battle of shiloh importance?

Answer 1

With the loss of Forts Henry and Donelson in February, General Johnston withdrew his disheartened Confederate forces into west Tennessee, northern Mississippi and Alabama to reorganize. In early March, General Halleck responded by ordering General Grant to advance his Union Army of West Tennessee on an invasion up the Tennessee River.
Occupying Pittsburg Landing, Grant entertained no thought of a Confederate attack. Halleck's instructions were that following the arrival of General Buell's Army of the Ohio from Nashville, Grant would advance south in a joint offensive to seize the Memphis & Charleston Railroad, the Confederacy's only east-west all weather supply route that linked the lower Mississippi Valley to cities on the Confederacy's east coast.
Assisted by his second-in-command, General Beauregard, Johnston shifted his scattered forces and concentrated almost 55,000 men around Corinth. Strategically located where the Memphis & Charleston crossed the Mobile & Ohio Railroad, Corinth was the western Confederacy's most important rail junction.
On April 3, realizing Buell would soon reinforce Grant, Johnston launched an offensive with his newly christened Army of the Mississippi. Advancing upon Pittsburg Landing with 43,938 men, Johnston planned to surprise Grant, cut his army off from retreat to the Tennessee River, and drive the Federals west into the swamps of Owl Creek.
In the gray light of dawn, April 6, a small Federal reconnaissance discovered Johnston's army deployed for battle astride the Corinth road, just a mile beyond the forward Federal camps. Storming forward, the Confederates found the Federal position unfortified. Johnston had achieved almost total surprise. By mid-morning, the Confederates seemed within easy reach of victory, overrunning one frontline Union division and capturing its camp. However, stiff resistance on the Federal right entangled Johnston's brigades in a savage fight around Shiloh Church. Throughout the day, Johnston's army hammered the Federal right, which gave ground but did not break. Casualties upon this brutal killing ground were immense.
Meanwhile, Johnston's flanking attack stalled in front of Sarah Bell's peach orchard and the dense oak thicket labeled the "hornet's nest" by the Confederates. Grant's left flank withstood Confederate assaults for seven crucial hours before being forced to yield ground in the late afternoon. Despite inflicting heavy casualties and seizing ground, the Confederates only drove Grant towards the river, instead of away from it. The Federal survivors established a solid front before Pittsburg Landing and repulsed the last Confederate charge as dusk ended the first day of fighting.

The Second Day
April 7, 1862

Shiloh's first day of slaughter also witnessed the death of the Confederate leader, General Johnston, who fell at mid-afternoon, struck down by a stray bullet while directing the action on the Confederate right. At dusk, the advance division of General Buell's Federal Army of the Ohio reached Pittsburg Landing, and crossed the river to file into line on the Union left during the night. Buell's arrival, plus the timely appearance of a reserve division from Grant's army, led by Major General Lewis Wallace, fed over 22,500 reinforcements into the Union lines. On April 7, Grant renewed the fighting with an aggressive counterattack.
Taken by surprise, General Beauregard managed to rally 30,000 of his badly disorganized Confederates, and mounted a tenacious defense. Inflicting heavy casualties on the Federals, Beauregard's troops temporarily halted the determined Union advance. However, strength in numbers provided Grant with a decisive advantage. By midafternoon, as waves of fresh Federal troops swept forward, pressing the exhausted Confederates back to Shiloh Church, Beauregard realized his armies' peril and ordered a retreat. During the night, the Confederates withdrew, greatly disorganized, to their fortified stronghold at Corinth. Possession of the grisly battlefield passed to the victorious Federal's, who were satisfied to simply reclaim Grant's camps and make an exhausted bivouac among the dead.
General Johnston's massive and rapid concentration at Corinth, and surprise attack on Grant at Pittsburg Landing, had presented the Confederacy with an opportunity to reverse the course of the war. The aftermath, however, left the invading Union forces still poised to carry out the capture of the Corinth rail junction. Shiloh's awesome toll of 23,746 men killed, wounded, or missing brought a shocking realization to both sides that the war would not end quickly.

atp

Answer 2

The Battle of Shiloh (April 6-7, 1862) was important for several reasons.
1. The Confederate attempt to destroy the Union's forces under Grant and then Grant and Buell failed.
2. The Union forces followed up their victories at Fort Henry/Donelson and together with the concurrent victory of Pope at Island 10 pushed the Confederates onto the defensive in the Western theatre.
3. Both sides learned they were unprepared - Grant and Sherman learning valuable lessons, and the Confederates lost an able General - Albert Sidney Johnson.

Answer 3

The main importance of Shiloh was (1) to cause Grant to be demoted for about a year. Grant won at Ft. Donaldson/Henry in Feb. 1862 and was riding high as one of the few Union generals who beat Southern armies, but lost a lot (23,000) of men at Shiloh. Such a massive loss at that stage of the war was unacceptable to the North and so he was practically demoted until he won at Vicksburg on 7/4/1863 upon which he was promoted to Major General http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_S._Grant ) and (2) to blunt a Union offensive from Kentucky through Tennessee into Mississippi that threatened to cut the South in half following the rough contours of the Anaconda Plan (see http://www.civilwarhome.com/scottmcclellananaconda.htm ) suggested by Gen. Scott in 1861. This failure to seize the initiative and cut the South in half east of the Mississippi led to the slower approach of the Anaconda Plan followed by Grant of beseiging Vicksburg, Mississippi (the main Southern stronghold on the Mississippi River) and the North's eventual capturing the whole of the Mississippi River shortly after the fall of Vicksburg with the fall of Port Hudson 4 days later. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vicksburg

Answer 4

I think the main importance of the Battle of Shiloh is twofold.

1) It was an important victory early in the war, when Union victories were very scarce. And as the previous answerer pointed out, it was incredibly costly in terms of human lives.

2) It brought Ulysses S. Grant -- a minor general at the time -- to the attention of Lincoln. Grant would turn out be the commander that Lincoln needed to win the war. Shiloh showed Grant's willingness to stand and fight, despite high Union losses, unlike Gen. George McClellan, who was Grant's superior at that early stage of the war. It was this tenacity that allowed him to use his superior numbers to wage and win a war of attrition.

Answer 5

"The second great battle of the American Civil War (1862); the battle ended with the withdrawal of Confederate troops but it was not a Union victory."

"It was one of the bloodiest contests of the war, losses on each side reaching over 10,000, and, with the possible exceptions of Antietam and Gettysburg, it has been the subject of more controversy than any other Civil War battle."

"...Reinforcements from Gen. Buell arrived in the evening and turned the tide the next morning, when he and Grant launched a counterattack along the entire line. The Confederates were forced to retreat from the bloodiest battle in United States history up to that time, ending their hopes that they could block the Union invasion of northern Mississippi."