Sorry. Forget to provide the link to the map.
http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/shiloh/maps/shiloh-april-6-1862.jpg
Just a couple things about Jackson, Polk and Hill:
Jackson was wounded by friendly fire while returning from a mounted reconnaissance, after dark and accompanied by maybe ten or twelve staff officers and orderlies. His arm was amputated and he died a number of days later of an infection that was sort of the natural consequence of field surgery. He was not shot by hostile forces.
Polk was killed by almost random artillery fire while observing the fighting from what was regarded by the other officers with him as a safe distance. It was almost as if he had been struck by lightening – it was just about that sort of a fluke event.
A.P. Hill was killed in one of the last fights as the Army of Northern Virginia was starting to disintegrate during the retreat from the Petersburg-Richmond lines that ended at Appomattox Court House. It was a disorganized fight with fluid firing lines. Hill suffered more from bad luck than from deliberately putting himself in harms way.
It wasn’t really a random event. Joseph Johnston and some other Confederate generals rode out to an exposed position so they could scout out the Union positions. A Union general saw them and directed an artillery battery to shoot at them. Polk was one of the generals being shot at and he was killed. So it wasn’t random - they were being shot at because they were identified as enemy generals.
I don’t want to beat this topic to death, but the conduct of war changed tremendously in 1914-1918 with the development of almost modern communications and truly mass armies. In 1914-1918 a commander could not hope to control a fighting front from the top of a horse some two or three hundred yards behind the fighting front. Before that it was not the case. In the wars of the 18th and 19th century, including the American Revolution, the requirements of control and supervision required and army commander to place himself at almost as much risk as a company commander in order to know what was going on and to influence the conduct of the fight. When things went all pear shaped the commander was expected to place himself in the front line a lead just as if he was commanding a company. Whether a senior commander came out of a fight unharmed was largely a matter of luck but the commander was required to place himself in harms way in order to do his job…
As far as Bishop Polk is concerned I think the characterization of his death as a fluke is fair when you consider the vagaries of mid-19th century cannon fire, the need to hand set fuses on common shell, the half-mile range and the targeting of groups of people. Even a three inch ordinance rifle was hardly a precision weapon.
As far as Sidney Johnston is concerned, Willey Sword’s excellent study of Shiloh concludes that the commander of the Confederate army was probably struck by stray friendly fire while behind the firing line but well within the zone of danger. Again, a matter of bad luck. All the more so in the case of Sidney Johnston because if the wound had been recognized it could have been easily treated with the medical skills readily available in the field – a simple tourniquet improvised from a belt and a ramrod would have done the trick. As it was Johnston bled to death from a bullet wound to the back of the knee
As another illustration, The Duke of Wellington at Waterloo was probably not more than a hundred yards or so behind the firing line and came out of it without a scratch while his staff was devastated and the commander of the Dutch contingent and the second in command of the whole Anglo-Dutch army was desperately wounded. Wellington’s cavalry commander had his leg blown off by a cannon ball that passed between wellington and the cavalry officer. Wellington’s only injury was from being kicked by his horse at the end of the day. Again, random luck.
To be fair, the standard we’re judging by is George Washington, the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army. By definition, I don’t think any country’s army ever had more than one of those in circulation at a time. He was “only” a Lieutenant General in the American Revolution because, as mentioned already, the Continental Army wasn’t very big.
Even allowing for a Lieutenant General commanding the same number of troops in the ACW (I don’t know if that was the case or not), I somehow doubt that a Lt. General in the ACW would have the same responsibilities as General Washington did as Commander in Chief in the American Revolution.