Free Shiloh, 1862 by Winston Groom Page A

Army had to offer.
    Not long after news of the North’s disaster at the Battle of Bull Run in Virginia had reached the western command, Grant was put in charge of the District of Southeast Missouri, with headquarters at Cairo, Illinois, at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. At that point Missouri and Kentucky were hanging in the Union by the slenderest political thread. As slave states, their loyalties were decidedly mixed and in the outlying areas Rebel detachments, abetted by Southern sympathizers, were recruiting, reconnoitering, burning bridges, and shooting at Yankee patrols. It was Grant’s job to suppress these activities, and he was given considerable latitude to accomplish it.
    The first thing Grant decided to do after he reached Cairo was seize the nearby city of Paducah, Kentucky, whose citizens were merrily anticipating the arrival of the Rebel general Gideon Pillow and his band of Confederates. This, Grant said, he had learned “from a scout belonging to General [John. C.] Frémont,” who commanded the department. Control of Paducah, located about 40 miles east of Cairo at the confluence of the Ohio and the Tennessee Rivers, was critical if the Union planned to use the rivers as highways into the heart of the Confederacy.
    One of the most brilliant ideas that the Union came up with during the war was the concept of the armed river gunboat as a strategic weapon. Rivers were, and had been, main arteries of travel, but until Robert Fulton’s development of the steamboat in 1807 it was nearly impossible for a military operation to go against the current of a river. Now the Union snatched up a number of large river vessels, reinforced their superstructures with heavy oak, and armed them with big guns. These became the so-called timberclads, two of which played such a large role at the Battle of Shiloh. Atthe same time, the Yankees were developing an even more powerful river warship—the ironclad. These were shoal draft vessels up to 200 feet in length carrying crews of 150 or more. Their armament consisted of 2½-inch-thick iron plate over heavy oak blocking from 12 to 24 inches deep. The ship’s main batteries consisted of 32-pounder cannons, as well as big 42- and 64-pounder Dahlgren guns. By comparison, the typical army field gun was a mere 6-pounder or 12-pounder Napoleon gun. The ironclads were self-sustaining, except for coal tenders that supplied their fuel, and their firepower could flatten an average-size town within half a day. Eight of these enormous craft were produced in less than four months in 1861–62.
    Acting upon the information provided by Frémont’s scout, Grant telegraphed Frémont for permission to depart that night on riverboats for Paducah and occupy it with two regiments and a battery. When he received no reply from the department commander, Grant again telegraphed his plans to Frémont. Again no reply was forthcoming, so Grant went ahead, and imagine the surprise on the faces of the dumbfounded Paducahans when instead of the Confederate army they had anticipated they were met by a blue-coated regimental band playing “Hail Columbia” as it marched to the town square. Once there, however, the citizens seemed relieved when Grant delivered a proclamation that began, “I have come among you as your friend and fellow citizen” and went on to pledge to respect their “rights and property,” which both parties understood to include slaves.
    Grant’s bloodless occupation of Paducah was just the sort of thing Abraham Lincoln liked to see, and he certainly had not seen much of it since the war began. Only last month there had been theawful humiliation of the Battle of Balls Bluff right outside Washington, and now the British were threatening to intercede on behalf of the South because of the notorious Trent Affair. 5 With things looking down in the East, Lincoln had cast an eye to the war in the West, not least because of political concerns, including the upcoming