Wallace and Grant at Shiloh

I'll end this series on General Wallace by recapping what I have found in my research and give a conclusion that, to me, seems obvious. Wallace, in command of the 3^rd Division encamped at Crump's Landing and only in command due to the ailing Smith, brought his division into the fight at Shiloh late. Unable to participate in the fighting on the first day, he along with Buell's Army of the Ohio, provided Grant with fresh regiments to carry the fight to the enemy on the second day of fighting. These are facts that are not disputed. The reasoning behind the delay and who may have caused that delay are very important. Further, the reports of Grant's staff officers as entered into the official record also speak volumes, but not necessarily as intended by their authors. One need only look at what was written about Grant after the war and who was doing that writing to see the connection to those reports and the intended damage done to Lew Wallace's reputation and career. That the written order to Wallace was lost that day and only recounted from memory by suspect people is also a fact. No written order, no conclusive proof that Grant did or did not order Wallace to take the river road and end up on the extreme right of the army instead of on the left as Wallace maintains in opposition to the word of Grant and Rowley and Baxter.

What we have left is the decision of history and historians to the available evidence and a good gut feeling guess as to what is true and what is not. The memoirs of Grant and the biography by Badau are highly suspect in their accounting of the truth, and such material should always be looked at with a wary eye. Further, the official reports by Baxter and Rowley should also be taken with a wary eye including that of Wallace himself. These are not documents that speak to events as they happened but events as seen and portrayed by the vanity and reputations of their authors. That Wallace sought to downplay his difficulties in getting to the field by up-playing his accomplishments on the second day can be accepted as putting a good face on a bad situation. His delay was an embarrassment, both for himself and for the army and that may lead to further inquiry as to the reports of McPherson, Rowley, and Baxter in the official record to screen Grant from any possible mistake he might have made in judgment. That a mistake was made is obvious, but by who?

From the testimony, both after the war and in the official records, it is clear that the words and tone of both Baxter and Rowley in the official record are tainted and false. That Wallace could have gotten lost in an area he would have known well by that time is preposterous. That he was slow is another matter and up for interpretation. By accounts of his subordinates, both shortly after the battle and after the war attest to the rigorous march the division had to execute on April 6^th and the poor quality of the River Road that they ultimately had to traverse to arrive at Pittsburg Landing. That they also executed a forced march of some tens of miles due to the countermarch is also clear, adding time to their arrival. Rowley and Baxter paint a picture of incompetence on Wallace and heroism to themselves, especially Rowley.

What is often overlooked is Grant's mental and physical state at the time of the battle, something that would have come into play upon him during those momentous events. As W.E. Woodward stresses in his biography, Grant was still smarting from his rebuke by his superior Halleck and from his fall a few days before. It is not hard to imagine, given Grant's spotty command history to this point that he misjudged the weight of the Confederate forces bearing upon him and the problems his own divisions were having in containing the assault. It is not hard, further, to imagine that he did indeed order Wallace to join with Sherman's left by the Purdy Road where his forces could best be employed where the crises was most acute. However, knowing the state of the roads connecting the two camps Grant should have known that Wallace's division was at least several hours from entering the fight. His impatience at Wallace's tardiness is further murk to cloud the evidence as he expected Wallace to arrive sooner than either the Purdy Road route or the River Road route would have allowed. Wallace was neither the rank armature nor tactical genius, by all accounts he was competent to do his duty and proved such at the battle of Monocacy later in the war, leading one to the conclusion that he was neither the hero or the goat of Shiloh.

The conclusion to draw from all of this is that Wallace was the victim of the circumstances of where he was at the time of the battle and a mistake made by Grant, in either word or inference, to cause the order to be worded and written down to communicate to Wallace Grant's intentions for the 3^rd Division. That something was communicated to Wallace that lead him, either by direct order or by inference, to join the left of Sherman's division is also clear despite the official testimony of Grant's staff. Wallace was talked out of an official court of inquiry by Sherman and others, an act that would probably have exonerated him and done damage to Grant, especially given his shaky relationship with Halleck. If true, in some senses, Wallace may have been the needed scapegoat that allowed Grant to eventually lead the Union to victory later in the war.

24th Ohio at Shiloh, Army of the Ohio

Along a narrow and lonely path stand the monuments representing Amman's brigade in their positions before they attacked the line thrown together by General Cleburne atop the hill cut by the Hamburg-Purdy road. The forest has been allowed to grow over this part of the battlefield and it gives the whole area an enclosed feeling, claustrophobic and on this day in particular, damp from a recent downpour. The 24^th Ohio, part of Buell's Army of the Ohio, stepped lively across an undulating terrain to charge into the maw of artillery and Confederate musketry to push Cleburne's line even further to the rear.

The character Philip, from my novel They Met at Shiloh, stood in a brigade line that stretched three hundred yards long, marked today by a trail cut in the trees with monument after monument marking the approximate middle of each regimental line. It is sad to see these monuments being over grown by the forest, no longer facing the enemy but now facing loneliness. I only happened upon the trail by accident while searching around the Bloody Pond area, a small marker, across the Hamburg-Savannah road, marks the extreme right of Ammen's brigade line, whose flank most regiment would have been a stones throw away from the Bloody Pond to witness the misery of its denizens. Down the trail I ran into regiment after regiment of Ammen's line until finally finding the monument I was looking for. I wanted to see where each regiment from my novel stood and what the ground looked like.

Of all of the civil war battlefields Shiloh is the one I've been to the most, having visited when I was very young with vague impressions of it still lingering after 25 years, then again at the soggy 135^th reenactment, and finally last summer to get landmark and geographic impressions for the novel. Shiloh is not like Gettysburg, where the field is much like it was 145 years ago where one can stand atop Missionary Ridge or Cemetery Ridge and look out at the same rolling countryside that the combatants did. Shiloh has been allowed to over grow parts of the battlefield forcing you to rely upon the descriptions of the combatants themselves to understand what it was like. Many areas now are thickly wooded and though some of the fields are still present, like Seay and Fraley Field are preserved, some of the other avenues are impassable. Chickamauga, another thickly wooded area is probably better preserved as far as forest management goes. One can take the descriptions of the fight at the Viniard Farm and imagine standing at the tree line along with the soldiers of Wilder's brigade and look down into the famed ditch or from Winfrey Field and see the treeline where the Confederates attacked at dusk.

The Shiloh of yesteryear was forested, but southern farming techniques and general occupation of the land meant that the tree cover was sparse and the farmers only cleared areas for planting, leaving the periphery open for trees to grow unmolested. The results were just like any forest area butting up against settlement, old and tall trees and undergrowth that was minimal due to grazing. It is a pity that the campsites and some of the interior fields of the battleground are now mere clearings in the trees, leaving little to the imagination as to how it looked then. Thankfully, we can still walk those grounds and stand where fallen patriots stood and read the markers that attempt to describe a mere fraction of what happened in each spot. There is a power to those fields yet, of ringing cheers and acrid gun powder whose voice is fading away with time and memory. You can feel you are a part of it for a moment in the stillness and lean upon a gun line marked by surplus cannon. This is what is experienced at Ruggle's gun line facing the Sunken Road. You see it from the campsite of the 25^th Missouri Vols who met the onrush of Confederates early on the morning of April 6^th. You hear it in the groans of the wounded crowded around the Bloody Pond. You feel it in the fear struck crowds of fugitives under the bluff at Pittsuburg Landing.

Lew Wallace and his defenders

When reading either the official records of the war or the correspondences sent to Grant by Wallace from his former subordinates at the time of Shiloh, one thing becomes clear. Both men and their surrogates were trying to preserve a reputation. Grant had those involved submit official reports to the War Department regarding their actions in the Wallace affair as has already been noted. Wallace admits that the fateful order, the order delivered by Assistant Quarter Master Baxter without signature, has been lost to history, reconstructed from the memory by he and his defenders.

The reports submitted by Grant's staff officers, submitted days after the battle all state that the orders Grant communicated to Wallace were to march by the river road and join the right of the army at Pittsburg Landing. Further, most paint an unflattering picture of Wallace in his attempt to get his division into the fight. Rowley, Grant's right hand according to W. E. Woodward's Meet General Grant was particularly unflattering in his description of Wallace and his state of mind.

How can these statements be reconciled with the remembrances of Wallace's staff officers who encountered both Baxter and Rowley as they executed their errands? Wallace's own aid de camp, a Captain Ross relates in a letter to Wallace penned in 1868 that not only was the order given verbally to him as he encountered Captain Baxter but also the written order shown to him relating Grant's order to "move forward and join General Sherman's right on the Purdy road" forming his line of battle at right angles with the river. He further states that the shortest route to accomplish this was to take the Purdy road to make a junction with the right of Sherman, a distance of about 5 miles versus the route purported to have been given via the River Road, a distance of about 12 miles. The order was not signed but was inferred to have come from Grant given that it was delivered by a staff officer of the commanding general. Ross also relates that Baxter told him, upon inquiry as to how the battle was going, that the enemy was being driven in at every point. At the point that Rowley overtook Wallace's command with Grant's second order to hurry along and the intelligence that Sherman had been pushed back so that to continue on the current course would have been to march onto the field behind the enemy lines unsupported, the distance to counter march and take the River Road was no less than 12 miles total. Rowley's account states that Wallace's division marched as if under no idea of haste or need for speed, a statement countered by Col. Thayer's AG, a Major Strickland of the 15^th Ohio who relates that the brigades made a rapid march then counter march.

One man is lying. One man is either mistaken in recollection or purposeful in deceit as to the true nature of the incident. A now missing order, conflicting statements given by staff officers who have every reason to defend their benefactor and discredit their antagonist, and a host of years gone by with no living eye witness the mystery of why Wallace's division was absent on that first day will never be resolved with any certainty.