Rebforever
Lt. Colonel
- Joined
- Oct 26, 2012
I agree it was his first battle and he certainly would have learned from it. And what a first battle! It involved over 100,000 men. Lee, Jackson, and Grant all failed in their first battles and they were piddling affairs in comparison.
Beauregard formulated the stacked corps approach at Shiloh. Johnston's plan was to have the corps attack side by side. No one really knows why Beauregard's plan was implemented. Maybe because Jordan was the one who drafted up the orders and he was Beauregard's staff. Everyone always comments about the stacked corps being a problem but I wonder if it really made much of a difference. The terrain at Shiloh was so wooded that any army organisation would have broken down pretty quickly into bands of disorganised men shooting at one another. Plus it was one of the first battles of the war, and the inexperience of all involved would have added to the chaos anyway. I don't think the stacked corps vs. arrayed corps had that much of a difference. The crucial factor was the delay in the attack. If it had happened on the 5th or even earlier as Johnston had planned then Buell would not have been close enough to support Grant and turn the tide of the battle.
I don't fault Johnston for being at the front of the lines. His men had no experience and needed direction. Beauregard also exposed himself to direct fire on day two, Grant was almost killed, and Sherman was peppered with bullets. Another army commander, Lyon, was killed leading his men at Wilson's Creek in 1861. In such an early battle as Shiloh, Johnston probably needed to be at the front or the men and officers would milled around aimlessly.
Upton used the stacked offense at Spotsylvania, Grant used it at the Petersburg breakout.
Some learned.