Relevant Passages
Relating to First Shiloh
Shiloh: The Battle That Changed the Civil War
by
Larry J. Daniel, pp. 68-70
INTERSECTING RAILROADS, the Memphis & Charleston and
the Mobile & Ohio, coming together at a sixty-degree angle, gave Corinth its
strategic value and sobriquet- "the Crossroads of the Confederacy. Settled
in 1854, the town had a prewar population of 1,200. The business district
consisted primarily of one- and two-story gabled woodframe structures. Most of
the stores were whitewashed, with the notable exception of the post office,
which was pink. Businesses included the usual drygoods stores, blacksmith shops,
livery stables, saloons, and restaurants, along with a drugstore, bakery, tailor
shop, picture gallery, the local office of the Aetna Insurance Company, and
three hotels, the most renowned of which was the Tishimingo, located next to the
Memphis & Charleston depot. There was a square brick courthouse, five
churches (only one of which was bricked), a sawmill, and a long farmer's market
with cupola. A number of quaint Frenchstyle cottages graced the western section
of town, along with the threestory Corona Female College. Many trees on the
residential side offered a pleasant shade. Ruggles arrived in town on February
17 and, by order of Polk, assumed command of northern Mississippi and Alabama.(26)
The vulnerability of the region had already been
demonstrated. Shortly after the fall of Fort Henry, a squadron of three Federal
gunboats had ascended the Tennessee River to Florence, Alabama, where they
docked on February 8. More hysteria than damage was created, although nine of
the thirteen steamboats below Muscle Shoals were destroyed. The gunboats then
returned casually downriver, burning an abandoned Confederate camp at Savannah,
Tennessee.(27)
The immediate supervision of northern Alabama fell to
Brigadier General Leroy P. Walker, with headquarters in Tuscumbia. Only four and
a half months earlier, this Huntsville, Alabama, native had served as secretary
of war in the Davis administration, but a dispute with the president and poor
health had forced his resignation. The paltry force at his disposal included
James Clanton's 1st Alabama Cavalry, scouting the north bank of the Tennessee
River, and a poorly armed Arkansas battalion at Tuscumbia. Ruggles forwarded two
twenty-four-pounder siege guns to Walker, who made plans to construct a battery
at Chickasaw, about ten miles above Eastport, Mississippi. The work would not be
completed until March 10.(28)
Eastport concerned Ruggles. An enemy force landing at
that place could take the fourteen-mile road to Iuka and destroy the vital
eighty-yard-long Bear Creek bridge of the Memphis & Charleston Railroad,
four miles east of town. To guard against such a possibility, Brigadier General
Chalmers had been sent to Iuka to command a makeshift brigade composed of units
recently arrived from eastern Tennessee.(29)
On the night of February 20, Ruggles received news of yet
another naval incursion. That morning a lone gunboat (U.S.S Tyler) had landed at
Hamburg, Tennessee. Residents were told (falsely) by sailors that transports
would follow the next day. Actually, the Federals had planned a bold dash upon
the Bear Creek bridge. After moving on to Eastport that day, the Yankees were
informed by excited locals that the bridge was protected by 3,000 to 4,000
Confederates (in truth about 1,500). Having only fifty sharpshooters aboard,
Lieutenant William Gwin canceled the operation and leisurely returned to Cairo.(30)
Leaving Eastport and Tuscumbia to Chalmers and Walker,
Ruggles concentrated on the landings north of Corinth. On February 18, only two
regiments were in town, the 16th and 19th Louisiana, the last having no
cartridges. The 17th and 18th Louisiana and a battery were on the way, however,
and would thus secure the town. He dispatched two companies of the 2nd
Mississippi Cavalry Battalion to Purdy, Tennessee, to observe east, toward the
river. In late February, the 18th Louisiana, the Miles Light Artillery, and a
cavalry detachment were dispatched to watch river activity at a place
twenty-three miles north of Corinth by the name of Pittsburg Landing. (31)
THIRTY-THREE-YEAR-OLD Colonel Alfred Mouton, a West Point graduate, civil
engineer, and son of a former Louisiana governor and United States senator, was
a man with a mission. He had been ordered to monitor activity at Pittsburg
Landing, a site nine miles upriver from Savannah and on a direct approach to
Corinth. His 18th Louisiana arrived on February 28, following a grueling two-day
march, with the battery coming up the next morning. (32)
The Louisianans found their destination rather
bleak-"three log cabins and a pigsty," described one. The
Pittsburg-Corinth Road cut through the bluff down to the river. Near the edge of
the bluff, north of the road, sat a log dwelling, and about a hundred yards back
was a second cabin, a ravine separating the two. The third cabin was positioned
two hundred yards south of the road. A cultivated field, two hundred yards wide
and a half-mile long, ran along the back of the bluff; behind the field was a
heavily wooded area. The landing had originally been settled back in 1848 by the
family of Pittser Miller Tucker, called "Pitt" Tucker. He established
a frontier trading post that dealt largely in hard liquor. When other families
settled nearby, Pitts Landing became Pittsburg Landing. (33)
About noon on March 1, two Federal gunboats rounded
Diamond Island and steamed into view. Shots were exchanged with Claude Gibson's
battery for ten to fifteen minutes. Mouton ordered his eight companies to safety
in a deep ravine behind the bluff, but two or three shots passed so close they
"could feel the wind raising the hair on our heads," wrote a member.
Gibson's gunners were "compelled to travel." The eight-inch navy guns
continued to pound the landing for an hour, after which a hundred armed sailors
and infantry sharpshooters boarded skiffs and put ashore. After burning one of
the cabins, they formed a line and advanced toward the woods. The Louisianans
suddenly burst forth from ambush. "As we rose the brow of the bluff,
Corporal Huggins C. Ensign, of the Orleans Cadets, fell, torn and mutilated by a
[navy] shell, his left arm broken and left side torn out," noted a
horror-stricken comrade. The Yankees quickly fell back to the safety of their
boats. Mouton counted twenty-one casualties in the sharp engagement, the enemy
about thirteen. Although claiming victory, the colonel thereafter kept only a
light picket in observation. He withdrew his regiment inland about three miles
to a log Methodist church by the name of Shiloh.(34)
26. Ernie Rice, "A History of the Corinth,
Mississippi Depot," NEMMA. Joseph T. Sanders, "M. A. Miller's Sketch
Book of 1860," M.A. thesis, pp. 51-64; OR, vol. VII, pp. 890, 894; Chicago
Tribune, June 6, 1862. M. A. Miller was a civil engineer with the Memphis &
Charleston Railroad. In 1860, while staying at Corinth, he sketched every
business street and scores of homes, thus capturing the Civil War appearance of
the town.
27. Edwin C. Bearss, "A Federal Raid Up the
Tennessee River," pp. 261-70.
28. Faust, ed., Encyclopedia, p. 797; OR, vol. VII, pp.
887-88, 909; vol. X, Pt. 2, p. 304.
29. OR, vol. X, Pt. 1, p. 646; Pt. 2, p. 313; Bearss,
"Federal Raid," p. 266; Civil War
30. OR, vol. VII, pp. 421,619, 894, 895.
31. Ibid., pp. 895, 909.
32. Faust, ed., Encyclopedia, p. 515; OR, vol. VII, p.
909; Bergeron, ed., Grisamore, pp. 19-20.
33. New Orleans Picayune, March 11,1862; B. G. Brazleton,
A History of Hardin County, Tennessee, p. 35; Memphis Commercial Appeal, May 3,
1952.
34. Chicago Tribune, March 7, 8,1862; Cincinnati
Commercial, March 4, 5,1862;