Civil War Armies in 1862

When reading up on official histories of Shiloh, one gets the impression that both U.S. Grant and A.S. Johnston were in command of great armies. One reads of the brigades, divisions, and corps and it is easy to build a picture of that organization with an eye on our modern military. We share titles and ranks and indeed there are some former volunteer regiments, national guard formations that can trace some of their lineage to the Civil War and the Spanish American War.

Easier still to envision that the regiments and brigades were organized and trained as whole organizations where brigade and division commanders were men of note and experience. Since WWII, we have lived in a nation where a large standing army was the norm, not the rule. This army is professional in character, all volunteer until the Vietnam conflict, and made up of men from all over the fifty states who trained as specialists in war.

The Civil War armies were of a vastly different character, more akin in make up to our current National Guard formations where men served with other men from the same geographic location and then only served in time of war. They were not professional at this early stage, only the experience of time would make them the soldiers who marched and fought each other at Gettysburg in June of 1863.

To understand Shiloh as a campaign and battle, we need to look at the character of these formations, how they were formed, and how they trained.


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