Sorry I can't remember this I'm in high school it has been a long time but I found this
The Battle of Shiloh (aka Battle of Pittsburg Landing) was fought on April 6–7, 1862, in southwestern Tennessee not far from Corinth, Mississippi. General Albert Sidney Johnston, commander of Confederate forces in the Western Theater, hoped to defeat Union major general Ulysses S. Grant’s Army of the Tennessee before it could be reinforced by Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell’s Army of the Ohio, which was marching from Nashville.
Battle Of Shiloh Facts
Location
Location: Pittsburg Landing. Hardin County, Tennessee
Dates
Dates: April 6-7, 1862
Generals
Union:
Ulysses S. Grant, Army of the Tennessee, 47,700
Don Carlos Buell, Army of the Ohio, 18,000
Confederate:
Albert Sidney Johnston, Army of the Mississippi, 45,000
P.G.T. Beauregard (following Johnston’s death)
Soldiers Engaged
Union: 66,000
Confederate: 44,700
Important Events & Figures
Hornet’s Nest
Sunken Road
Peach Orchard
Ruggles’s Battery
Defense of Pittsburg Landing
Outcome
Outcome: Union Victory
Battle Of Shiloh Casualties
Union: 13,000
Confederate: 10,700
Battle Of Shiloh Pictures
Battle Of Shiloh Images, Pictures and Photos
Battle Of Shiloh Pictures
Battle Of Shiloh Maps
Battle Of Shiloh Maps
Battle Of Shiloh Articles
Explore articles from the History Net archives about the Battle Of Shiloh
» See all Battle Of Shiloh Articles
The Battle of Shiloh Begins
Johnston initiated a surprise attack on Grant’s camps around Shiloh Church and drove the Federal forces back to a defensive perimeter on the heights above Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River. During the afternoon, Johnston was wounded in the leg and bled to death. He was replaced by Gen. Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, commander of the Army of the Mississippi. As darkness fell, Beauregard called a halt to the fighting and pulled his weary soldiers back from the landing, where they were being shelled by two gunboats, USS Lexington and USS Tyler. He believed Grant’s army was beaten and that Buell’s army was miles away.
Buell’s men arrived and ferried across the Tennessee River during the night, and a "lost" division of Grant’s army under Maj. Gen. Lewis "Lew" Wallace, the future author of Ben Hur, finally arrived on the field. These two new arrivals added 23,000 troops to the fight. Shortly after 5:00 the next morning, Grant and Buell’s combined forces moved out, slowly but surely forcing the Confederates back until, by dark, they had retaken all the ground lost the previous day. Beauregard’s battered army withdrew to Corinth.
The Hornet’s Nest
The Hornet’s Nest was a name given to the area of the Shiloh battlefield where Confederate troops made repeated attacks against Union positions along a small, little-used farm road on the first day of the battle, April 6, 1862. Southern soldiers said the zipping bullets sounded like angry hornets; according to tradition, one man said, "It’s a hornet’s nest in there." Though long considered to have been the key to holding back the Confederate onslaught during the Battle of Shiloh long enough for Major General Ulysses S. Grant to organize a defense and receive reinforcements, historians have begun to question how significant the Hornet’s Nest was.
The narrow farm road ambles generally southeast from its junction with the Eastern Corinth Road (Corinth-Pittsburgh Road). Fairly level toward its northwest end, it makes a rather sharp climb up a hill near its center, descending again near the William Manse George cabin and the Peach Orchard. That hill, where Brigadier General Benjamin Prentiss commanded an ad hoc group of regiments, comprises the area of the Hornet’s Nest. To Wallace’s right was a division of Federals under Brig. Gen. W.H. L. Wallace, and to his left was another division under Brig. Gen. Stephen Hurlbut.
Wallace held a position stretching along the farm road from the Eastern Cornith Road and up the slope to where Prentiss’s line began. Wallace’s men were in a deep ravine on the east side of the farm road; that area is now known as the Sunken Road. Often, but erroneously, the positions of Wallace and Prentiss are lumped together as the Hornet’s Nest. Confusing matters further is the fact that as the farm road passes over the hill where Prentiss had his command, it is sunken for a portion of its 600-yard length there.
Unlike the Sunken Road (Bloody Lane) at the Battle of Antietam or the Confederate position at the base of Marye’s Heights during the Battle of Fredericksburg, the slight depression of the road along Prentiss’ position is not deep. The true defensive strength of the Hornet’s Nest position lay in the fact that the attacking Confederates had to charge uphill through obstructions of blackberry bushes and undergrowth, making it impossible.
