The Siege of Corinth: The Union Takes A Ghost Town

Beginning of article

The savage two-day battle at Shiloh/Pittsburg Landing left the public stunned - more so on the Union side because the battle tended to initially be viewed as a defeat because of the fusillade of negative and fault-finding Northern press reports printed in its wake.

As historian James M. McPherson put it, "Although Grant had snatched victory from the jaws of defeat at Pittsburg Landing, northern opinion at first focused more on those jaws than on victory."

The casualty count alone was shocking news - 13,047 for the Union (1,754 killed, 8,408 wounded and 2,885 missing) and 10,699 on the Confederate side (1,728 killed, 8,012 wounded, and 959 captured or missing). It was the …