Shiloh

Today is the 150th anniversary of the start of the Battle of Shiloh (also known as the Battle of Pittsburgh Landing).  The battle, which took place in Tennessee and lasted two days, delivered a message to both the Union and Confederacy that the Civil War had entered a new, and much bloodier, phase.  By April 6, 1862, the conflict had been going on for almost exactly one year.  But in the next two days, 24,000 soldiers would be killed, wounded or go missing, more battlefield casualties than both sides together had suffered during the entire first year of the war.

The Union forces, commanded by US Grant, were initially surprised by the Rebel attack, and many units collapsed.  Later in the day the Union troops rallied and the Confederate commander, Albert Sidney Johnston, was fatally wounded with command falling upon PGT Beauregard (actually, let me use his full name since it's so much fun - Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard).  On the second day, the Union pushed back the Rebels, who eventually retreated from the field. As a result, central and western Tennessee remained in Union hands till the end of the war.

Shiloh was a turning point not just because of the number of casualties and its outcome.  A.S. Johnston was considered at the time to be the best general officer in the Confederacy (Robert E Lee was still desk bound in Richmond as a military aide to Jefferson Davis) and if the Union had been defeated US Grant's career would have been derailed.

Speaking of Grant, Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S Grant is the best single memoir of the Civil War (as well as his service in the Mexican War - a war he seems not to have been in favor of). Turns out he was quite a fine writer - clear, concise and forceful.  The book was written in the last year of his life, when he was bankrupt and fighting throat cancer.  Despite this illness he was determined to complete the book in order to earn some money for the support of his family after he died.  Mark Twain intervened to rescue him from an unfavorable publishing deal and Grant's memoirs turned out to be the biggest non-fiction seller (other than the Bible) in 19th century America.

This is Grant writing about his reaction just after accepting Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House:

"I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse."

Grant, unlike some then and now, had no doubt about the real cause of the Civil War.