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Ron
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Posted: Wed Mar 12th, 2008 01:01 am |
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The confusing Battle of Shiloh may have prevented the realization of the fact that there was, in effect, two orders of battle for the confederate Army of the Mississippi. The first, I call the "Official" Order of Battle. The organization that appears in the Official Records, Vol 10, Part I, 382 was actually from June 1862 and enclosed as Exhibit B to the report of Col. William P Johnston's report for President Jefferson Davis. It was first composed by Col. Thomas Jordan on April 2nd or 3rd, just before he started work on Special Order #8 that launched the army up the road to Shiloh and became the order of battle studied by students of the battle. This is the Order of Battle that appears as an Appendix in the books published recently and they repeat the several errors contained in the orginial version. The "Official" order of battle has never been corrected by deleting the several errors since it was published despite ample evidence of these errors.
The second Order of Battle for the Battle of Shiloh is what I call the "Tactical" version. This version of the order of battle caused a realignment of the army for the battle when it called for repeated waves each composed of a single corps. To understand the wave alignment and how they collapsed into each other early in the battle helps in understanding the subsequent events. Also in the "Tactical" version, the various detachments and flank guards are indicated and the errors in the "Official" version are corrected. Additionally, the troops not taken to Shiloh are deleted.
I intend to post these two versions of the order of battle for the confederate Army of the Mississippi with corrections, additions, deletions and realignments in seperate posts in the next few days. Don't wish to do so now as I dislike long posts. However, I will start the posting by indicating two deletions from the staff of the army commanded by General Albert Sidney Johnston.
The position of Army Chief of Artillery was vacant at the time of the battle. Lt. Col. Daniel Beltzhoover had been appointed the army chief of artillery in Special Oders #44, dated March 13th, 1862 (OR X, Part 2, Serial 11, page 320) but apparently, he never took up these duties. The army marched out of Corinth on April 3rd minus a chief of artillery. Aware of the need for this position to be filled, Major Francis Shoup was appointed to the position of temporary Chief of Artillery on April 10th by General Orders #10. Some have repeated the false information that Brig. Gen. James Trudeau was the army chief of artillery (Daniel's book, page 229) but not so. General Trudeau was never appointed a general officer in the confederate army. He was called General only because he was a Louisiana militia officer. True, he did have a command at Island No. 10 of the post heavy artillery but left with Gen. McCown departed after being relieved of duty. Trudeau was a staff officer on McCown's staff, was now without a assignment and went to the army. He was present at the battle as a volunteer aide and was probably given a assignment that may have included some temporary artillery duty.
The position of army Chief of Cavalry was also vacant during the battle. Brig. Gen. Hawes is mentioned as the commander of the reserve cavalry of the army in a General Order of March29th (no number indicated) but this also probably never happened. In this case, since the cavalry were assigned to the infantry corps, there was never a reserve cavalry. General Hawes was to shortly become a infantry brigade commander.
The absence of both a chief of cavalry and chief of artillery may help to explain the poor performance of both arms of the service (Forrest excluded)
Ron
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Ron
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Ron
Member
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Posted: Mon Feb 16th, 2009 02:53 pm |
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Well, to my surprise, I found a Order-of-Battle for the confederate army at the Battle of Shiloh which I was unaware of. I found this new information while I was doing something I love to do, that is to browse through various volumes of the Official Records. I happened on this order of battle in Series I, Volume 52, Part I, Serial #109 appearing on pages 26 through 29. This is obviously a corrected version of the original OB because most of the confederate units not present at the battle do not appear. New arriving units are added. The listing of casualties among the commanding officers suffered during the battle are mentioned and clearly proves this order of battle was composed after the battle. What is missing is any notation of the source or a signed date on the OB. This is not new information since this volume was published in 1898 but was obviously, unknown to some authors of the recently publ;ished books concerning the Battle of Shiloh.
After much effort and long study to construct my Tacticial Order-of-Battle to show the rebel army as it attacked on the morning of April 6th, then I find this new information. I should be pleased that this new OB actually supports my constructed tactical OB. The deletions of troop units and batteries from the army I indicate are also deleted in this new (1898 new) information. Further, a few troop additions also appear in this new information, additions I also included.
An example of how this new OB and my tactical OB agree is in the number of field batteries. I long felt that the total of batteries as being 23 present, mentioned in recent books was wrong. I believe the number of twenty-three batteries for the confederates is too many and the actual number should be 20. This recenly found OB indicates 19 batteries. However, Robert's Arkansas Battery is missing from the new OB and if added back in, as I have done, makes twenty batteries with the army. Why add Robert's battery back in??? Because it is known to have been at the battle, it was part of the two battery artillery reserve of the army and was in Ruggles' line of guns. I believe that the batteries listed in recently published books that were not at the battle of Shiloh are Miller's Tennessee Battery, the Watson Artillery of Louisiana and Bain's Mississippi Battery. I'm glad that this new OB tends to support my thoughts.
Additionally, this new found information also supports the suppositions I used to formulate the list of troop units left behind to garrision Corinth and Iuka. Additionally, a new order of battle for the union armies is also in this volume on pages 16 through 21.
Ron
Last edited on Fri Dec 25th, 2009 01:29 am by Ron
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Ron
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Wrap10
Administrator
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Posted: Thu Dec 24th, 2009 11:36 pm |
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Just as an FYI, the title of this topic has been changed, per Ron's request. The original title was, "Army of Mississippi Order of Battle."
Perry
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"And all is hushed at Shiloh." - Herman Melville
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