Shiloh: The War is Civil No More

The Battle of Shiloh was one of the largest amphibious campaigns ever waged by an American army. Digital effects bring the Federal gunboats, Tyler and Lexington, back to life and firing from the Tennessee River. Archival photos, first-person accounts and narration seam this story together. Shiloh will take you back to that fateful Tennessee battlefield of 1862.
This film is part of Wide Awake Films' Classic Collection. These films were produced by Wide Awake Films and were available for purchase on DVD. They've since been digitized and made available in full on KZbin for your viewing pleasure. Please enjoy.
Visit www.wideawakefilms.com/ for more information and our latest projects.

[@liennitram9291]

I live near Hodgenville Kentucky. The birthplace of Abraham Lincoln. There is a cemetery near there where two soldiers are buried. They are brothers. One was Union, amd the other was Confederate. The Confederate brother was KIA at Shiloh. The Union brother was wounded on the same day, and died from his wounds a few months later. They are buried directly beside each other. A few graves away is the midwife who helped deliver Abraham Lincoln.... To me that is absolutely amazing..... Out in an obscure, very rural pioneer cemetery are buried three people who had a hand in truly determing the world we live in to this day. There also two Revolutionary War soldiers who the name of the county (Larue), and the nearby town (Hodgenville), are named after.

[@johnnyman2268]

Interesting. I don’t want to sound morbid but you can learn a lot of history in cemeteries especially the old ones

[@paulrummery6905]

That's a profound & moving echo from the agony of that war and the forging of your nation. Salutations from Australia.

[@andrewhoneycutt7427]

Thanks for posting this video. Shiloh is the best preserved Civil War battlefield.

[@jeffbrewer8810]

I grew up near Shiloh. My ancestors along with the ancestors of most of my childhood friends, all from North Mississippi, fought at Shiloh. I give a tour of the western flank which is where my second great grandfather fought in Aaron B. Hardcastle’s 3rd Mississippi Battalion. The thing I love about these comments is discovering others around the country who also had ancestors there. One person on here had an ancestor in the 22nd or 25th Alabama. That was Gladden’s Brigade of Bragg’s Corp. Your great grandfather was to the right of mine who was in Wood’s Brigade. Shaver’s Brigade was between Wood and Gladden. Another commenter on here had ancestors in the 6th Kentucky, Trabue’s Brigade, Breckinridge’s Reserve Corps. They were on the Confederate far right close to the river. Your other ancestor was in the 28th Tennessee in Statham’s Brigade also in Breckinridge’s Corps. They were in the center right of the battle in the intense fighting In Sarah Bell’s cotton field and peach orchard. These were the troops rallied personally by Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston after which about 3,000 of them surged forward and broke the Union line around the George farm. Johnston was mortally wounded at the same time and died within minutes. With his death command and control was lost in that area of the field. We owe these men much. Regardless of the politics of the war or sectional biases, these men on both sides suffered for two days a maelstrom of shot and shell that the most men today couldn’t imagine let alone endure. I encourage you all to search out your history. It’s important to know who we were. Especially today.

[@charlesbyrd6055]

The woke could care less It’s virtue signaling or nothing

[@jonnie106]

I am descended from a great great uncle who lost an eye at Petersburg with the USCT. My great grandmother on my father's side briefly dated a WW1 vet of 369th Infantry, who nearly had a problem with locals while being in uniform (and out with my great grandmother), whose father also fought with USCT.

[@jeffbrewer8810]

@@jonnie106 you’ve got some unique family history there. Where we’re your USCT ancestors from? Where and when did they enlist? Also your connection to the 369th is definitely something to pass down to your children. They were attached to the French command because the AEF was too small initially to mount any kind of action on its own. Other New York units fought under the British. My great uncle was a white NCO in a colored Engineering Battalion during WWI. They were attached to the artillery and apparently suffered grievously. My grandmother said he was a totally different man when he came back from the war. He had began drinking heavily and died in a car crash returning with a friend from the county fair in Tupelo, Mississippi in 1923. I’d encourage you to document your ancestry so it’s not lost. History is not being taught intentionally. It’s not “white history” or “black history” or this history or that history, it’s the history of western culture that they are systematically attempting to erase. While the media was eager to report the defacing and or destruction of Confederate monuments in 2019 and 2020, the media intentionally did not raise the spectacle of the defacing of monuments to the USCT like the 54th Massachusetts or Frederick Douglas. If our history is preserved it’s going to be up to us to preserve it.

[@jonnie106]

@@jeffbrewer8810 Family on my father's side came from North Carolina and my mother's side from Virginia. Story has it that my great great grandmother had two brothers, at least one of which escaped chattel bondage. Making his way north through Maryland he encountered enlistment rallies and joined late 1863. The Harlem Hellfighters connection isn't via blood as my grandmother's mother on my mother's side only dated the man briefly, during which he managed to talk himself out of the bad judgment of some white men from Georgia that didn't like his uniform. He feels like a blood relative though, in that if he'd been lynched so too would my great grandma, which may certainly have interrupted me. Allow me to fill out your history of the 369th Infantry's disposition. An equally important facet to Gen Pershing's AEF approach was absolutely refusing repeated French requests to be reinforced. They simply wanted numbers; units given over to fight under French command, wherever the French needed them. Pershing preferred (for antiquity's sake) the actions of the AEF to be whole, complete and unique to itself; all Americans fighting under American commanders, executing American battle plans. He soon met the unceasing French requests for troops with the offering of the 369th. Whatever historical legacy Pershing saw in the actions of the AEF in Europe, he had no interest or desire to include any colored troops. The French not being nearly as shallow-minded accepted the 369th, put them in French uniforms, gave them French weapons and put them in the line, where they would set many combat records unequalled by any other American unit. I also must refute your claim of a 'certain' history not being taught. You may not be aware of the activities of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in the public schools of the southern states. Aside from the statues, monuments and confederate cemeteries they championed, they also audited grade school history books, for any 'histories not benevolent to the confederacy', removed said books and replaced them with UDC published books that absolutely taught a confederate-friendly version of history. This was done in most if not every public or private school, in every southern state. Take a step back and we see that from the late 1890's to the late 1960's, 69,706,756 southern children attended grade schools that year after year, generation after generation, taught them 'the lost cause' version of history. To assert history being re-written, one must not discount the revisions to history already made. I did not know however, of any defacing of a Frederick Douglass monument. I was born and raised in New York so my schools didn't feature any lost cause, except to identify its application. I believe in preserving our history, I just very much believe that it should be our most accurate and true history, especially any immoral, distasteful history.

[@connconagher6155]

I was at that reenactment!!! I have this on VHS! I wish I could get it on DVD...

[@stephenwilson9872]

My dad asked me and my cousin Ruel one day as we were leaving what we learned . I said I don’t know? So we went through a detailed tour twice in one day.

[@jimmyraythomason1]

My great great grand father, Pvt. Eli J. Todd fought in this battle with the 22nd/25th Alabama CSA. He survived this battle as well as the Battle of Chickamauga. He was at the surrender at Appomattox Courthouse. He lived until 1900 and suffered from respiratory problems caused by so much smoke inhalation during this battle.

[@robtruax7640]

You have a heritage of great genes!

[@lololomo5484]

The military team that emerged from Shiloh wasn't just Grant and Sherman. It was Grant, Sherman and Abe Lincoln, who for a time was the only national politician who believed in this man Grant, "who fights."

[@robertdeen8741]

You mean fightingest.

[@baishampayandas5056]

Also General Philip Sheridan.

[@travisbayles870]

Grant stood by me when I was crazy and I stood by him when he was drunk and now sir we stand by each other always General William T Sherman Union Army

[@jollyjohnthepirate3168]

The same thing happens at Antietam. No one knew how to use the military with all the new technology of the time. Napoleonic tactics based on inaccurate smooth bore muskets were used with rifles that were deadly accurate at 800 yards. Troops would march up to point blank rage and blaze away at each other. The dead would pile up like cord wood.

[@monumentstosuffering2995]

Most excellent.

[@johnaugsburger6192]

Thanks

[@UncleDavesKitchen]

I lived in Athens County as a child in the 1950s and early 1960s. We lived on a dirt and gravel road, had no plumbing, a Coal stove for heat, outhouse out the back door, across the yard and down the hill. Over the years, now and then, maybe 50 times that I recall my grandmother would suddenly say, "they're coming, get ready, get on the porch, they're on their way." She'd comb her hair, put her teeth in, some lipstick and compact and we'd quickly get to the porch swing and look at the empty road. Soon, we'd hear men talking, kicking up rocks on the road as they walked. There would be about 30 Civil War Soldiers walking down the hill by our house, behind the barn and up over the next hill out of sight. All in blue uniforms, shot up, dirty, rips and holes, some had guns, most didn't. They walked slowly, some in groups talking to each other but we couldn't make out what they said. Some walking alone, some straggling. Every time we saw them it was the same groups, same stragglers. I was a kid and sometimes I'd run up to them wanting to play. They looked like teen agers or a bit older, dirty, not noticing me, I could see up close the holes in their uniforms. They'd walk on and disappear over the next hill and my grandmother and I'd go in the house. How she would know they were coming I don't know. Years later I watched a documentary on the Civil War, after the war the solders had to walk home, rail roads were destroyed, horses killed, no boats left they had to walk. So many soldiers that made it through the war never made it home with the long walk, maybe over 1,000 miles. I wonder if these soldier boys were those soldiers, heading home but never made it, still trying to find home. They were solid, did every movement, walk and talk the same each time and I saw them at least 50 times. At night I'd hear them walking by, recognize the voices and kicking up the gravel rocks in the road. I've not been back there in over 50 years, I wonder if the soldier boys ever made it home. I'm retired now and thinking of taking a trip back to Ohio to that spot, not sure if the house is there or not, but wait and see if the soldier boys are still walking by or finally made it home. Here I am telling my story. kzbin.info/www/bejne/iqbFmGV8frCGm9E

[@talleman1]

What reenactment year was this?

[@rev.elsiecompo4542]

R.I.P. Pvt Isaac Pickering

[@daviddavenport9350]

I always thought that the War in the Western theater was decided at Shiloh....so early in the conflict....but from then on, it seems the Union armies could maneuver as they pleased throughout Tenn., Miss., Northern Alabama, and Louisiana.....

[@TheLoyalOfficer]

Too bad no detail on the Union counterattack on the second day. They just kind of gloss it over.

[@upkevington]

My GG Grandfather was in and survived that second day, and Stones River and Chickamauga.

[@TheLoyalOfficer]

@@upkevington Union or Confederate?

[@upkevington]

Part of Union support forces that arrived end of day one.

[@JamesTheCivilWarGuy]

Shelby foots narrative goes into day 2 union attack detail

[@TheLoyalOfficer]

@@JamesTheCivilWarGuy Sure, many sources do, but not this video. lol

[@nanouli6511]

At Shiloh we lost a great American general in Albert Sidney Johnston

[@OneLastHitB4IGo]

The Civil War assured that this country is anything but United.

[@dsmonington]

what? The country was also "anything but United" before the Civil War... that's why there was a Civil War lol

[@hazcat640]

'Ironclads made Navies around the world wake up and ...' Well, except for the Navies that already had ironclads like the British who already had a dozen better ocean going ironclads, and the French who had 1\2 a dozen and either Spain or Italy (maybe both) that had a couple and the many other countries that had them under construction. ;)

[@thomasbaagaard]

yep, typical American nationalistic mythmaking. Just like the idea that the riflemusket was a new weapon. At the battle of Isted in 1850, involving about 62500 men in total, half where armed with riflemuskets. When the british first deployed to the Crimean 3 our of 4 infantry divisions had riflemusets, and by the end of the war, all of them had riflemuskets. at Solferino in 1859, 260.000 men was involved... almost all of them armed with riflemuskets... The simple fact that both sides in the civil war imported surplus riflemuskets from Europe should make it obvious that this was not a new weapon.

[@markjurgens8898]

Thanks for the information. Got me learning new things. Ken Burns documentary even states that Europe was obsolete after the United States had "invented" the ironclad.

[@jollyjohnthepirate3168]

HMS Warrior and the French Glorie were the first ocean going ironclads.

[@UsoundsGermany]

@@jollyjohnthepirate3168 Correct, also this one: The French ironclad Couronne ("Crown")

[@robleahy5759]

@@markjurgens8898 Ken burns best work, and that ain't much, was the civil war doco. Every other of the eight docos he made for that station mirrored it and greatly to their detriment. Hes just an old commie American. Pete Coyote is one too. 60s weed and indian jackets. Christ help us.

[@robleahy5759]

If you can tell who the black hat is from the first frame, it's not a movie or novel or story. Good luck!

[@ConorMaguire-wl6vk]

It was fought during the first year.

[@randysmith4739]

Confederate army was known as the "Army of Mississippi"....the Yankees named their armies after rivers examples the "Army of the Tennessee" , the "Army of the Ohio, etc,etc

[@aaronjohnson2850]

Union army of the Potomac Confederate army of northern Virginia

[@albertborgman859]

Now the Reconciliation is no more. ..

[@jamieshrimpton8021]

What is the name of the song

[@daviddavenport9350]

Which one? I heard 'Amazing Grace' and 'Over the Sea to Skye'....

[@aaronjohnson2850]

I know that this might not make sense but the Virginia could have gone to shore loaded up 150+ men and than have ran into the monitor again and in the process boarded these extra 150+ men and captured it

[@drrbrt]

Where's Willich?

[@WatcherofVids]

😂😂the silent film footage effect.

[@stephenwilson9872]

Stephen D. Lee dubbed

[@Carl-ht7cg]

All of the engineer that fought in the war, the wall should have been started then

[@bambusidu]

Like two criminals who cannot share the spoils.

[@parttysetzer6247]

See you never hear this in his books 📚 school or college Shame

[@majcorbin]

KILROY corbin WAS HERE IOWA DAD JOKE of the day [Q] when does a JOKE, become a DAD JOKE? [A] when it becomes, APPARENT

[@multipipi1234]

Revolutionary War....sorry Civil War.

[@aaronnoon2582]

Grant wasn’t an Illinoisan, but an Ohioan by birth.

[@rebelwithoutaclue8164]

Shiloh is in south central Tennessee ? Dumb Ace

[@CSAFD]

Shiloh is in southwest Tennessee, I live 70 miles from it, 50 from Corinth, 10 miles from Brice’s crossroads, 2 miles from tupelo, my family land is on old town creek battle area of the 2nd day battle of tupelo, my land that I have now is part of the 1st day battle.

[@kenanacampora]

A huge waste..... all for nothing.

[@jollyjohnthepirate3168]

That's what the Civil War is about. Many battles were fought on ground that had no strategic value. Gettysburg is a grand example of this. The battle drew troops to it without rhyme or reason.

[@charlesfaure1189]

@@jollyjohnthepirate3168 Gettysburg was a road hub. Armies traveled by road, even marching by foot. The timely concentration of army corps was critical to successful warfighting, so Gettysburg was not 'without rhyme or reason.' Lee needed to draw in and destroy Meade's army to open the way for a march on Washington, D.C. He knew he needed to knock Lincoln out of office to gain a favorable peace, and that's how he figured to do it.

[@alanaadams7440]

A one two punch Grant and Sherman hard to beat

[@Neb2117]

The idea that Union General Lew Wallace was lost, as stated in this video, is ridiculous. Wallace knew exactly where he was. Advancing his troops down the Shinpike road to support Sherman. Unfortunately Sherman had been forced to retreat back towards Pittsburg Landing. Once this news reached Wallace he was forced to alter course. Grant would later use Wallace as a scapegoat in an attempt to cover his vague orders.

[@aaronjohnson2850]

If the csa would have concentrated on a attack on the usa right flank they would have pushed them into the river and watered there horses in the Tennessee that night only the USA gun boats could have saved the USA army but they wouldn't have been able to fire because it would have hit there own men

[@delstrain8590]

Damn meddling Yankees