Albert Sidney Johnston
The loss of Albert Sidney Johnston dealt a severe blow to Confederate morale. Contemporaries saw his death and their defeat as the beginning of the end for the Confederacy: President Jefferson Davis called it "the turning point of our fate", while Confederate brigade commander Randall L. Gibson believed that "the West perished with Albert Sidney Johnston, and the Southern country followed." With the Confederate loss, their best opportunity to retake the Mississippi Valley and achieve numerical superiority with the Union armies in the west disappeared, and the heavy losses suffered at Shiloh represented the start of an unwinnable war of attrition.