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literary emporium of
Tennessee, was lost, and this noble State became the common battle-ground of hostile and contending armies.
Both sides levied recruits and supplies from the unfortunate citizens of
Tennessee;
Columbus, Kentucky, was abandoned, and the fall of
Island No.10,
Fort Pillow and
Memphis followed.
The unbroken tide of Federal victory in the
West was rudely arrested by the armies gathered by
General Albert Sidney Johnston and
General G. T. Beauregard near the southern shore of the
Tennessee, at
Corinth, Mississippi.
The brave Confederate commander,
General Albert Sidney Johnston sealed his devotion to the Southern Confederacy with his life, on the 6th of April, 1862, whilst leading to victory the gallant soldiers of the Armies of
Mississippi and
Tennessee.
At the
battle of Shiloh, April 6 and 7, 1862, the effective total of the Confederate forces, comprising the Army of Mississippi, before the battle, numbered, forty thousand three hundred and fifty-five, and after the bloody repulse of the 7th, the effective total was only twenty-nine thousand six hundred and thirty-six.
General Beauregard, in his official report, places his loss at
Shiloh at one thousand seven hundred and twenty-eight killed outright, eight thousand nine hundred and twelve wounded, nine hundred and fifty-nine missing, making an aggregate of casualties of ten thousand six hundred and ninety-nine.
The losses at
Shiloh were distributed among the different corps of the Confederate army as follows:
| Killed. | Wounded. | Missing. |
| First Corps, Major-General Polk | 385 | 1,953 | 19 |
| Second Corps, Major-General Bragg | 553 | 2,441 | 634 |
| Third Corps, Major-General Hardee | 404 | 1,936 | 141 |
| Reserve, Major-General Breckenridge | 386 | 1,682 | 165 |
| —— | —— | —— |
| Total | 1,728 | 8,012 | 959 |
The suffering of the
Confederate wounded were great, indeed, as they lay upon the cold ground of
Shiloh during the night of the 6th, exposed to the pitiless rain and the murderous fire of the gunboats.
In the subsequent siege of
Corinth, less than fifty thousand Confederate troops successfully resisted the advance of one hundred and twenty-five thousand Federal troops abundantly supplied with food and water, and armed and equipped with most approved weapons of modern warfare.
