Never have two nations been as unprepared for war as were the Confederate States of America (which "would make war") and the United States of America (which "would accept war"). And the war came.
This unpreparedness was in the marrow of every component part of the nations, from the heads of state who were not clear in the head what the fighting was about, to the department heads who didn't have at hand the personnel and materiel needed to "make" or "accept" war, to the generals whose sympathies to the other side were frequently conflicted, to the foot soldiers who were untrained, unequipped and unaccustomed to taking orders, to the civilian populations which thought it would all be a hoot and unfortunately be over too soon. Everybody was drifting.
It is then no wonder, no, no wonder a'tall, that the first year's battles were an embarrassment to battles everywhere. The Confederate commander at Elkhorn Tavern in March, 1862 had made use of some Indians to even the troop disparity with the Union but found that when the Natives "came under artillery fire, which the tribesmen found strange and terrifying, they took to the woods, where each man got behind a tree in the old wilderness-fighting tradition." A typical but dispiriting prelude to one of the most consequential battles of the West which began at Pittsburg Landing and continued at Shiloh Church. This too was conceived and initiated in confusion.
C.S.A. Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard's orders "were imperfectly drafted and poorly executed". He made "grandiose plans for an army which needed exceedingly simple plans", for "the one thing an untrained army cannot possibly do is to move from here to there efficiently."
Beauregard's battle plan rested foundationally on taking the Union army by surprise but his own army "had been so noisy that a surprise seemed out of the question. After a soaking rain, "the men had blithely fired their muskets to see whether the powder charges had been dampened, so that there had been a constant pop-pop of small arms fire..." In addition, there was "much cheering and yelling: loud cheers for General [Albert Sydney] Johnson," "wild shouts when a startled deer jumped out of a thicket...enough noise, altogether, to arouse the most unobservant foes." In short, General Beauregard had "asked [his boys] to do more than they could do." He "was so discouraged that at last he wanted to cancel the entire movement..."
Humorous, so American, endearing, is it not? Bruce Catton found it so. Catton is unsparing with the truth of that first year's amateur hours but at Shiloh other American traits were displayed and these prevailed. General Johnson was determined as a mule, would have run his head into a wall like one too, and was so beloved by his men that "when the reality came, next day, most of them went into it with the same enthusiasm." They fought heroically, maniacally, they were generaled inspiringly. If in the end Johnson, shot in the leg and bleeding uncontrollably simply "looked up at the sky and died", and with him hopes for a Confederate victory, "Give the innocents credit." "In all American history, no more amazing battle was ever fought than this one."
Catton, Terrible Swift Sword, ch. four.
