Shiloh was the first battle on a scale that became commonplace during the next three years. The 20,000 killed and wounded at Shiloh (about equally distributed between the two sides) were nearly double the 12,000 battle casualties at Manassas, Wilson’s Creek, Fort Donelson, and Pea Ridge combined. Gone was the romantic innocence of Rebs and Yanks who had marched off to war in 1861. “I never realized the ‘pomp and circumstance’ of the thing called glorious war until I saw this,” wrote a Tennessee private after the battle. “Men … lying in every conceivable position; the dead … with their eyes
...more
