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.

Grant, before Shiloh

By late February, 1862 General Grant was a newly minted Major General without a command. In a foreshadowing of what would happen along the banks of the Tennessee river in April, Grant's tiny command of 27,000 investing Fort Donelson was surprised in an early morning breakout attempt by the bottled up Confederates. Through the incompetence of the Confederate command, the wildly successful smashing of McLernand's division of which the brunt of the attack fell upon, Confederate General Floyd who decided to turn and try to route the next division in line instead of moving his charges down the now open road to Nashville. The brunt of this attack fell upon General Lew Wallace's 3^rd Division.

W.E. Woodward's biography of Grant states that Grant was called by Flag Officer Foote's flagship for a conference owing to being then unable to get about easily due to a wound. This happenstance took Grant away from the scene of the sudden attack by the Confederates, an unfortunate coincidence that would have consequences later. The early morning parley with Foote brings a most uncomfortable consequence for Grant. His visit is hard to account for how much time he spent and why he did not hear the battle raging no more than three miles away on his right. That he did not hear it is attested by other witnesses on board Foote's flagship. What has been questioned is how much time he spent there. The other being why was he not informed of the attack right away. Grant's own staff should have known where he was, but Grant's detractors later said he spent half the day lounging in Foote's state room smoking cigars and drinking. Woodward states that this rumor was indefensible given Foote's high degree of prohibition against any intoxicant on any vessel of his command. Still, the time is unaccounted for and in his official report of the action Wallace states that he did not see Grant until well after 3pm once the Confederate attack upon his division had been stopped.

In the world of military politics and with a commanding officer, Major General Henry W. Halleck, establishing a severe dislike of the ramshackle Grant, it is not too hard to imagine that Wallace's report, which Grant would have eventually seen, did not paint his participation in the battle in too favorable of a light. That Grant did reverse the morning's misfortune notwithstanding, a cloud was hanging over his generalship. If he cast blame upon Wallace is not known, but it was entered into the official record of the battle and Grant himself makes mention of his whereabouts that morning in his own official account of the action but fails to clarify how long he was in conference with Foote. Aside from reports from Lt. Col McPherson, the army's chief engineer, Flag Officer Foote, and General McLernand, Wallace's report is the only one that makes mention of Grant's presence at all on the battlefield.

With the surrender of Fort Donelson on the 16^th, Grant falls afoul of Halleck when he takes a trip to Nashville to confer with Buell whose entrance into the Tennessee state capital crowned an extraordinarily bad month for the Confederacy. Halleck, fed up with his upstart general and feeling somewhat threatened by his sudden rise to national acclaim fires off several complaints to General McClellan, in command at this time of all the military forces for the Union, requesting permission to relieve Grant of command for his unauthorized absence. Short of arresting Grant, Halleck does the next best thing, leaving him dawdling about Donelson with nothing to do and no troops to command. For two weeks Halleck leaves him there to stew until giving him orders to rejoin his command on the banks of the Tennessee at Pittsburg Landing and Crump's Landing. Once there, Grant remains in a funk until the battle.

Woodward's biography draws comparisons from the Grant that we know and love who eventually rose to the highest rank in the US military, a post once held by Washington, and the Grant who commanded the Army of the Tennessee in April, 1862 and states that Grant is off of his game. Establishing his command post eight miles downriver at Savannah and shuttling back and forth every day, Grant does not stay on the field with his army and remains quasi out of touch with the dispositions that General Smith, given command of the army in place of Grant by Halleck, made of the army. A further fall from a horse a few days before the battle leaves him in constant pain and unable to ride a horse for very long. His own statements notwithstanding as to why he tarried in Savannah as long as he did, Grant's behavior during this episode is out of character and suspect. It is easy, then to speculate and imagine that the mystery of the unwritten order to Wallace at Crump's Landing was indeed to join the right flank of Sherman's division and not, as the second order later in the day was, to march by the river road to Pittsburg Landing. Speculation only, as no court of inquiry was convened that would have opened up much more evidence in either support or condemnation of Wallace officially.

He said, he said

General Lew Wallace

General Wallace was faced with a problem. 6 miles as the crow flies from the scene of the morning's surprise attack on Grant's army encamped at Pittsburg Landing and following orders that he states changed their tune mid way through his march.

I've puzzled over this for some time. If the orders that Grant was supposed to have sent to Wallace via Captain Baxter had been logged and, as dictated by Grant, entered into that log, would not the controversy over why Wallace took the Purdy road instead of the more direct road to Pittsburg Landing be over?

In his article, as alluded to in prior posts, General Henry Carrington surmises that due to Grant's swollen and injured ankle, he was more reliant upon his staff officers to send and note his orders given his lack of mobility. In this instance, a verbal order by Grant to Baxter that was written in Baxter's own hand and then delivered to Wallace later that morning. Carrington further surmises that Baxter, given Grant's orders to have Wallace close up with his right, knowing that at this time in the morning the full details of the fight being still foggy, wrote down the order so as to interpret what Grant wanted, i.e. Wallace on the right of the line next to Sherman instead of at Pittsburg Landing.

Wallace further relates in his letter to Grant years later (also alluded to in previous post) that Baxter first verbally then by written order communicated success of Union arms on the right necessitating the need for Wallace to close on Sherman's right flank via a march down the Purdy road. He states:

…Perhaps I should here state that this order was not signed by anyone, but coming as it did through one of the Staff Officers of the Commanding General, could not be questioned. I would also state in this connection, that when I met Captain Baxter first, I asked him how things were going. He replied that Grant was driving the enemy at all points.

We know this to not be the case, as the left of Grant's line, the division of Prentiss was in fact crumbling and only redeemed by a quick consolidation at the sunken road by remnants of Prentiss', WHL Wallace, and Hurlbut's commands. If Baxter really did relate these things, it shows how in the dark Grant and or Baxter really was at that hour, approximately 8 am when Grant dispatched the captain to Wallace. In his official report, Wallace stated thusly:

At 11.30 o'clock the anticipated order arrived, directing me to come up and take position on the right of the army and form my line of battle at a right angle with the river. As it also directed me to leave a force to prevent surprise at Crump's Landing, the Fifty-sixth Ohio and Sixty-eighth Ohio Regiments were detached for that purpose, with one gun from Lieutenant Thurber's battery. Selecting a road that led directly to the right of the lines as they were established around Pittsburg Landing on Sunday morning, my column started immediately, the distance being about 6 miles. The cannonading, distinctly audible, quickened the steps of the men. Snake Creek, difficult of passage at all times, on account of its steep banks and swampy bottoms, ran between me and the point of junction. Short way from it Captain Rowley, from General Grant, and attached to his staff, overtook me. From him I learned that our lines had been beaten back; that the right, to which I was proceeding, was then fighting close to the river, and that the road pursued would take me in the enemy's rear, where, in the unfortunate condition of the battle, my command was in danger of being entirely cut off. It seemed, on his representation, most prudent to carry the column across to what is called the "River road," which, following the windings of the Tennessee bottoms, crossed Snake Creek by a good bridge close to Pittsburg Landing. This movement occasioned a counter-march, which delayed my junction with the main army until a little after night-fall. The information brought me by Captain Rowley was confirmed by Colonel McPherson and Captain Rawlins, also of the general's staff, who came up while I was crossing to the River road. About 1 o'clock at night my brigades and batteries were disposed, forming the extreme right, and ready for battle.

Something must be said, at this point, about battle reports. Each commanding officer was required to give an account of himself to his superior upon any occasion. Indeed, much of the Official Records of the War of Rebellion are full of mundane reports of actions taken or events witnessed. Herein lies a problem. These reports, written after the fact, were occasion for an officer to trump up his own deeds and belittle the deeds of others. We see this in Captain Rowley's report in my last post. Rowley wastes little time in making him to be the hero and Wallace the goat. It is also clear from Wallace's own report that he had little intimation that he was going to be made a scapegoat for the failure of the first day's action.

What is the evidence?

General Lew Wallace, finding himself at the helm of Smith's division in the middle of the conflagration that would become Shiloh, was in the unenviable post of being separated from the rest of the army at Crump's Landing, six miles as the crow files from Pittsburg Landing. Swampy, forested, and cut by a poor circuit of dirt roads made communication overland time consuming. Early fears of the loss of either of the convenient places to land supplies within reach of any move upon Corinth, Mississippi lead to the dispatching of Smith's 6^th Division to three camps around Crump's Landing. In Grant's memoirs, he states he was initially fearful that the confederates might make a move to take Crump's Landing overland and therefore, especially as he wrestled with the object of the confederate attack. He states this as his reason for having Wallace hold his division in readiness to move until he had developed the enemy's intentions.

Grant knew the road network leading to Crump's overland was indirect and communications over it lengthy. Grant's visit to Wallace at Crump's occurred at 8 am, his order to Wallace to move didn't arrive until 11 am over this lousy road network. Three hours was in the balance for Grant, it would take that long for any communication to get to Wallace and take longer for Wallace to get his division to where it was being ordered. In a battle, a moment is too late even when communications are instantaneous. Communications at Shiloh and in any battle of the Civil War was by horse and any communication of orders would have to take into account that whatever goal Grant had in mind for Wallace, it would have to be with the foreknowledge that the battle situation would be different by the time Wallace's division made the field. Was Grant's intention to tuck the 6^th division away at the landing because the course of the battle was unpredictable or, like any field commander, made a judgment based upon the information he had at the time?

In Grant's official report, he states that due to the circuitous route Wallace needed to take, it took him until evening to arrive on the field. It isn't clear if Grant held any ill will towards Wallace regarding his divisions tardiness, but he at least did not communicate any ill feelings in his official report.

Captain John A. Rawlins, an aid de camp of Grant, states that Grant dispatched Captain Baxter to order Wallace from Crump's Landing to move to the right of the line. However, he further states that Wallace refused to comply without a written order and that Grant then dispatched Rawlins with orders for Wallace to march by the river road, crossing snake creek and the bridge over it and end up at the Landing on the right of the line. Rawlins encounters Wallace along the Purdy road and not the River road as he expected and communicated Grant's orders to Wallace who "indignantly" refuted refusing an order written or not. Rawlins further states that Wallace expressed ignorance of the river road and lamely stated that he was on the road his cavalry headed down. He further communicated to Rawlins that as neither he nor anyone on his staff knew of the river road, he would need Rawlins to act as guide.

I find it incredible that Wallace would not have known about this road, having been encamped at Crump's for weeks and in communication with the rest of the army this whole time. Rawlins' statement regarding this seems overly to the point of feeding the idea that Wallace was in a state of poor command. But, the source must be considered here, coming from a close confidant and ardent supporter of Grant throughout the war and his aid de camp, a position given to ones close friends and supporters. More on this in further posts.

General Lew Wallace at Shiloh

On Feburary 29^th, 1868 Lew Wallace penned a letter to Ulysses S. Grant, Wallace's former commander and about to be elected President of the United States. Wallace opens his letter stating that he became aware of Grant's disquiet and disapproval of Wallace's performance at the battle of Shiloh but was counseled to withdraw his request for a court of inquiry, seeking instead to redress in person the smudge to his and his division's honor.

What happened? As the large encampment at Pittsburg Landing was surprised on the morning of April 6^th, 1862 and was in the process of being overrun by Albert Sidney Johnston's Army of Tennessee. Wallace, in temporary command of Grant's 6^th Division in place of an ailing General Smith, was encamped at Crump's Landing five miles as the crow flies from Pittsburg Landing was ordered by Grant personally to prepare to move at 8 am as he (Grant) made his way by paddlewheel up river from his HQ at Savannah. Grant, upon learning of the situation at Pittsuburg Landing sent a Captain Baxter with orders for Wallace's division to begin moving. Here is where the controversy starts. What was the order? By what route to take and by what result to achieve by moving?

Grant, in his memoirs, written after his two terms in office and while dying of throat cancer, had this to say about what his orders where:

Up to that time I had felt by no means certain that Crump's landing might not be the point of attack. On reaching the front, however, about eight A.M., I found that the attack on Pittsburg was unmistakable, and that nothing more than a small guard, to protect our transports and stores, was needed at Crump's. Captain Baxter, a quartermaster on my staff, was accordingly directed to go back and order General Wallace to march immediately to Pittsburg by the road nearest the river. Captain Baxter made a memorandum of this order. (chapter 14, paragraph 10)

Wallace, by virtue of letters in his possession of statements by his former subordinates and by his own statements tells a different tale in his letter to Grant:

…On the contrary, the order I received from your messenger was in writing, unsigned, and contained substantially the following instructions: "You will leave a force at Crump's Landing sufficient to guard the public property there; then march the rest of your division, and effect a junction with the right of the army; after which you will form your line of battle at right angles with the river, and act as circumstances dictate." (Major General Lew Wallace at Shiloh, Bay State Monthly magazine, vol 2 issue 6 1885)

The question becomes, whose memory is correct? Was it the second order, the order Grant dispatched after 1 pm to Wallace - the one that was recorded and signed by him, ordering Wallace to the Landing and not the right of the line? The first order, dispatched in a hurry and not signed and therefore not logged and delivered by Captain Baxter, could it have stated Grant's wish to re-enforce Sherman's pressed division on the right and thus either save it from further retreat or to fall upon the enemy's extended left flank in a coup de main? Wallace collected statements from several of his brigade commanders and those who met personally Captain Baxter as he made his way through the tangle of poor roads leading to Wallace's camps at Crump's.

Of all of the controversies surrounding the battle, this is probably the most well known and the one that is the most reported as Wallace becoming confused or lost on his way to joining the battle. I'll have more on this in further entries.