Shiloh, 1862 by Winston Groom

the Confederacy was going to leave Kentucky be.
    However, its fragile neutrality lasted through the spring and summer of 1861, with neither Lincoln—who was born there—nor Jefferson Davis—who also was born in the state and attended college there—wishing to disturb the equipoise. Pressure continued to build, however, and Kentucky’s internal politics seethed with volatile and rancid hatreds. At the end of the summer the Union general William “Bull” Nelson, a bombastic former Annapolis graduate and naval officer and native Kentuckian, could stand it no longer. He established a Union recruiting camp right in the middle of the state and defied the legislature to remove it. This “violation” of Kentucky’s neutrality by the Yankees prompted the Rebel general Leonidas Polk, formerly the Episcopal bishop of Louisiana, and a West Point classmate of Jefferson Davis’s, to order troops to takeColumbus, which was both a tactical and strategic strongpoint on the Mississippi.
    Located on a curve in the river, Columbus’s most commanding feature were the imposing bluffs that reared nearly 180 feet straight up from the banks almost like the ramparts of a medieval castle. (In one of his many decisions-never-made, Frémont had nearly ordered Grant to take the place, but the Rebel Polk beat him to it on September 2, 1861.) The Confederates set out to make Columbus impregnable by land or sea, installing 140 large guns, underwater mines, and a gigantic anchor chain with links eight inches thick that spanned a solid mile and was connected to a capstan across the river at Belmont, from where it could be lifted from the bottom and wound tight to block Northern shipping. The fortifications were manned by a small army of 17,000 troops served by a line of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad to Memphis and points south. Thus Columbus became the end of the end of the line so far as Yankee navigation of the Mississippi was concerned. Leonidas Polk made the installation so formidable-looking that Union intelligence estimated some 80,000 Rebels inhabited the place.

    Initially, Grant’s intention had been to annihilate both Columbus and Belmont, but Frémont had not given him enough troops to do the job, so now the best he could hope for was to disrupt the Rebel encampment at Belmont and perhaps forestall its expansion. Union strategy in the West at this point seemed more bent on securing places than invading the Confederate South, which Grant clearly saw as the way to victory, and the sooner the better. He had a vision of amphibious operations that other officers seemed to lack.He saw the rivers as an easy way to get to the Rebel heartland, deep into Tennessee to places like Corinth, Nashville, and even Shiloh, which at that point he’d never heard of.
    Military bureaucracy continued to block his way, but at Belmont Grant got off to a good enough start, landing without opposition about two miles north of the Confederates and marching in line of battle through a landscape of woods and cornfields. The Rebels had been forewarned by their lookouts across the river at Columbus, but Grant’s attack still took them more or less by surprise. Quickly the brisk fire from Grant’s Yankees had the Confederates scrambling down six-foot-tall bluffs along the riverbanks. It looked as though an easy victory had been obtained, but there then occurred an evil that dogged commanders on both sides all through the conflict.
    As Grant lamented afterward, if his men had pressed the attack, the Rebels would have been either driven into the river or forced to surrender. Instead, his soldiers began looting the Confederate tents. “The moment the enemy camp was reached,” Grant bitterly complained, “our men laid down their arms and commenced rummaging the tents to pick up trophies. 6 Some of the higher officers were little better than the privates. They galloped about from one cluster of men to the other, and at every halt delivered a short eulogy upon the Union