Grant: Grant Leads Union Army to VICTORY at Battle of Shiloh (Season 1) | History

let's get these boys Haven pulling them into regiments I don't care what regiments they used to be in make new ones [Music] you won't get here till nightfall Wallace is still six miles away what a wall is to come enter once with this man Sherman yes on the first day of the Battle of Shiloh about 40,000 Confederate soldiers surprised the Union Army and begin pushing forward it is the largest attack in American history up to that time when grant finally got to Pittsburg Landing officers didn't know where their men were their men didn't know where the units work grant immediately begins to assess the situation it is almost as if battle clarified his mind and he could see the central thing he needed to do to remain calm to collect soldiers who have straggled back into the area and begin to plug this defensive lie [Music] [Music] very bad private so when you scratch that so you can fight come on now boys pitch in I'm right behind you Brent makes his way around the battlefield not caught up in the chaos thinking where are my commanders what's their assessment of the fight and how is going on what can I do to assist them if Pittsburg Landing Falls grant knows his army is gone if the Confederate plan is to trap the Union Army in this cul-de-sac along the Tennessee River then grant will utilize this trap perfectly to fight a delaying action to hold out until Don Carlos Buell reinforcements arrive he has a whole division under Lee Wallace much nearer and as he goes around and he talks to the different division commanders throughout the day he will tell them hey Luke Wallace is on the way should be here any moment there's a confusion and incoherence on a battlefield the grant had enormous control of his emotions there was physical courage disquiet competence and he was a great Horseman in a day and age when that was a very important skill to have on the battlefield number of attempts were made by the enemy to turn our right flank where Sherman was posted general the boys bounce that they didn't break I need reinforcements now where's Buell no Buell I'm sinful Wallace in the hold your position yes sir it'll cost at the Battle of Shiloh Sherman and grant while they had never been what you would call good friends they will first come into their own as this wonderful duo who will turn out to be one of the great working partnerships of the war while so many other fragments of that Union Army dissolve in panicked retreat Sherman slows the Confederate onslaught nevertheless grant knew that he may need that division of Lew Wallace's just survived this fight but there's great confusion with Wallace's division on how they should get to the battlefield and Wallace does not show up as the Confederates move forward the fighting became more and more constricted it becomes a very chaotic brutal fight and grant recognizes that at points of chaos when everything is going wrong you just simply have to do something to regain control contrary to all my experience up to that time we were on the defensive the endeavour the enemy was simply to hurl their men against ours to disregard the losses on their own side grant realized he needed by time or his army was about to be overwhelmed Shiloh the first day doesn't go well but in the chaos noise the friction that we know is inherent in a battlefield nobody gets it right initially nobody grant is able to learn through hard experience and he has this vision of how it's gonna turn out in spite of all that's going bad around him Grant is already thinking to fall back gradually holding successive lines of defense basically trading space for time to hold out until our reinforcements arrive and so orders went out to all his division commanders to hold their positions his grant put it at All Hazards his men constructed as defensive line along this deep ravine the Confederates have to go down into this ravine they make one charge up out of the ravine into this whirlwind of Union artillery and musket fire they are driven back by this intense fire orders start to echo down the Confederate line that we're done stop the attack Beauregard stop the fight we'll finish this up in the morning grant sitting on horseback watching as the Confederates fell back into the ravine said not beaten yet by a damn sight grant with this dogged determination he thinks that nobody can be by the time darkness falls yes it's been a bad day for the Union Army but they haven't been pushed off Pittsburg Landing they're still holding on to that strip of ground and what's more across the river Don Carlos Buell is finally starting to arrive and there are federal gunboats out on the river whose shells are keeping the Confederates at bay in the darkness he had the gift of being able to take in a landscape a map and know almost at once what needed to be defended what couldn't be defended and what grant had seen at Shiloh was that the Confederates had exhausted their last energy just in getting as far as they had grant has seen that if in the night Buell's troops could be ferried over and grants army could be rallied and somehow reorganized and put back into position for a counter-attack the next morning then the Confederate Army itself would collapse grant was determined to stay and fight everything he's learned came into play in making that decision that's the point where grant becomes great this day everything was favorable with the Union side we had now become the attacking party [Applause] [Applause] the enemy was driven back all day as we had been the day before that was another brutal day of fighting over much of the same ground but by 2:00 in the afternoon Confederate commander Beauregard ordered withdrawal back to Corinth [Music] the battle is over and it is technically speaking the victory for the Union Army it's a victory which has been won had terrible prices huge casualties 25,000 killed wounded and missing this is the first time in American history that we've seen this the armies in the revolution in the war of 1812 are smaller than the casualty count inshallah I saw an open field on the second day so covered with the dead and it would have been possible to walk across the clearing stepping on dead bodies without a foot touching the ground [Music] Shilo itself means place of peace shiloh for two days was anything that a place of peace shiloh is incredibly important as the place where our country woke up to the reality of what it had signed up for was as if from the battlefield a metaphorical postcard went home to America and it said with a picture of the dead this is what you signed up for it forced us to wake up and forced us to grow up it forced us to realize that this was going to be much harder than anybody had imagined [Music] you you

Channel: HISTORY

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Keywords: history, history channel, history shows, history channel shows, the history channel, civil war, the civil war, the civil war in color, full episodes, original series, america, united states, tea party, american revolution, Battle of Shiloh, Grant s1 clips, Grant s01, Grant s1, Grant season 1 clips, Grant season 1, miniseries event, Unlikely Hero, history washington, washington history channel, descendant of Ulysses S. Grant, Ulysses S. Grant, Grant season 1 history

Id: L6hehVbFYG8

Length: 10min 47sec (647 seconds)

Published: Mon May 25 2020