Beauregard at Shiloh

T. Harry Williams, well known as the author of Lincoln and the Radicals (1941), Selected Writings and Speeches of Abraham Lincoln (1943), and Lincoln and His Generals (1952) is Professor of History at Louisiana State University. This article is a chapter from his forthcoming biography of Beauregard , to be published by the L.S.U. Press. Beauregard at Shiloh T. HARRY WILLIAMS shiloh was a crucial battle in the career of P. G. T. Beauregard. For him it was a make or break battle. A victory would have made him one of the greatest military figures of the Confederacy, and he could have traveled the glory road. A defeat or an indecisive result would mean that his military road would continue to lead downhill. He had started on the downward path in 1861 in Virginia. Summoned to Richmond by President Davis, he had come with the renown of Sumter behind him and with the reputation of being one of the finest generals in the South. Then the trouble started. Davis placed him in command of the largest army in Virginia, on the Bull Run line. Soon Beauregard began to demonstrate that he was not ready to command a field army. He produced and pressed upon the government several plans of grand strategy that bordered on the fantastic. They were impossible of execution because they were not based on the realities of available Confederate resources. Beauregard formulated them in a sort of Napoleonic dreamworld; they were too grandiose and complex to be carried out by the kind of military organization the Confederates had. The same weakness appeared in his planning of battlefield strategy at the first battle of Manassas. His combat schemes failed because they were too elaborate to be completed by the organization at his disposal. Success at Manassas came without his having done much to bring it about and even despite grave errors on his part that might have brought disaster. On the credit side of his military ledger, he was courageous and pugnacious. At Manassas he had handled his men well. Judged by what he had shown up to the summer of 1861, he could command a small army or a corps in a large one. He showed promise, but he needed more seasoning before he could direct a field army. In the months after Manassas he revealed another weakness. He developed a passion for the use of the pen and became involved in a series of controversies, most of them useless, with Richmond. Finally Davis, fed 17 18T. HARRY WILLIAMS up with Beauregard's dialectical talents and convinced that he was no field general, arranged to send the general to the Western Department as second in command to Albert Sidney Johnston. Beauregard's friends thought he was being shelved, and they were probably right. Beauregard arrived in the West just before U. S. Grant smashed the center of Johnston 's line at Henry and Donelson, forcing the Confederates to loosen their hold on Kentucky and retreat through Tennessee. In the withdrawal Beauregard commanded the left wing of the army, the forces in and around Columbus, Kentucky, while Johnston led the troops retiring from the Bowling Green line. By the last week in March the Confederate fractions were reunited at Corinth in northeast Mississippi. There Johnston and Beauregard discussed the recent disasters and their plans for the future. They knew that Grant's army had moved up the Tennessee and had landed on the West side at Pittsburg Landing, about twenty-five miles from Corinth. It was rumored that D. C. Buell was marching to join him with 25,000 men. Both generals agreed that a blow should be struck at Grant as soon as possible, before Buell arrived. With an offensive in mind, Beauregard drew up a plan to reorganize the army. Johnston was designated as commander, Beauregard second in command, and Braxton Bragg chief of staff. The new organization contained four corps: the first, under Leónidas Polk, 9,136 troops; the second, Bragg, 13,589; the third, William J. Hardee, 6,789; the reserve corps, John C. Breckinridge, 6,439. Not much time was allowed Johnston and Beauregard to plan an offensive . Late on the...