was stunned by the scale of carnage at Shiloh, which posted a new benchmark for mass slaughter…Men who survived it could never scrub its harrowing imagery from their memories…Of more than one hundred thousand soldiers who pitched into the fray, twenty-four thousand had been killed or wounded. Shiloh’s casualties eclipsed the total of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the Mexican War combined.”

“Union troops regained territory lost the day before, tripping over numberless cadavers and groaning men abandoned on the battlefield overnight…Taken by surprise, Confederate soldiers yielded ground…they were exhausted, unable to make a sustained stand against fresh troops that bore down relentlessly upon them. Grant implemented a trademark technique: simultaneously applying pressure in as many places as possible.”

“Grant thought Lew Wallace typical of politically well-connected generals who had risen to excessively high positions. This problem bedeviled the North, where there were deep divisions in the electorate, forcing Lincoln to curry favor with opposition politicians by plucking generals from their ranks.”

“…[ Sherman] stood caked with dust, his bloody hand bandaged, his arm in a sling from a bullet to his shoulder; before the day ended another bullet slashed harmlessly through his hat and three horses were shot from under him. Grant was simply amazed at Sherman’s adroit handling of his green soldiers. There, “in the midst of death and slaughter,” Sherman contended, the friendship between the two men solidified.”

“ Heavily outnumbered, facing more than forty thousand Confederate soldiers versus thirty-three thousand in his own army, he was gratified by his men’s valor under exceptionally terrifying circumstances. Shiloh was a free-for-all of death in which brute force trumped tactical subtleties. “It was a case of Southern dash against Northern pluck and endurance,” Grant wrote.”