This text is part of:
[44]
20-and 24-pounders, rifles, and howitzers.
Grant's fifteen thousand men found themselves confronted by about twenty thousand entrenched.
McClernand pressed to the right, up the river.
His artillery was very active.
Sometimes acting singly, and then in concert, the batteries temporarily silenced several of those of the Confederates and shelled some of the camps.
Outside the main work, about fourteen hundred yards to the west, the Confederates had, after the surrender of Fort Henry, constructed a line of infantry entrenchments, which circled thence to the south and struck the river two and one-quarter miles from the fort.
The guns of eight field-batteries were placed on this line.
On the 15th, McClernand's right was assailed and pressed back, and a part of the garrison escaped, but Grant received the unconditional surrender of about fourteen thousand men and sixty-five guns.
His own artillery had not increased beyond the eight batteries with which he marched from Fort Henry.
These were not fixed in position and protected by earthworks, but were moved from place to place as necessity dictated.
The brilliant feat of arms of Pope and his command in the capture of Island No.10 added to the growing respect in which the artillery was held by the other combatant arms.
About seven in the morning on April 6, 1862, the Confederate artillery opened fire on the Union camps at Shiloh.
Thereupon ensued one of the most sanguinary conflicts of the whole war. Although the Federal artillery was under the direct orders of the division commanders, the fighting was so fragmentary that no concerted attempt was made to use the batteries until, on the retirement of Hurlbut to the vicinity of Pittsburg Landing, some batteries of heavy guns were placed in position to cover the possible retirement of the troops from the front.
About forty guns were finally assembled, and their work had an important part in saving the army, for this group of batteries was a large factor in repulsing the attempt of the
Review of Reviews. New York. 1912.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.