Shiloh: Conquer or Perish by Timothy B. Smith (review)

Timothy B. Smith’s Shiloh: Conquer or Perish is the best scholarly treatment of the battle of Shiloh to date. Published as part of the University Press of Kansas’s outstanding Modern War Studies series, Smith’s examination of the critical April 6–7, 1862, battle is more than just academic. With lucid prose, Smith has successfully bridged the frustratingly elusive gap between exhaustive scholarly research and good storytelling. Smith’s book joins a growing body of work on Shiloh, including Larry J. Daniel’s well-respected Shiloh: The Battle That Changed the Civil War (New York, 1997) and Winston Groom’s more popular treatment, Shiloh, 1862 (Washington, D.C., 2012).

Shiloh: Conquer or Perish departs from these earlier works in three important ways. First, Smith emphasizes the social history of the battle, namely, the local civilian and soldier experience. Civil War scholars have long understood Shiloh’s importance in terms of its role in the overall Union strategy in the West, but few have focused on the battle’s part in inaugurating a style and intensity of warfare previously unseen from the soldier and civilian perspective. While always keeping the overarching strategic and tactical machinations of the Union and Confederate campaigns in perspective, Smith delves deeply into how soldiers and civilians experienced this new intense warfare. Soldiers on both sides struggled to comprehend the magnitude of the engagement, and the battle shattered any semblance of order for local civilians. According to Smith, their lives were “turned upside down,” and they remained that way until after the war (p. 404). For those who lived and fought in the western theater, the battle foreshadowed the extreme and constant conflict that followed.

Second, Smith focuses a great deal of his attention on the battle’s second day, which he contends “was much more important to the central battle than is often thought” (p. xiii). Most scholars have given only cursory attention to the events on April 7, but the Union counterattack on that day lasted well into the afternoon. It was defined by pockets of fighting as intense as the day before and was marked by a collapse of Confederate command and morale.

Finally, Smith impressively places the natural environment where it should be: at the center of the battle. Terrain, Smith shows, was “one of the two chief determining factors . . . of victory and defeat” (p. xii). The Federals used the river, creeks, ravines, and forests more effectively and consistently than did the Confederates. Although not singularly responsible for the Union victory, the proper leveraging of the terrain was as important as any other factor. By elevating the natural environment to a critically important position, Smith admirably bridges a persistent but softening divide between military and environmental scholarship.

Ultimately, Shiloh: Conquer or Perish is a well-narrated story of a battle that has too often been overshadowed by the engagements that followed it. By placing it in context, Smith convincingly argues that Shiloh was one of the most critical contingency points of the war—a moment when, as Confederate general Albert Sidney Johnston remarked, the Confederate army must “conquer or perish.” As Smith makes clear, not only Johnston, but also “perhaps the Confederacy itself, perished on the plains of Shiloh” (p. 422). Shiloh: Conquer or Perish will become the standard book on the battle. Clearly written, deeply researched, and situated firmly in the relevant scholarly discourse, Smith’s work will be of great value to interested readers and Civil War scholars alike.