After the February 1862 Union victories at Forts Henry and Donelson, Don Carlos Buell's army occupied Nashville and Ulysses S. Grant's army advanced to Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River as the two planned to attack Corinth, Mississippi. On April 6, Confederate forces under Albert Sidney Johnston struck first at Shiloh, where they came close to victory on the first day before Johnston was killed, and on the second day Grant's counterattack drove the Confederates back toward Corinth. Shiloh became the war's bloodiest battle to that time, with almost 24,000 killed, wounded, or missing. On April 8, 1862, William T. Sherman led a reconnaissance from the Shiloh battlefield to determine whether the Confederate army had withdrawn. Six miles southwest of Pittsburg Landing, beyond a clear field and about 200 yards of fallen timber, his force encountered a Confederate camp occupied by Nathan Bedford Forrest's cavalry. Sherman sent two companies of skirmishers forward, and Forrest's 350 cavalrymen, who were protecting a field hospital on the ridge north of the road, immediately attacked. The charge overran Union infantry struggling through the fallen timber and forced them, along with Sherman, back behind a supporting infantry brigade. The Confederates killed and wounded 40 Federals and captured 40 more before a heavy volley from the Union line struck them. Forrest was severely wounded in the lower back near the Union line but stayed mounted, fought his way out with pistol and saber, and retreated west with his command. Sherman captured the hospital and sent the 4th Illinois Cavalry another mile west along Ridge Road, where a Confederate rear guard stopped further advance. Convinced that the Confederate army was retreating fully to Corinth, Sherman then returned his troops to their camps, ending the fighting that followed Shiloh.

Photo: Phillip Knecht

Photo: Brandon Fletcher

Photo: Brandon Fletcher

Photo: Brandon Fletcher

Photo: Phillip Knecht

Michie, Tennessee · USA