Iowa Troops at Shiloh, April 1862

Steamboats at Pittsburg Landing

Iowa regiments were camped near Pittsburg Landing when the Confederate army came out of the woods at dawn and slammed into the Union camps with a violence few soldiers had ever imagined.

One Iowa correspondent said the attack came “like a thunderclap out of a clear sky,” adding that men were driven from their tents “before they had time to seize their arms.” A reporter for the Chicago Tribune was blunter: “The enemy fell upon us with a fury that astonished even seasoned troops.”

 

Shiloh wasn’t supposed to happen like that.

 

Union commander Ulysses S. Grant believed his army was secure while it gathered for an advance deeper into Tennessee. The camps were spread out. Men cooked breakfast. Some were still half asleep when musket fire cracked through the trees.

 

Grant would later admit, “I did not expect an attack so soon,” a statement repeated widely in Iowa papers in the weeks that followed.

The Confederates were closer than anyone realized.

 

For Iowa troops, the battle began in confusion and smoke. Iowa had sent a large force to Grant’s Army of the Tennessee. Infantry regiments from across the state were present, along with artillery batteries that would soon fire almost nonstop for two days.

 

Among the Iowa infantry at Shiloh were the 2nd, 6th, 7th, 8th, 12th, 14th, 15th, and 16th Iowa. Many had already seen combat in Missouri or earlier operations in Tennessee. They were not green, but nothing they had faced prepared them for what came out of the woods that morning.

 

A scene in the fighting at Shiloh

An officer in the 8th Iowa wrote home that Shiloh was “a battle such as no man here ever dreamed could exist—so vast, so noisy, so full of terror.”

 

The 2nd Iowa Infantry, commanded by Colonel James M. Tuttle, was among the first Iowa units heavily engaged. Formed near the front of the Union camps, the regiment was hit hard and early. They fell back under pressure, reformed, and went forward again as Confederate attacks rolled across the field.

 

Grant praised the regiment, writing in his official report that the 2nd Iowa “stood its ground under a most destructive fire, and retired only when flanked on both sides.”

 

Tuttle’s men fought in open ground and broken timber, firing until cartridges ran low and ranks thinned. An Iowa soldier recalled, “The smoke hung so thick that we fired at sound rather than sight.”

 

Nearby, the 6th Iowa Infantry under Colonel John Adair McDowell moved into position as the line bent and shifted. McDowell was killed during the fighting, struck while leading his men.

 

The Dubuque Herald reported his death with grim clarity, writing that he “fell while bravely urging his regiment forward, pierced by the enemy’s fire.” One soldier from the regiment later said simply, “He died where a colonel ought to die—at the front.”

 

His death hit the regiment hard, but the 6th Iowa held its ground through repeated attacks, refusing to collapse even as neighboring units gave way.

 

The early hours of Shiloh were chaotic everywhere.

 

The 7th Iowa Infantry, part of a brigade commanded by Colonel Jacob G. Lauman, was pushed into heavy fighting near the center of the field. Lauman later described the situation as “confusion indescribable,” noting that “regiments were compelled to fight almost independently, guided only by the sound of firing.”

 

The 7th Iowa was thrown forward, fell back, and advanced again. Men fought through smoke so thick it was difficult to see more than a few yards. Orders were shouted. Flags became rallying points.

 

A correspondent for the New York Times observed that “whole brigades seemed to dissolve into fragments, yet the men continued to fight on with stubborn determination.”

 

Colonel William T. Shaw’s 14th Iowa Infantry entered the fight late in the first day but immediately found itself in the thick of it. Shaw’s men were positioned near what would become known as the Hornet’s Nest, a sunken road where Union troops made a prolonged stand. This stretch of ground became one of the bloodiest places on the field.

 

A soldier from the 14th Iowa wrote home that “the air was alive with bullets,” adding that the sound “was like tearing canvas held close to the ear.”

 

The Hornet’s Nest earned its name honestly. Confederate attacks poured in for hours, met by steady musket fire from behind the road embankment. Iowa regiments were part of that stubborn defense, holding while the sound of bullets snapping overhead never seemed to stop.

 

The 12th Iowa Infantry, commanded by Colonel Joseph J. Woods, also fought in this sector. Like many units in the Hornet’s Nest, the 12th Iowa endured repeated assaults. When the Confederates finally concentrated artillery and infantry against the position late in the afternoon, portions of the line were surrounded.

 

Colonel Woods said his men fought until “every cartridge was exhausted.” An Iowa paper described the surrender as “a bitter necessity, not a failure of courage.” It was one of the darkest moments of the day.

 

Further to the right, the 8th Iowa Infantry under Colonel James L. Geddes fought in conditions just as desperate. Geddes was wounded during the battle. His regiment lost heavily but continued to hold until ordered to withdraw.

 

Geddes later wrote, “My regiment behaved with great gallantry, and did not leave the field until compelled by overwhelming force.”

 

General Ulysses S. Grant

Iowa artillery was everywhere. The 1st and 2nd Iowa Batteries were pushed forward repeatedly, often firing at close range. Guns were unlimbered under fire, fired until barrels overheated, then dragged back by hand when positions became untenable.

 

An artillerist said that “horses fell in heaps about the guns,” and that men “worked the pieces with the steadiness of a drill, though death was at every discharge.”

 

Artillery fire helped slow Confederate advances and bought time for Union infantry to reform. By nightfall on April 6, the Union army had been driven back toward the river.

 

Grant refused to retreat. When advised to pull back, he replied, according to one officer, “We will lick them tomorrow.”

 

Iowa regiments that had been fighting since dawn slept—or tried to—on muddy ground under rain, surrounded by wounded men and the sounds of a battlefield that never fully quieted.

 

A soldier wrote home that night, “We lay down with the rain on our faces and the dead at our feet.”

 

On the morning of April 7, the Iowa infantry moved forward with the rest of Grant’s army. The fighting was still fierce, but the balance had shifted.

 

The 15th Iowa Infantry, commanded by Colonel Hugh T. Reid, took part in the advance, helping push Confederate forces back through the same woods and fields that had swallowed the Union camps the day before.

 

The 16th Iowa Infantry under Colonel Alexander Chambers moved forward. Chambers said his men “advanced with confidence, driving the enemy at every point where we encountered him.”

 

By afternoon, the Confederate army began its retreat. Grant later summarized the result simply: “The enemy was driven from the field in confusion.”

 

Shiloh was over, but the cost was staggering.

 

Iowa regiments suffered heavily in killed, wounded, and missing. The Iowa State Register called Shiloh “a victory baptized in blood,” noting that nearly every town in the state would soon receive grim letters.

 

Grant later wrote that Shiloh taught him the war would not be quick or easy. 

 

Iowa soldiers already knew that. They had learned it in the woods along the Tennessee River, where camps became battlefields and breakfast fires turned into lines of fire.

 

Shiloh didn’t end the war in the West, but it changed it. The Mississippi Valley would not fall easily. Neither side would break quickly.

 

An Iowa private put it plainly in a letter printed back home: “We have found out what war truly is.”

 

Shiloh was not a clean victory. It was not a simple story. But in the chaos and violence of one of the war’s first great battles, Iowa regiments proved they could stand in the worst conditions the war offered.

 

And at Shiloh, Iowa held.