After the February 1862 Union victories at Forts Henry and Donelson, Don Carlos Buell’s army occupied Nashville while Ulysses S. Grant’s army advanced to Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River in preparation for an attack on Corinth, Mississippi. Before that offensive began, Albert Sidney Johnston struck first on April 6 at Pittsburg Landing, opening the Battle of Shiloh. The Confederates came close to victory on the first day, though Johnston was killed, and on the second day Grant’s counterattack drove them back to Corinth. Shiloh became the war’s bloodiest battle to that date, with almost 24,000 killed, wounded, or missing. In March 1862, the house of Unionist William H. Cherry and his wife, Ann “Annie” Irwin Cherry, served first as the headquarters of Charles F. Smith and then, beginning March 17 at Cherry’s request, as Grant’s headquarters while he awaited Buell’s army marching overland from Nashville. Grant’s own army was camped two miles upriver at Pittsburg Landing. At dawn on April 6, when the Confederate attack began, Annie Cherry recalled Grant hearing cannon fire at her breakfast table, rising quickly, telling his staff, “Gentlemen, the ball is in motion; let’s be off,” and embarking within fifteen minutes on his flagship to steam toward the fighting. Though Annie Cherry strongly supported the Confederate cause and had two brothers in the Southern army, she later said Grant had conducted himself as a gentleman, was kind and considerate to her family, was uniformly kind to citizens regardless of politics, and was thoroughly sober that morning.