page_title: Battle of Shiloh
section_title: Evening lull
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of Shiloh / Battle, April 6 (first day: Confederate assault) / Evening lull
caption_attribution_description: Photograph of Shiloh Church at the Shiloh battlefield, April 2006, by Donald Wiles, donated to Wikipedia, Photoshopped by Hal Jespersen.
context_page_description: The Battle of Shiloh was a battle in the Western Theater of the American Civil War, fought April 6–7, 1862, in southwestern Tennessee. A Union force known as the Army of the Tennessee had moved via the Tennessee River deep into Tennessee and was encamped principally at Pittsburg Landing on the west bank of the Tennessee River, where the Confederate Army of Mississippi launched a surprise attack on Grant's army from its base in Corinth, Mississippi. Johnston was mortally wounded during the fighting; Beauregard took command of the army and decided against pressing the attack late in the evening. Overnight, Grant was reinforced by one of his divisions stationed farther north and was joined by three divisions from the Army of the Ohio. The Union forces began an unexpected counterattack the next morning which reversed the Confederate gains of the previous day.
  On April 6, the first day of the battle, the Confederates struck with the intention of driving the Union defenders away from the river and into the swamps of Owl Creek to the west. Johnston hoped to defeat Grant's army before the anticipated arrival of Buell and the Army of the Ohio.
context_section_description: The evening of April 6 was a dispiriting end to the first day of one of the bloodiest battles in American history. The cries of wounded and dying men on the fields between the armies could be heard in the Union and Confederate camps throughout the night. Exhausted Confederate soldiers bedded down in the abandoned Union camps. The Union troops were pushed back to the river and the junction of the River (Hamburg–Savannah Road) and the Corinth-Pittsburg Landing Roads. Around 10 p.m. a thunderstorm passed through the area. Coupled with the continuous shelling from the Union gunboats Lexington and Tyler, it made the night a miserable experience for both sides.
  In his 1885 memoirs, Grant described his experience that night:
  During the night rain fell in torrents and our troops were exposed to the storm without shelter. I made my headquarters under a tree a few hundred yards back from the river bank. My ankle was so much swollen from the fall of my horse the Friday night preceding, and the bruise was so painful, that I could get no rest. The drenching rain would have precluded the possibility of sleep without this additional cause. Some time after midnight, growing restive under the storm and the continuous pain, I moved back to the loghouse under the bank. This had been taken as a hospital, and all night wounded men were being brought in, their wounds dressed, a leg or an arm amputated as the case might require, and everything being done to save life or alleviate suffering. The sight was more unendurable than encountering the enemy's fire, and I returned to my tree in the rain.
  A famous anecdote encapsulates Grant's unflinching attitude to temporary setbacks and his tendency for offensive action. Sometime after midnight, Sherman encountered Grant standing under a tree, sheltering himself from the pouring rain and smoking one of his cigars, while considering his losses and planning for the next day. Sherman remarked, "Well, Grant, we've had the devil's own day, haven't we?" Grant looked up. "Yes," he replied, followed by a puff. "Yes. Lick 'em tomorrow, though."
  Beauregard sent a telegram to President Davis announcing a complete victory. He later admitted, "I thought I had Grant just where I wanted him and could finish him up in the morning." Many of his men were jubilant, having overrun the Union camps and taken thousands of prisoners and tons of supplies. Grant still had reason to be optimistic: Lew Wallace's 5,800 men (minus the two regiments guarding the supplies at Crump's Landing) and 15,000 of Don Carlos Buell's army began to arrive that evening. Wallace's division took up a position on the right of the Union line and was in place by 1 a.m.; Buell's men were fully on the scene by 4 a.m., in time to turn the tide the next day.
  Beauregard caused considerable historical controversy with his decision to halt the assault at dusk. Braxton Bragg and Albert Sidney Johnston's son, Col. William Preston Johnston, were among those who bemoaned the so-called "lost opportunity at Shiloh." Beauregard did not come to the front to inspect the strength of the Union lines; he remained at Shiloh Church. He also discounted intelligence reports from Col. Nathan Bedford Forrest (and bluster from prisoner of war General Prentiss) that Buell's men were crossing the river to reinforce Grant. In defense of his decision, Beauregard's troops were simply exhausted, there was less than an hour of daylight left, and Grant's artillery advantage was formidable. In addition, he had received a dispatch from Brig. Gen. Benjamin Hardin Helm in northern Alabama that indicated Buell was marching toward Decatur and not Pittsburg Landing.
caption: Shiloh Church at Shiloh National Military Park, 2006. The original church building did not survive the battle. The present-day structure is a reconstruction erected in 2003 on the historical site by the Tennessee Sons of Confederate Veterans organization.[99]
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