The Battle of Shiloh was a major engagement in the American Civil War's Western Theater, fought on April 6–7, 1862, in southwestern Tennessee near a small church named Shiloh and Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River. The Confederate Army of Mississippi sought to achieve a decisive victory by defeating Major General Ulysses S. Grant's Army of the Tennessee before Union reinforcements and resupply could arrive, making this battle strategically critical to Confederate hopes in the western campaigns.
The battle unfolded over two days with dramatically shifting momentum. On the first day, April 6, the Confederate forces under General Albert Sidney Johnston launched a surprise attack that produced considerable gains against Grant's positions. However, Johnston was mortally wounded during the fighting and was replaced by his second-in-command, General P. G. T. Beauregard. Despite the Confederate success on the opening day, Grant's Army of the Tennessee survived the onslaught. Overnight, Union forces received crucial reinforcement when one of its divisions stationed farther north rejoined the main army, and portions of Major General Don Carlos Buell's Army of the Ohio arrived to bolster Union strength.
On April 7, the Union forces launched an unexpected counterattack that reversed the Confederate territorial gains from the previous day. The Confederate army, exhausted from two days of intense fighting, withdrew further south. The Union pursued the retreating Confederate forces modestly, with the pursuit beginning and ending on the day following the main engagement. The battle demonstrated that the war in the Western Theater would be prolonged and costly, and it established Grant as a significant commander despite the initial Confederate surprise.
The American Civil War (1861–1865) was the deadliest conflict in American history, killing an estimated 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilians. The Confederate States of America, formed by eleven seceding Southern states, faced the Union in four years of warfare across 23 states and territories. Major engagements included First and Second Bull Run, Antietam (the bloodiest single day in American history, September 17, 1862), Chancellorsville, Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), Vicksburg (surrendered July 4, 1863), and Sherman's March through Georgia and the Carolinas (1864–1865). President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, transforming the war's stated purpose to include the abolition of slavery and enabling the enlistment of approximately 180,000 Black men in the United States Colored Troops. Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. The war resolved the question of secession and ended American slavery, though Reconstruction would face sustained resistance in its attempt to secure civil rights for formerly enslaved people.
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