Casualties
Estimates of numbers engaged in the two days of fighting at and around Pittsburg Landing on April 6 and 7 vary, and statistics on killed, wounded, captured, and missing are incomplete. Participants attempted to fill gaps as they wrote their official reports, and historians have tried to refine the data.
| Killed | Wounded | Capt/Miss | Aggregate | ||||||
| UNION ARMIES | |||||||||
| The Army of Tennessee | |||||||||
| Total Engaged: 42,682 | |||||||||
| First Division | 285 | 1,372 | 85 | 1,742 | |||||
| Second Division | 270 | 1,173 | 1,306 | 2,749 | |||||
| Third Division | 41 | 251 | 4 | 296 | |||||
| Fourth Division | 317 | 1,441 | 111 | 1,869 | |||||
| Fifth Division | 325 | 1,277 | 299 | 1,901 | |||||
| Sixth Division | 236 | 928 | 1,008 | 2,172 | |||||
| Unassigned | 39 | 159 | 17 | 215 | |||||
| ------ | ------ | ------ | ------ | ------ | |||||
| Total | 1,513 | 6,601 | 2,830 | 10,944 | |||||
| . | |||||||||
| The Army of the Ohio | |||||||||
| Total Engaged: 20,000 | |||||||||
| Second Division | 88 | 823 | 7 | 918 | |||||
| Fourth Division | 93 | 603 | 20 | 716 | |||||
| Fifth Division | 60 | 377 | 28 | 465 | |||||
| Sixth Division | 4 | 4 | |||||||
| ------ | ------ | ------ | ------ | ------ | |||||
| Total | 241 | 1,807 | 55 | 2,103 | |||||
| . | |||||||||
| Grand Total | |||||||||
| Armies of Tennessee and Ohio | 1,754 | 8,408 | 2,885 | 13,047 | |||||
| . | |||||||||
| CONFEDERATE ARMY | |||||||||
| Total Engaged: 40,335 | |||||||||
| Polk's Corps | 385 | 1,953 | 19 | 2,357 | |||||
| Bragg's Corps | 553 | 2,441 | 634 | 3,628 | |||||
| Hardee's Corps | 404 | 1,936 | 141 | 2,481 | |||||
| Reserve Corps (Breckinridge) | 386 | 1,682 | 165 | 2,233 | |||||
| . | |||||||||
| Grand Total | 1,728 | 8,012 | 959 | 10,699 | |||||
(From: O.R., vol. X, pt. I, pp. 101-108, 395-396, and from Thomas L. Livermore, Numbers and Losses in the Civil War in America, 1861-1865 (New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1901), pp. 79-80.)
Participant's Quotation(s)
FROM: "Henry Stanley Fights With The Dixie Grays At Shiloh", by Sir Henry Morton Stanley, in The Blue and the Gray, ed. by Henry Steele Commager, 1950.
The desperate character of this day's battle was now brought home to my mind in all its awful reality. While in the tumultuous advance, and occupied with a myriad of exciting incidents, it was only at brief intervals that I was conscious of wounds being given and received; but now, in the trail of pursuers and pursued, the ghastly relics appalled every sense. I felt curious as to who the fallen Greys were, and moved to one stretched straight out. It was the body of a stout English Sergeant of a neighbouring company, the members of which hailed principally from the Washita Valley. . . .Close by him was a young Lieutenant, who, judging by the new gloss on his uniform, must have been some father's darling. A clean bullet-hole through the centre of his forehead had instantly ended his career. A little further were some twenty bodies, lying in various postures, each by its own pool of viscous blood, which emitted a peculiar scent, which was new to me, but which I have since learned is inseparable from a battle-field. Beyond these, a still larger group lay, body overlying body, knees crooked, arms erect, or wide-stretched and rigid according as the last spasm overtook them. The company opposed to them-must have shot straight. . . .
It was the first Field of Glory I had seen in my May of life, and the first time that Glory sickened me with its repulsive aspect, and made me suspect it was all a glittering lie. . . . Under a flag of truce, I saw the bearers pick up the dead from the field, and lay them in long rows beside a wide trench; I saw them laid, one by one, close together at the bottom. . . .
FROM: Tramps and Triumphs of the Second Infantry, Briefly Sketched by John T. Bell, 2nd Iowa, Tuttle's (1st) Brigade, Second Division, Army of the Tennessee, 1886.
In places dead men lay so closely that a person could walk over two acres of ground and not step off the bodies...Details of soldiers were scattered through the woods gathering the dead together, and in one instance I saw 230 bodies buried in one grave.
FROM: "A Boy At Shiloh" by John A. Cockerill, 70th Ohio, Buckland's (4th) Brigade, Fifth Division, Army of the Tennessee, inUnder Both Flags. A Panorama of the Great Civil War, by C. R. Graham, 1896.
The pallid faces of the dead men in blue were scattered among the blackened corpses of the enemy...All the bodies had been stripped of their valuables, and scarcely a pair of boots or shoes could be found upon the feet of the dead. In most cases, pockets had been cut open...
Here beside a great oak tree I counted the corpses of fifteen men. One of them sat stark against the tree, and others lay about as though during the night, suffering from wounds, they had crawled together for mutual assistance...
The blue and the gray were mingled together. This peculiarity I observed all over the field. It was no uncommon thing to see the bodies of Federal and Confederate lying side by side, as though they had bled to death while trying to aid each other.
In one spot I saw an entire battery of Federal artillery which had been dismantled in Sunday's fight, every horse of which had been killed in his harness,...and in this awful heap of death lay the bodies of dozens of cannoneers. One dismounted gun was absolutely spattered with the blood and brains of the men who had served it...
FROM: "What I Saw At Shiloh" by Sgt. Maj. Ambrose Bierce, 9th Indiana, Hazen's (19th) Brigade, Fourth Division, Army of the Ohio, inThe Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce.
During the first day's fighting, wide tracts of woodland were burned...and scores of wounded who might have recovered perished in slow torture.
FROM: Personal Letter by Dr. James R. Zealing, 52nd Illinois, Sweeney's (3rd) Brigade, Second Division, Army of the Tennessee. Chicago Historical Society.
The wounded of the whole army were brought to the landing...The crowded state of the everything and the absence of extensive preparations for such an event caused a great deal of suffering that might have been prevented.
FROM: "The Forty-Fourth Indiana Volunteer Infantry" by Col. H. B. Reed, 44th Indiana, Lauman's (3rd) Brigade, Fourth Division, Army of the Tennessee, in History of its Services in the War of the Rebellion, by John H. Rerick, 1880.
The immense number of wounded required an army of surgeons. Many young doctors, among others, were sent from home to help care for them, and, with the best intentions, their want of practical knowledge left much to wish for.A day or two after the battle, I went on board a steamer filled with wounded men. very many of them were wandering aimlessly about over the boat, presenting a most ghastly appearance, their wounds having been tied up hurriedly, the blood and grime of battle being left to be removed at a more convenient season.
FROM: Newspaper article by Chaplain John M. Garner, 18th Missouri, Miller's (2nd) Brigade, Sixth Division, Army of the Tennessee, in "Unionville (Missouri) Republican," Oct. 5, 1892.
The aim was to group the dead, by regiments as far as possible, but many isolated ones were buried alone and unmarked. Little red mounds rose rapidly all about in that woods, some covering one man, others several men each. These were all marked, but the marking could not be durable, and the identity of many must have been lost in a short time.The dead animals were drawn together in piles and ricks of logs and leaves stacked on them; and then fire was applied...
Hundreds of such fires [were] in full blast at the same time. The fumes from such quantities of burning, putrid flesh were almost unbearable, and it took so long to reduce these piles to ashes.
FROM: With Grant at Fort Donelson, Shiloh and Vicksburg, and An Appreciation of General U. S. Grant by Wilbur F. Crummer, 45th Illinois, Marsh's (2nd) Brigade, Second Division, Army of the Tennessee, 1915.
Tuesday I was detailed with others to bury the dead lying within our camp and a distance of two hundred yards in advance. I had charge of digging the grave, sixty feet long and four feet deep...The weather was hot, and most of the dead had been killed early Sunday morning, and dissolution had already commenced.
The soldiers gathered up the bodies and placed them in wagons, hauling them near to the trench, and piling them up like cord wood. We were furnished with plenty of whiskey, and the boys believed that it would have been impossible to have performed the job without it...
All the monument reared to those brave men was a board, nailed to a tree at the head of the trench, upon which I cut with my pocket knife, the words: '125 rebels.' We buried our Union boys in a separate trench, and on another board were these words: '35 Union.' Many of our men had been taken away and buried separately by their comrades...
It was night when we finished the task, some of the squad, 'half seas over' with liquor, but they could not be blamed, for it was a hard job.
The next day we burned the dead horses and mules.
FROM: "The Civil War Diary of C. F. Boyd, 15th Iowa Infantry" by C. F. Boyd, 15th Iowa, Army of the Tennessee, in Iowa Journal of History, Vol. 50, No.1, January 1952.
Where the retreat commenced on Monday afternoon...wounded rebels...had fallen in heaps, and the woods had taken fire and burned all the clothing off them and the naked bodies and blackened corpses are still lying there unburied. On the hillside near a deep hollow our men were hauling them down and throwing them into the deep gulley. One hundred and eighty had been thrown in when I was there.Men were in on top of the dead, straightening out their legs and arms and trampling them down so as to make the hole contain as many as possible. Other men on the hillside had ropes with a noose on one end, and they would attach this to a man's foot or his head and haul him down the hollow and roll him in.
Where the ground was level it was so full of water that the excavation filled up as fast as dug, and the corpse was just rolled in and the earth just thrown over it and left.
FROM: Personal Letter, April 1862 by William J. Kennedy, 55th Illinois, Stuart's (2nd) Brigade, Fifth Division, Army of the Tennessee. Illinois State Historical Library.
Lots of citizens here every day since the battle. They are digging up the dead and taking them home. I think they had better let them remain where they are for they look so bad...I would not want to see a friend of mine after being buried two weeks...
They had to be buried without coffins and when they take them up now they look like a butt of mud. Most of them are laying in water, and plenty are scarcely under the surface. Some of their hands sticking out, the rains having washed the dirt off. Most of the Union men were buried deeper then the rebels.