The First Great and Terrible Battle of the Civil War
National Geographic Society
March 2012
On Sale: March 20, 2012
512 pages ISBN: 142620874X EAN: 9781426208744 Kindle: B0058Z4NZA Hardcover / e-Book Add to Wish List
A main selection in History Book-of-the-Month Club and
alternate selection in Military Book-of-the-Month
Club.
In the spring of 1862, many Americans still
believed that the Civil War, "would be over by Christmas."
The previous summer in Virginia, Bull Run, with nearly 5,000
casualties, had been shocking, but suddenly came word from a
far away place in the wildernesses of Southwest Tennessee of
an appalling battle costing 23,000 casualties, most of them
during a single day. It was more than had resulted from the
entire American Revolution. As author Winston Groom reveals
in this dramatic, heart-rending account, the Battle of
Shiloh would singlehandedly change the psyche of the
military, politicians, and American people--North and
South--about what they had unleashed by creating a Civil
War.
In this gripping telling of the first "great
and terrible" battle of the Civil War, Groom describes the
dramatic events of April 6 and 7, 1862, when a bold surprise
attack on Ulysses S. Grant's encamped troops and the bloody
battle that ensued would alter the timbre of the war.
The Southerners struck at dawn on April 6th, and Groom
vividly recounts the battle that raged for two days over the
densely wooded and poorly mapped terrain. Driven back on the
first day, Grant regrouped and mounted a fierce attack the
second, and aided by the timely arrival of reinforcements
managed to salvage an encouraging victory for the
Federals.
Groom's deft prose reveals how the bitter
fighting would test the mettle of the motley soldiers
assembled on both sides, and offer a rehabilitation of sorts
for Union General William Sherman, who would go on from the
victory at Shiloh to become one of the great generals of the
war. But perhaps the most alarming outcome, Groom poignantly
reveals, was the realization that for all its horror, the
Battle of Shiloh had solved nothing, gained nothing, proved
nothing, and the thousands of maimed and slain were merely
wretched symbols of things to come.
With a
novelist's eye for telling and a historian's passion for
detail, context, and meaning, Groom brings the key
characters and moments of battle to life. Shiloh is an epic
tale, deftly told by a masterful storyteller.
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