One of the most interesting battles of the war, and the bloodiest to that point.
110,000 troops (66,000 Union + 44,000 Confederate) met in the fields of southwest Tennessee near Pittsburg Landing (the Union name of the battle) on the Tennessee River. For non Civil War buffs, interesting things about the battle:
-It was the first major command experience in the war for U.S. Grant and his friend William Sherman
-The most famous Confederate general in both the north and the south at that time, Albert Sidney Johnston, personally led the Southern advance on “The Hornets Nest” (a center line held by Iowa soldiers); his skin was exposed in several places as many patches of his clothing were shot off, but his only real injury was a “somethin’ bit me!” wound to the back of his knee
-The first day it was assumed by all including the Union troops that the battle was an unqualified Confederate victory
-By the time the Hornet’s Nest was broken few Confederates and fewer Union soldiers knew that Johnston was dead. The minor injury on the back of his knee had proved more serious than realized when Johnston began to lose consciousness. Upon helping him it was discovered that his boot was literally sloshing with blood. His surgeons were attending other wounded on both sides two miles away and he bled to death before they returned.
-The next day it became an unqualified Union victory due to the late arrival, but arrival, of Don Carlos Buell and Beauregard, not a particularly able general on the best of days, was overwhelmed by numbers
-Nathan Bedford Forrest, a rags-to-riches self-made millionaire who the previous year had joined the Confederate cavalry as a private, then resigned and funded his own cavalry company because he didn’t like taking orders, guarded the Confederate retreat and made what should have been a suicidal charge but, obviously, survived- the first real notice taken of him by the north.
-Several accounts describe the field as being so full of dead that you could walk across it without touching the ground.