The charge of being blindsided at Shiloh would long be a sore point with Grant. Ordinarily the soul of honesty, he sought to rewrite history, claiming to have known a major battle was imminent. Unfortunately, his April 5 correspondence makes crystal-clear that he had no intimation of a massive attack in the offing. He dismissed raids on Union outposts as the work of reconnaissance forces, insisting, “I have scarcely the faintest idea of an attack, (general one), being made upon us but will be prepared should such a thing take place.”13
