Any understanding of the battle of Shiloh must first start with the strategic situation in Tennessee in early 1862. For this, I turn to the man named second in command to Albert Sidney Johnston, the hero of Fort Sumter, P.G.T. Beauregard. In an article written for the New Century Magazine, Beauregard relates how he came to be transferred to the west and his role in the Shiloh campaign. At times self serving in his own praise (a malady all prominent generals seem to share when attempting to explain their role in history) Beauregard was in a position to know the greater strategic plans of Johnston and, as he over and over states, to suggest alternate plans.
Early in 1862, the battle of Mill Springs, Kentucky which ended in the defeat of George B Crittenden and death of Confederate general Felix Zollicoffer ended an early attempt to secure Kentucky for the Confederacy and left open middle Tennessee to federal incursion. As Beauregard prepared to accept his new command, that of all of the troops then located in Columbus, Tennessee, he faced a force under federal general Don Carlos Buell of (an exaggeration) 75,000 men then 40 miles outside of Bowling Green, Kentucky. General U.S. Grant had 20,000 men at Cairo, Illinois poised to move on Forts Henry and Donelson, and a force of 30,000 men under Pope in southern Missouri. In all, including such troops as present in middle and southern Missouri under General Henry W. Halleck, about 125,000 federals threatening the department of the west. Opposing them are 45,000 Confederates distributed as follows: 14,000 with A.S. Johnston at Bowling Green, Kentucky; 5,500 at Forts Henry and Donelson, 8,000 in Clarskville, Tennessee; and 15,000 in West Tennessee and Kentucky under General Leonidas Polk. Spread out and under supplied/equipped the Confederates in Tennessee and Kentucky were holding a line hundreds of miles long and split between holding the river ways open and protecting Nashville's intersecting lines of railroad connections to other points south and west.
Of immediate danger to the whole of the positions in Tennessee was the river line of forts protecting the river communications on the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers meaning the fall of either the impossibility of holding on to both Bowling Green, Kentucky and Columbus, Tennessee. Failure to hold on to those forts would mean the abandonment of all of Tennessee to the federals and another defeat for the confederacy in the west. According to Beauregard, Grant's little force of 20,000 threatened the whole of the Confederate positions by his moves towards Fort Henry. Soon, Forts Henry and Donelson would fall. Beauregard attempted to persuade Johnston to abandon Bowling Green and tighten up the defenses on the forts instead of waiting to see if Grant could take them, by which evidence it was clear that he would given the poor state of both forts defensive measures and positions. Of course, Beauregard is writing this some twenty years after the war and without Johnston to rebut his claims. Hindsight is always 20/20.
