In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

29  a terrible baptism by fire david stuart’s defense of the union left Alexander Mendoza Shortly after 6 p.m. on April 6, General P. G. T. Beauregard halted the attack of his Confederate Army of Mississippi on the lines of Grant’s Army of the Tennessee. “The victory is sufficiently complete,” explained Beauregard to one of his subordinates. The Creole general was confident that if Grant’s army did not withdraw during the night, as Beauregard rather expected, his own Confederate army would drive it into the river. He was wrong, and the Rebel assault on the evening of the sixth represented in some ways a high-water mark of Confederate hopes.1 Several key junctures in the battle figured largely in this final result, this Union victory, and none of these was more important than the fight that took place near Lick Creek and the Hamburg-Savannah Road area two miles to the southwest of that high-water mark.2 There Colonel David Stuart’s lone brigade of a little more than twenty-one hundred raw troops from Ohio and Illinois stood off a larger Confederate force for five vital hours when retreat would have brought about the collapse of the Union position and the likely surrender of at least a significant part of the Army of the Tennessee. Several weeks before the battle, General William Tecumseh Sherman had selected the ground around Pittsburg Landing for the Union army’s camps and deployed his own division to cover its approaches. Three of his four brigades he deployed near his division headquarters at Shiloh Church, on the Corinth Road a little more than two and a half miles from the landing. The fourth brigade, Stuart’s, consisting of the Fifty-fifth Illinois and the Fiftyfourth and Seventy-first Ohio, he deployed two miles to the east of Shiloh Church to guard the Hamburg-Savannah Road, which was the other primary southern approach to Pittsburg Landing.3 During the weeks between that deployment and the battle, three other divisions moved into the area between Sherman’s and the landing, and Brigadier General Benjamin Prentiss’s Sixth alexander mendoza 30 Division began to organize along the outer edge of the Union encampment between the main body of Sherman’s division at Shiloh Church and Stuart’s separated brigade. Stuart remained in his original position, assigned to guard the extreme Union left.4 Prentiss’s left flank was about eight hundred yards from Stuart’s right, and a similar gap separated Prentiss’s right from the left of the main body of Sherman’s division.5 Stuart, a former Illinois lawyer and railroad solicitor whose prewar reputation took a serious blow when he was involved in a sordid divorce case, epitomized the inexperienced officers who dominated both armies early in the war. Successful in their professional lives, many of these untrained soldiers failed in the heat of battle, a problem that was not lost on the rank and file as they carefully observed the performance of their commanders.6 Stuart may not have possessed the professional military education many believed necessary, but he did at least have the one intangible benefit that the common soldier appreciated—courage. “Colonel David Stuart . . . had no military training but he was brave to a fault,” wrote one Ohio soldier, “and if he committed errors in posting and handling his brigade, it was in the endeavor to obey the orders that were given him.”7 Yet, bravery was not always an adequate substitute for preparedness, and Stuart often had his subordinates drill the men in his place, thus assuring himself limited experience in leading his men during battle.8 Lick Creek, which ran just north of a series of steep hills that dominated the area, flowed eighty to a hundred feet wide at , Lick Creek Ford, just south of Hamburg-Savannah Road. While not particularly imposing, the stream could still be a significant barrier to an attacking force, especially after the recent wet weather.9 The Fifty-fifth Illinois, bivouacking in a peach orchard in the field of Noah Cantrell, held the easternmost position of Stuart’s brigade. A few hundred yards to Fifty-fifth’s right stood the tents of the Fifty-fourth Ohio, along the western edge of Larkin Bell Field. About three hundred yards farther to their right, just south of the junction of the Hamburg-Purdy and Savannah-Purdy roads, the Seventy-first Ohio encamped as...

Share