Library of Congress
The timberclads Tyler and Lexington lend their firepower to Federal troops fighting in the April 1862 Battle of Shiloh. While many contemporary observers recognized the gunboats’ important role at the battle, historians generally have downplayed the vessels’ contributions.
Library of Congress

Defending the Final Line at Shiloh

Shiloh, the early Civil War’s bloodiest battle, was a Union victory but not an overwhelming one. On 6 April 1862, the Confederates failed to drive Union troops from the west bank of the Tennessee River at Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee. The next day, the reinforced Federals counterattacked, forcing the Confederates to retreat from the battlefield. After a prolonged advance and siege, Union troops would seize their original objective in the area—the strategically important junction of the Mobile & Ohio and Memphis & Charleston railroads at Corinth, Mississippi.General Ulysses S. Grant’s assessment of Shiloh illustrates the complexity of the battle, in which he was overall Union commander, and its resultant controversies. More than two decades after the fight, he wrote that “S
By Phillip R. Kemmerly
August 2017
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With the Union army pushed back nearly to the Tennessee River, a pair of timberclad gunboats played a key role in repulsing the Confederates’ last desperate charges late on the Battle of Shiloh’s first day.

hiloh, or Pittsburg Landing . . . has been perhaps less understood, or to state the case more accurately, more persistently misunderstood, than any other engagement . . . during the entire Rebellion.”

One misunderstanding that persists concerns the battle’s naval aspects. Any standard history of Shiloh mentions the two Union gunboats that fought there, but generally downplays their part in the battle. This view also usually overlooks the Navy’s role transporting men and matériel to Pittsburg Landing, reconnoitering farther upriver for military operations, and especially stabilizing the tenuous Federal left flank along the Tennessee during the battle.

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