Winston Groom: "Shiloh, 1862"
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-04-05/winston-groom-shiloh-1862
Shiloh has been called the first “great and terrible battle” of the American Civil War. Before it was fought in the spring of 1862, many believed the war would be over by Christmas. But then word came from southwest Tennessee of the battle’s 23,000 casualties -- more than in all previous American wars combined. The conflict began on April sixth as the Confederate Army mounted a surprise attack on General Ulysses grant’s poorly prepared troops. When it ended a day later, both sides finally realized what they had unleashed – and understood the war was far from over. On its 150th anniversary, a look at Shiloh's pivotal role in America’s Civil War.
Guests
Winston Groom
author of fourteen books, including "Patriotic Fire," "Shrouds of Glory" and "Forrest Gump"
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Program Highlights
Award-winning author Winston Groom has written a new history of the Civil War battle - the Battle of Shiloh - which got its name from a tiny Methodist chapel that stood at the site of the heaviest fighting. The book is titled simply, "Shiloh, 1862." In it, Groom brings key characters from the battle vividly to life. He focuses on the human aspects of the story.
A Battle Of Colonels
Groom calls the Battle of Shiloh a "battle of colonels." The generals didn't have a lot of say or control in the course of the battle. "So when I looked at it, I thought there's gotta be a way to tell this story so that your average reader can appreciate it. And what I did was I found a dozen or maybe more, 18, 19 people who were either in the battle itself or very personally affected by it who had written letters or diaries or memoirs. And I let them carry the thread all the way through the fight," Groom said.
Diarists
Gjelten noted that while it seems that not many people keep diaries today, back in the Civil War era, people seemed to do it more and many were strong writers. Groom said that people back then poured their hearts into their diaries; they didn't have phones to pick up or emails to write. One diarist, Josie Underwood, came from Bowling Green, Kentucky, a town that was bitterly divided Confederate sentiments. Her own family were staunch Unionists, but she went to Memphis to stay with relatives for a summer and fell in love with a staunch Confederate there. Her diary reveals the depths of her torn feelings and her ultimate decision to go back to her family and her Unionists roots.
The Brutality Of The Battle
Groom said that he still can't understand how Ulysses S. Grant "got himself surprised by 45,000 men sneaking up on him," but apparently that's what happened. "I mean, to not fortify, to not put out patrols when you knew that you had 20 miles away a great Confederate Force is beyond me. But these guys, to think about them, you know, they were polishing their boots or doing their wash or, as I said, playing cards," she said.
You can read the full transcript here.
Comments
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That story is a fiction!
http://youtu.be/dkHWj1qEr30
Look forward to hearing the discussion. I am familiar with the battle and have visited the battle site about six times. I too believe it was a pivotal battle and helped shape the civil wars outcome.
Video of Civil War vets doing the Rebel Yell: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6jSqt39vFM
http://www.26nc.org/History/Rebel-Yell/rebel-yell.html
There was nothing about slavery that was "neat." A man forcing his slaves to fight in a battle was is as bad or worse than leaving them at home as slaves. The gentleman never mentioned how many of the slaves died in battle. I doubt that he or his ancestor cared.
A reference was made to the battle of "Bull Run."
While I was working in Northern Virginia in the early eighties, I was "informed" that the above reference was very offensive to the locals who referred to the battle as the battle(s) as the Battles of Manassas (First & Second).
These are equivalent terms but is there an historical preference?
Thanks.
Mr Groom just completely BOLLOCKED his statement on Abraham Lincoln's rearing.
President Lincoln was born in Kentucky, MOVED to Indiana at age 7.
Lincoln was raised, became an ADULT in INDIANA and moved to Illinois (more central Illinois than Southern Illinois...) with his father and step-mother at age 21...
If he got something this BASIC wrong, how ACCURATE can his book be??
This should have been vetted more critically as it was full of historical inaccuracies and pro-southern myths...
1. Illinois DID NOT PROVIDE regiments for the south. There may have been citizens of Illinois that joined Missouri or Kentucky Confederate units but no Illinois Confederate units existed --Units of the Confederate States Army by Joseph H. Crute, Jr.
2. Tactically, the Civil War was the last of the Napoleonic Wars despite the new long range weapons. The terrain DID NOT support the use of long range weapons mostly due to the preponderance of undulating terrain and woodlands. --Battle Tactics of the Civil War by Paddy Griffith
3. Fortifications not being used by Sherman was NOT AN ANOMALY in the early war years although I would agree that he was caught by surprise due to the failure of properly using his Cavalry to monitor the Confederate movement. Sherman and Grant were Infantry Officers with tactical training in maneuverability. The Confederacy was the first to use defensive fortifications because they were fighting a defensive-offensive war. Fortification are what Engineers [Lee was an Engineer by training] were trained to do and after Gettysburg the Civil War began to pre-shadow what World War I would look like when both side adopted this static fortification [trench warfare] tactic. It was a disaster, not an advancement in war tactics. --Battle Tactics of the Civil War by Paddy Griffith
4. The discussion was rife with southern myths -- southern soldiers were more motivated, more accustom to fire arms usage, blah, blah, blah; same old tired wishful thinking. --Life of Johnny Reb and Life of Billy Yank both by Bell Irvin Wiley.
There were more errors but these stood out. Mr. Groom referenced one of my favorite 19th century authors, Ambrose Bierce. One of his most important observations about the Civil War was that it was all in vain because Reconstruction made a mockery of civil liberties by turning a blind eye to Jim Crow laws.
Drill or Dig in?
Senior leaders on both sides of this conflict were veterans of the Mexican War. Sherman did not campaign in Mexico, but his contemporaries did, and he saw action in the Seminole War.
In those conflicts, the weaponry (particularly the musket) and tactics gave advantage to the attacker. The experience of the Civil War forced a paradigm shift in tactics. The advances in the weaponry (rifling and the Minie ball) returned the advantage to the defender, but leaders did not learn this until after assessing the 1862 campaigns (Shiloh and Anteitam were particularly instructive in what worked and didn't work).
In April of 1862, given the conventional wisdom of the time, it was perfectly reasonable for a competent commander to have his unseasoned/untested units use the time available before a fight to focus on close order drill instead of building revetments.
r,
SS
Union Commanders (and newspapers) gave different names to engagements than did their southern counterparts in their reporting after the fact (ie. Anteitam [the creek on the map]=Sharpsburg [the nearby town], Bull Run [another creek]=Manassas [another town]).
History tends to prefer whatever the victorious called it, but for a lot of nostalgic revisionists, the "War of Northern Agression" never really ended.
Ok. It is a work of fiction. Given. BUT Groom should have been at least a bit more accurate. I heard on the show that he wrote the Rebs flushed all the game out of the forests as they set upon the Union encampments. In the book 'A History of Hardin County, Tennessee' by B. G. Brazelton c. 1885, page 79 "The county now presented a different appearance to what it did in 1860; in fact, it almost seemed like a new county. The four years of war had caused small game to become plentiful; even the deer and turkey, that were scarcely seen before the war, were numerous in places. The catamount screamed occasionally, and the black bear was to be seen now and then. As soon as it was known that a man could hunt without being molested, the hollow trees were robbed of their old rusty guns, and then there was such a killing of game as had not been known since the first settling of the county."
Additionally, Hardin Co. was the location of Hurst Nation. Not but a few miles N of Shiloh, it was rabidly Unionist and led by Fielding Hurst. Grant could expect little trouble by stopping at Pittsburgh Landing to await additional troops because that part of the county was the most sparsely settled and because plenty of the locals were not in favor of seceding.
As for the division between people. There was not much intermarrying between the two sides, for decades and decades. At least in that part of the country there wasn't. Unionists kept to their own.
The best I can say is that Groom is a novelist. He should have had a fact checker.
Yes, I'm from there.