The human story in war

Warfare is about human endurance. Politics and politicians/statesmen start wars and decide when to stop them. The civil war was started by politicians and sectional fervor in the South after Lincoln is elected. Had Lincoln lost, the war would not have started in 1860, perhaps it would have waited another decade or more before the sections could no longer stand to treat with one another civilly. If war did not come in 1860, when? Like a divorce that is not healed of its underlying causes, the sectional conflict was inevitable without intervention. Yet, was the war the intervening salve that eventually brought us together? Was war as William T. Sherman and Thomas J. Jackson envisioned, wrote about, and practiced also inevitable?

In his treatise on the Civil War as practiced by both of these men, ? studied how the war turned from targeting armies or territory/capitals to targeting societies and civilians. It was about killing every man, woman, and child who practiced for and gave aid to the underlying ideology that both men fought against. Soldiers were the tools in the hands of the master craftsman; the battles only the medium by which the artists did their work. Both of them a hero to their people. Both men practiced in the military art of moving men on the field of battle, though both not without their faults or their failings. But, when the general is through devising the grand scheme and the men step off in line of battle, it is then just a contest of humanity. Shiloh, with its grand scheme of Johnson's to annihilate Grant or Wallace's tardy entrance the story is of men and their response to pressure and death.

Johnson's plan of attack is almost flawless and Grant's army almost dumb with stupidity, born of the politics of Halleck and his dislike for Grant and Grant's surprising funk on returning to command. The least experienced troops, those cobbled together from garrisons throughout Missouri, Illinois, and Northern Tennessee are moved to Pittsburg Landing first, and like those who are first in an elevator crowd towards the back while the experienced brigades, those who saw battle at Fort Donelson and elsewhere are the last to arrive or are encamped five miles away at Crump's Landing. This is Shakespearean tragedy waiting for the plot to move. The first men to meet the onrush of Johnson's Confederates are green and untested, those of General Prentiss and Sherman. Both men acquit themselves well that day, April 6^th, 1862, but it is the rank and file in the regiments whom the story of Shiloh is built upon. The men who stood in line and fired at their enemy though they are outnumbered by gross numbers.

As Americans we value efforts of grand heroics and the life or death struggle against odds. The landing at Omaha beach, the airborne drops behind German lines in Normandy, the charge of Pickett's and Pettigrew's division at Gettysburg, and the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava; these stories of war and struggle belie our preoccupation and admiration of men at war and the struggle to obey orders where certain death seems the only outcome. Prentiss' division makes a hurried and forlorn stand in front of their camps but they are overrun by superior numbers. Many run, many stand to their colors and die or are captured. The Confederates, too, march and charge into the guns and though they have the surprise and numbers on their side, they press their attacks despite being exhausted by three days of marching and anticipation of the attack. Was it Johnson's determined leadership and planning that bore these regiments and brigades forward or each individual soldier's determination to press onward despite threat of death. Did Grant's presence mean the difference of failure on the first day or was it the determination of his army to not be forced into the Tennessee?

It is clear that the Confederate attack faltered after Johnson's death; his omni-presence on the field of battle, directing his brigades, gave the individual soldier a confidence to press onward, hence the psychological power of a storied leader. Even poor troops can be inspired to feats above their training if they have the confidence to perform. It is also clear that the arrival of Buell's advance division shored up Grant's flagging line as darkness fell on the 6^th, but the Confederate attack had already flagged after the delay caused by Prentiss' division in the Hornet's Nest. The green troops, remnants of the regiments who broke in front of their camps but under the determined leadership of solid officers held until surrounded and buying Grant's army time. This is human drama in war, the sudden turn of events or the quick reversal in the story of the play. The story we have of Shiloh, like all stories where thousands of men take part, will never be fully known and will be even lesser known as time goes by. The Historian looks for these stories now, as those written by Grant, Sherman, Wallace, and other generals have already been tapped. There are thousands of stories written by the participants in letters and diary entries that sit in collections and wait for someone to find them, to fill in another part of the story of Shiloh to completion.