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110  general beauregard’s “complete victory” at shiloh an interpretation Grady McWhiney Atelegram, sent from the Shiloh battlefield on the evening of April 6, 1862, to Confederate officials in Richmond, told what had happened, or at least what General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard thought and hoped had happened: “We this morning attacked the enemy in strong position . . . , and after a severe battle of ten hours, . . . gained a complete victory, driving the enemy from every position.”1 President Jefferson Davis still had no reason to doubt the accuracy of this report when he informed the Confederate Congress two days later that “the enemy was driven in disorder from his position and pursued to the Tennessee River, where, under cover of his gun-boats, he was at the last accounts endeavoring to effect his retreat by aid of his transports.” Davis admitted that “details of this great battle are as yet too few and incomplete to enable me to distinguish with merited praise all of those who may have conspicuously earned the right to such distinction . . . ,” yet he announced, “with entire confidence, that it has pleased Almighty God to crown the Confederate arms with a glorious and decisive victory over our invaders.”2 The Confederate Senate, in response to the president’s announcement, quickly passed a resolution thanking General Beauregard and his troops for the “exhibition of skill and gallantry displayed” in gaining this “signal triumph.” During the next few days, it became distressingly apparent to everyone in Richmond and elsewhere in the South that the Confederates had not achieved a “signal triumph” at Shiloh. Beauregard had neither destroyed General Ulysses Simpson Grant’s army nor forced it to retreat across the river; indeed, the very day that Beauregard’s telegram arrived in Richmond, the combined Union armies of Grant and General Don Carlos Buell had driven general beauregard’s “complete victory” 111 the Confederates back to Corinth. “The news today from Ten[nessee] is not so favorable,” a former member of the president’s cabinet wrote on April 9. “Gen’l Beauregard telegraphs that he had fallen back from the river to his original position at Corinth.”3 There is no doubt what happened at Shiloh; the dispute that began almost immediately after the battle and continues today is over whether Beauregard should have called off the first day’s action when he did. Jefferson Davis, who mistrusted Beauregard, became convinced “that, when General [Albert Sidney] Johnston fell, the Confederate army was so fully victorious that, had the attack been vigorously pressed, General Grant and his army would before the setting of the sun have been fugitives or prisoners.”4 Other writers agreed. Just after the war Edward Alfred Pollard, editor of the Richmond Examiner and certainly no friend of Jefferson Davis, described Beauregard’s decision as the “extraordinary abandonment of a great victory.” Confederate units were ready to “sweep the enemy from the field,” claimed Pollard. “The sun was about disappearing, so that little time was left to finish the glorious work of the day. The movement commenced with every prospect of success. But just at this time the astounding order was received from Gen. Beauregard to withdraw the forces beyond the enemy’s fire!”5 Similar complaints against Beauregard appeared periodically in the pages of such journals as the Southern Historical Society Papers. “A great victory was just within the grasp of the Confederates” at Shiloh, insisted Colonel William Allan in 1884, but Beauregard “allowed [it] to slip away from them.” James Ryder Randall, Confederate journalist and author of Maryland, My Maryland, announced in 1896 that “Beauregard’s unfortunate order of retreat [on the first day at Shiloh] saved the Federals from capture or destruction.” John Witherspoon Du Bose stated in 1899 that “Beauregard, going on the field on a bed, wasted by protracted illness, . . . recalled the troops from the very arms of victory.” Major Robert W. Hunter proclaimed in 1907 that if Beauregard had allowed the attack to continue, “Grant would have been crushed before Buell’s reinforcements could have saved him.” In 1914, Confederate veteran Philip D. Stevenson summarized the views of Beauregard’s critics. “Why,” he asked rhetorically, when the Yankees were “disorganized and whipped, huddled together like sheep,” did the Confederates fail to “go forward and complete their work? Alas!” he concluded, “they had changed commanders! And their new commander ordered them to halt and retire! And lo! The victory was lost!”6 Beauregard, some of his friends...

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