General Lew Wallace Study & Museum

Meet Lew Wallace: The Soldier - The Battle of Shiloh Soldier \| Governor \| Author \| Ambassador \| His Words \| Genealogy "How many are those who spend their youth yearning and fighting to write their names in history, then spend their old age shuddering to read them there." On April 6, 1862, Union and Confederate forces engaged in battle near Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee along the Tennessee River. Today the battle is remembered as Shiloh. By April 7, Union forces had won the field, but at the cost of 13,000 Union casualties. So much bloodshed had not yet been witnessed during the Civil War. Critics cried out for someone to blame. Many Union officers were blamed in the press, including William Tecumseh Sherman and Ulysses S. Grant. However, no officer drew as much criticism for the battle of Shiloh as Lew Wallace. The criticisms relate mainly to Wallace's failure to march his division six miles to the field on the first day of battle. Common reasons given for why he failed in this endeavor include that he was lost, insubordinate, or incredibly slow. The primary source evidence strongly suggests otherwise. Wallace's Third Division of the Army of the Tennessee was stationed six miles up river from the main body of Union forces, which were concentrated near and around Pittsburg Landing. Grant, the commander in the field, met with Wallace on the morning of the battle and told him to prepare his division to move. Wallace made such preparations and awaited further orders. Grant, upon arriving at Pittsburg Landing and assessing the condition of the battle, dispatched a courier to order Wallace to the field. The written order in question is where the controversy lies; unfortunately it was lost during the subsequent march. The source of contention between Wallace supporters and Grant supporters is what road the order specified Wallace to take. Wallace had a choice of two roads, the River Road, a swampy, deluged road that ran parallel to the Tennessee River and led directly to Pittsburg Landing or the Shunpike, a road that Wallace had ordered his cavalry to improve for rapid communication and assistance to or from the main Union force. Wallace and his staff all agreed that the order supported the latter option. (Grant could not attest to what the order read because he acknowledged that although he had given an order for Wallace to move up, he never saw it reduced to writing.) Wallace's division began marching along the remade road to join the Union's right flank, commanded by General Sherman. However, sometime between Grant giving the order and Wallace's march, the Union forces were forced to retreat from their initial positions. As a result, the road Wallace's division was on would no longer take them to the Union right; instead it would lead them behind Confederate lines. Grant eventually grew impatient with Wallace's tardiness and was expecting him via the River Road. He dispatched several couriers to hurry Wallace up. When they finally found Wallace they told him the condition of the battle. At which point Wallace ordered a time-consuming counter march, in anticipation of still joining the battle before dusk. However, retracing their steps and traveling through the swampy terrain with artillery wagons was a very tedious and slow moving process. Wallace's division arrived in the middle of the night, too late to participate on the first day of battle. They were, however, instrumental in turning the battle tide in favor of the Union on the second day. Wallace continued a few more months in command before requesting leave to return home. When he was ready to report back to the field, he found that his command had been taken away and that he was "on the shelf." It would only be through luck that Wallace would command troops in the field again at the Battle at Monocacy. In answer to the criticisms pertaining to Wallace at Shiloh, he was fully cognizant of his surroundings and roads to the main Union force, as evidenced by his remaking the Shunpike. The charges that Wallace was insubordinate are not valid because his staff read the order and testified that the division's action was correct. Furthermore, other generals on the field expected Wallace via the Shunpike road, demonstrated by Sherman dispatching a battery to guard the road for Wallace's passage. The criticism regarding Wallace's division being slow is correct, however it often fails to take into account the poor, swampy conditions through which his men had to march. The Battle of Shiloh continued to haunt Wallace's memory. To his dying day, Wallace defended his actions at Shiloh. He wrote, "Shiloh and its slanderers! Will the world ever acquit me of them? If I were guilty I would not feel them so keenly." Ulysses S. Grant in his memoirs gave what should have been the final vindication of Wallace at Shiloh. However, the statement is given in a footnote and is often overlooked by historians. For further reading on Wallace at Shiloh we recommend: Stacy D. Allen, "'If He Had Less Rank' Lewis Wallace" in Grant's Lieutenants: From Cairo to Vicksburg Ed. Steven E. Woodworth. University Press of Kansas, 2001. Gail M. Stephens, "Lew Wallace's Fall From Grace" in North and South, Volume 7, Number 3, 2004. Lew Wallace, Smoke, Sound & Fury: The Civil War Memoirs of Major-General.Lew Wallace, U.S. Volunteers Ed. by Jim Leeke. Strawberry Hill Press, 1998.