USMA Library Homepage: Shiloh: Shiloh

Getting Started

READ CAREFULLY THE ASSIGNMENT INSTRUCTIONS GIVEN TO YOU BY YOUR SECTION INSTRUCTOR. Direct questions about the assignment instructions to your section instructor.

BEGIN by reading carefully the section on the Battle of Shiloh in Chapter 26 of West Point History of Warfare.

Then consult the basic assignment materials cited in your assignment instructions. Many of them are also provided here:

Grimsley, Mark. and Steven E. Woodworth. Shiloh : a Battlefield Guide . Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006. [MUST BE CONNECTED TO WREN TO USE THIS LINK]
An important introductory secondary source. The Reserves are located on the 4th floor of the USMA Library.
Gudmens, Jeffrey J. and the Staff Ride Team. Staff Ride Handbook for the Battle of Shiloh, 6-7 April 1862. Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2005.
This a very useful secondary source you can consult to gain a basic understanding of the Battle of Shiloh. A careful reader can use it to gain an overall idea of the course of the battle. You need that in order to understand and interpret the primary source materials on which your paper must be based.

As you can see Gudmens' work is a staff ride guide. But what is a staff ride? The resource below may help you learn more about Gudmens' work and what it is. It is not necessary to consult this, and you can simply start with Gudmens, but it may help some to understand how and why the U.S. Army uses staff rides in professional military education.

Keller, Christian B. and Ethan S. Rafuse. "The Civil War Battlefield Staff Ride in the Twenty-first Century." Civil War History 62, no. 2 (June 2016): 201-213.

Maps

Consult the maps in Gudmens and the maps referred to in your assignment instructions. Several of these are also provided here:

Gudmens, Jeffrey J. and the Staff Ride Team. Staff Ride Handbook for the Battle of Shiloh, 6-7 April 1862. Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2005.
The American Civil War - USMA Department of History Map Collection
Scroll down page to view Shiloh maps.
Civil War Trust Maps of Shiloh
Scroll down and choose "Shiloh" from center "Battle" drop down menu.

Order of Battle

Whether your topic is directly related to the tactical conduct of the battle or has something to do with a broader aspect, it is very likely you will need to know how the two armies were organized. You will need to have at hand some kind of reference regarding which regiments were part of which brigade, who commanded each division and which brigades composed it, etc.

To gain knowledge of these matters, consult an Order of Battle of the Union and Confederate forces at Shiloh.

Q. What is an Order of Battle?

A. An Order of Battle is a document that explains the organization and composition of a military force at some period of time, whether a specific point in time or over some longer period. The term originates from eras (such as the early modern period) when commanders documented the actual arrangement on the field of particular units in a battle line. “Order of Battle” for military historians, however, has come to mean any document (whether in the form of formatted text, a chart, table, etc.) that makes clear the hierarchical command relationships and organizational structure of a military force. It is usually used to make clear the composition of larger forces, whether the entire military force of one nation or coalition a part thereof, such a field army, etc.

Order of Battle

The armies that fought at Shiloh were rather large, and having at hand a full order of battle of both the Union and Confederate sides will likely be of great help. At the very minimum, know which regiments composed your brigade, and know the division of which your brigade was part. When you start examining the OR, you may wish to look for reports, correspondence, other documents, etc. not just from your brigade but from each of its component regiments, etc. You may also use the Order of Battle for Shiloh in concert with various maps to increase your understanding of which opposing units your brigade faced and which nearby friendly units’ actions might have affected your unit.

Understanding the Order of Battle. Note that during the American Civil War, unlike later periods, Brigades and Divisions were not permanent organizations with a numerical designation but rather designated by the name of their commander. Regiments, however, did have a consistent designation. That designation consisted of (usually) a number, name of a state, and the arm of service, e.g. 15^th New York Infantry. This applies to state volunteer units that composed the majority of the Union Army. It may be helpful for you to know the names of commanders of individual regiments; some Civil War orders of battle list these and some do not. Also note that if a commander was killed or wounded in action and someone else took over command of his unit, some orders of battle will list this as well.

A basic order of battle for Shiloh is found in pp. 137-142 of Gudmens, Staff Ride Handbook for the Battle of Shiloh, 6-7 April 1862