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The battle of Shiloh.
The 6th of April, 1862, was a day fraught with momentous issues for the future of the
American Republic.
The evening of the 5th had witnessed the concentration of a great army, whose leaders had boastingly declared in the pride of their strength should, on the coming morn, overwhelm and destroy the army of the
Union which lay encamped in conscious security around the wilderness church of
Shiloh!
At no period during our prolonged and sanguinary civil war was the
Union more imperiled than on that eventful Saturday evening. The
battle of Shiloh was the first decisive and, pre-eminently, the most important of the war. Defeat then would have been the greatest disaster that could have befallen the arms of the
Union.
The country can never know the full danger of that hour, and the pen of the historian can never portray the peril which hung over the Army of the Tennessee.
Congress received the announcement of events then culminating in “profound silence,” the official dispatch of victory declared it was “the hardest battle ever fought on this continent,” the
President proclaimed a day of fasting and prayer for the great deliverance by this and other achievements of our arms; but the peril of the army, the severity of the battle, and the magnitude of the victory will, perhaps, never be fully known or appreciated.
General Grant says, in his report: “There was the most continuous firing of artillery and musketry ever heard on this continent kept up until nightfall ;” and the
Southern accounts describe it as the “most sanguinary battle in history, in proportion to the numbers engaged.”
We propose to give a succinct and
