The Untold Story of Shiloh: The Battle and the Battlefield, and: Shiloh: A Battlefield Guide (review)

Shiloh represented the first truly massive bloodletting of the Civil War, the battle where it became obvious to all observers that a long, bloody struggle lay ahead. Today, Shiloh remains one of the best preserved battlefields in the Civil War West.

It would be difficult to find a more thorough treatment of both Shiloh the battle and battlefield than Timothy B. Smith's Untold Story of Shiloh. Instead of presenting another rehash of the minutiae of the battle, Smith traces the history of the battlefield from the earliest settlement in the region to modern preservation efforts. The book is structured as a series of essays, one of most interesting of which contains meticulous efforts to debunk many of the myths associated with the battle, such as the enduring belief that Albert Sidney Johnston's survival would have guaranteed Confederate victory. However, the true value of Untold Story lies not in its investigation of the battle, but in its sections on the veterans, academics, and preservationists who have shaped the physical and historical landscape of the battlefield. Several chapters reveal how veterans established enduring, yet inaccurate, legends about the battle, such as the story surrounding Prentiss's stand along the Sunken Road. These stories were accepted by most subsequent historians and superintendents of the park, who enshrined them in the markers and monuments placed on the battlefield. The weakest essay in the book is devoted to monument dedication speeches following the war. Many of these speeches are unnecessarily reprinted in their entirety with little analysis provided other than brief praise for the reunion themes contained within them and Smith's unsubstantiated suggestion that "today the nation is almost as divided as it was in the immediate post–Civil War era" (p. 138).

Assessing battlefield guides is always a difficult prospect, since visitors almost invariably expect guides to anticipate every detail and question which may arise on a battlefield tour. Mark Grimsley and Steven E. Woodworth do not try to do the impossible, but instead seek "to fill a niche" (p. xi) with Shiloh: A Battlefield Guide. Their work succeeds in this endeavor by offering a straightforward, yet detailed, driving tour of much of the battlefield. Instead of sterile descriptions of tactical actions, the authors provide more features than the average battlefield guide by supplying historical analysis of major events during the battle, detailed maps and orientation directions for each tour stop, and several appendixes which provide the layman with information regarding orders of battle and nineteenth century military tactics. While the east-west split in the driving tour could prove confusing for some readers, the guide will certainly be a useful tool for most Shiloh visitors.

Both works are valuable to students of the Civil War, although Smith's attention to historiography would be of more interest to academics. However, any visitors who spend a long day using Grimsley and Woodworth's Battlefield Guide to prowl the fields and lanes of Pittsburg Landing may return to their hotel room in Savannah that evening and relax with Smith's Untold Story to learn how the battle, as usual, was only the beginning of the story.