Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
Major General Ulysses S. Grant’s successful winter campaign along the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers shattered the Confederate defensive line in Kentucky and middle Tennessee. Seeking to capitalize on these victories, Grant moved his Army of the Tennessee upriver to Pittsburg Landing, a vital staging ground just over twenty miles north of the crucial Confederate railroad junction at Corinth, Mississippi. Grant was ordered to wait at the landing for Major General Don Carlos Buell’s Army of the Ohio to arrive from Nashville before launching a combined offensive against Corinth.
Believing the retreating and disorganized Confederate forces under General Albert Sidney Johnston were incapable of launching an attack, the Union troops failed to entrench their camps around Shiloh Church and spent their days conducting routine drilling and reconnoitering, completely unaware that Johnston had quietly marched his entire army out of Corinth to strike first. On the morning of April 6, 1862, the Union army's complacency was shattered when a pre-dawn patrol clashed with advancing Confederates, unleashing a massive, unexpected assault that caught the forward divisions under Benjamin Prentiss and William T. Sherman completely off-guard.
In this Kriegsspiel game, the Union players are caught off guard as well as they weren't told this was Shiloh Day 1. Let's see how they do.
Major General Ulysses S. Grant’s successful winter campaign along the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers shattered the Confederate defensive line in Kentucky and middle Tennessee. Seeking to capitalize on these victories, Grant moved his Army of the Tennessee upriver to Pittsburg Landing, a vital staging ground just over twenty miles north of the crucial Confederate railroad junction at Corinth, Mississippi. Grant was ordered to wait at the landing for Major General Don Carlos Buell’s Army of the Ohio to arrive from Nashville before launching a combined offensive against Corinth.
Believing the retreating and disorganized Confederate forces under General Albert Sidney Johnston were incapable of launching an attack, the Union troops failed to entrench their camps around Shiloh Church and spent their days conducting routine drilling and reconnoitering, completely unaware that Johnston had quietly marched his entire army out of Corinth to strike first. On the morning of April 6, 1862, the Union army's complacency was shattered when a pre-dawn patrol clashed with advancing Confederates, unleashing a massive, unexpected assault that caught the forward divisions under Benjamin Prentiss and William T. Sherman completely off-guard.
In this Kriegsspiel game, the Union players are caught off guard as well as they weren't told this was Shiloh Day 1. Let's see how they do.
