Shiloh Battle

Historical Society of Quincy and Adams County

Shiloh: horrible beyond description

The Story of Adams Blueboys at the Battle of Shiloh
(Go to Battlefield Map)

               Young Union Army Private Edward H. Warden’s word “horrible”—he spelled it “horribal” in his diary—was apt. (The Historical Society owns Warden’s diary for the year 1862, a gift of his great grandson Ross Warden of Quincy.)
               On the battlefield named for a small church—whose name Shiloh meant place of peace—at the southwest tip of Tennessee occurred the bloodiest battle in the first full year’s fight for union. Federal and Confederate armies in two days suffered 23,000 casualties at Shiloh, more than the number in the American Revolution, the War of 1812 and the Mexican War combined. Seventy-nine of them were young Adams County men of the 50th Illinois Infantry volunteers, which had been formed in Quincy in five days in August of 1861.
               Nearly 4,000 others were killed, wounded or captured on that single day, Sunday, April 6, 1962, the first day of the Battle of Shiloh. They were soldiers in Quincy General Benjamin Mayberry Prentiss’s Sixt Benjamin Prentiss brochure pic h Division. Their sacrifices were made under orders from General Ulysses S. Grant to hold off “at all hazards” the predawn offensive of 44,000 Confederate troops. Prentiss had been a Quincy rope manufacturer, his products serving the packetboats that plied the Mississippi. Now, along the Tennessee River, he and his men were to hold the advance of an ocean of rebel soldiers.
               HSQAC volunteer Steve Butts, an Air Force veteran, created a wonderful dimensional relief of the battlefield to give visitors to our exhibit, “Shiloh: horrible beyond description,” a sense of how the Battle of Shiloh developed and progressed.
               Prentiss had camped his division in a clearing about three miles southwest of Pittsburg Landing, which is on the west bank of the Tennessee River. It was at the landing that Grant had been amassing an army growing to 40,000 men to attack the South’s transportation hub at Corinth, Mississippi, some 20 miles west southwest.
              At 5 a.m. April 6, 1862, a patrol from Prentiss’s division encountered an ocean of Confederate soldiers moving toward Shiloh from Corinth. The news caught Grant by surprise. His gathering forces were unorganized, and he ordered Prentiss to hold his position “at all hazards.”
               The first four southern brigades reached the front of Prentiss’s camp at approximately 5:30 a.m. Prentiss’s men fought there for nearly 90 minutes before Prentiss ordered them to fall back. Protected by the thick timber, they contested each inch of soil the rebels took.
               By 10 a.m., the men of the Prentiss Sixth Division were pushed back to a position between divisions commanded by Illinois Generals W. H. L. Wallace and Stephen Hurlbut. The position was in a deeply rutted wagon path known by locals as the “Sunken Road.” Prentiss’s men named it the “Hornet’s Nest” for the unbroken sound of musket balls whizzing overhead.
               The first Confederate assault on the Union divisions at the Hornet’s Nest came at 10:30 a.m. and was repelled.
               At about that time just northeast of the Prentiss-Hurlbut-Wallace line, the 50th Illinois Infantry , formed in Quincy the previous August, moved up to reinforce General David Stuart’s brigade along the Tennessee Rive George W. Robisonrc r about a mile south of Pittsburg Landing. No sooner had they arrived than they came under the massive fire of the Confederate brigades of Generals Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson and James R. Chalmers . In the first minute, Colonel Moses M. Bane of Payson was blown off his saddle by a rebel musket ball. (The saddle on which Bane was wounded at Shiloh is among the Shiloh artifacts in the Historical Society’s archives.) And within 15 minutes, 78 other young men of the 50th had fallen casualties of the battle.
               At the Hornet’s nest, the three divisions repeatedly thwarted attacks by several brigades of General A. P. Stewart’s Army of the Tennessee at noon, by four assaults of General Randal L. Gibson’s Louisiana brigade between noon and 2 p.m., and General Robert Glenn Shaver’s Tennesseeans at 2:30 p.m. In all, eight attacks were made there at the Sunken Road by 3 p.m. Each failed.
          By 3 p.m. General P. G. T. Beauregard, whose attack on Ft. Sumter almost exactly one year earlier had started the Civil War, changed tactics and concentrated his forces on the right side, near the Peach Orchard, of the Sunken Road. Rebel General Daniel Ruggles concentrated 62 cannon on the opposite side of the Sunken Road. By 4 p.m., Hurlbut was driven back from his Peach Orchard position.
          Half an hour later, Ruggles’s battery—at one mile long, the longest line of artillery in military history—opened fire on Wallace. The intensity of the cannon fire turned trees to toothpicks and deadly wooden shrapnel. Wallace ordered his unit to withdraw. General Wallace did not join them. A rebel musket ball had torn through the back of his head, a mortal wound. He later was carried from the battlefield to Pittsburg Landing. Four days later he died.
          By 5:30 p.m. the Confederates had surrounded Prentiss, who had continued fighting at the Hornet’s Nest. With two-thirds of his division rendered casualties during the day, the former Quincy rope maker surrendered himself and the 2,300 men remaining in his division.
          Prentiss’s men had done their job. For 12 hours they had resisted the Confederate offensive, giving Grant the time he needed to organize his armies at Pittsburgh Landing to the north and east for the fight—and victory—the next day.
          General Grant gained at least three other advantages late that day. The Confederate commander General Albert Sidney Johnston was mortally wounded; Johnston’s replacement, General Beauregard at approximately 6 p.m. suspended the fighting by rebel troops for the day; General Lew Wallace’s division, which had failed to show up earlier, arrived; and so did the army of General Don Carlos Buell.
          Some more recent historians dispute the importance of Prentiss’s efforts. The official Civil War record, including Grant’s account, pays Prentiss accolades for his resistance. Hero or not, his men’s contribution of nearly 12 hours to thrwart an advancing ocean of rebels saved Grant and contributed to his victory the next day.

               Our exhibit featured a new image of General Prentiss, which was discovered in the HSQAC archives while preparing the exhibit. The picture was taken in St. Louis and dated September 1861. Prentiss went AWOL to St. Louis in early September 1861 after a dispute over rank with General Ulysses S. Grant.
               Among the historical society’s prized artifacts that are showcased is young Pvt. Edward L. Warden’s diary, a gift to the historical society last year by his great grandson, Ross Warden of Quincy. It was Warden’s diary, the story of the young mand’s journey from boyhood to seasoned warrior, that inspired our Shiloh exhibit. A Col. Moses M. Bane, 37, Payson complete transcript of the Warden diary is available here.
               Another is the drum set that teenager George W. Robison of Columbus used as the drummer boy for the 50th. Three sticks are in the exhibit. The boy lost the fourth on the battlefield.
               The society also displayed the saddle of Colonel Moses M. Bane of Quincy. Bane was one of four community leaders who stirred the patriotism and recruited hundreds of young Adams County men after President Lincoln’s call in July 1861 for 500,000 volunteers. Put in command of the 50th Illinois, Bane was seriously wounded in the opening moments of their engagement in the battle. Although field surgeons considered his wounds deathly, Bane was saved by his brother Garrett, a surgeon from Liberty, who amputated his right arm. Bane was able to return to command in October.