The Generals of Shiloh by Larry Tagg

Author:Larry Tagg [Tagg, Larry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, Civil War Period (1850-1877), Military
ISBN: 9781611213706
Google: BuVFDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Grub Street Publishers
Published: 2017-11-19T22:20:00+00:00

5th (Crittenden’s) Division at Shiloh

The 5th Division was the smallest of Buell’s three full divisions at Shiloh, numbering 3,825 men in two brigades and two batteries: Brigadier General Jeremiah T. Boyle’s 11th Brigade, Col. William Sooy Smith’s 14th Brigade, Capt. Joseph Bartlett’s Battery B, 1st Ohio Light Artillery, and Capt. John Mendenhall’s Battery H and M, 4th U.S. Artillery. Mendenhall’s battery was Regular Army, and had returned in January 1862 from service against the Indians in the West. Crittenden’s two brigade leaders were of wildly uneven quality: Smith, though only a colonel, was a West Pointer who was destined for division command in the Civil War, while Boyle was “political general,” a highly visible Kentucky lawyer with no military experience.

On December 3, 1861, the troops organized at Henderson and Owensboro on the Ohio River in western Kentucky were designated the 5th Division in Don Carlos Buell’s Army of the Ohio. These two posts straddled the mouth of the Green River, and the troops there were intended to guard the army’s right flank in Kentucky. The 5th Division at that time consisted of two brigades: Col. Charles Cruft’s 13th Brigade and Col. William Sooy Smith’s 14th Brigade.

In January 1862 Brig. Gen. Thomas L. Crittenden marched the 5th Division, now grown to 5,000 men, south to Calhoun on the Green River, 50 miles from its confluence with the Ohio, to protect navigation on the river, and then he returned to Owensboro.

Early in February, in response to a request by Halleck in St. Louis, Buell sent Cruft’s brigade of Crittenden’s Division to Fort Henry to join Grant for his assault on Fort Donelson. Cruft’s brigade remained with Grant thereafter, never returning to the Army of the Ohio.

On February 15, Buell ordered Crittenden to embark the remainder of his division at Owensboro and follow Nelson’s 4th Division up the Cumberland River to Nashville. Crittenden’s division arrived at the Tennessee capital after Nelson’s men but before the rest of the army, which traveled overland from Bowling Green. The Army of the Ohio camped around Nashville until mid-March. On March 9, Brig. Gen. Jeremiah T. Boyle’s 11th Brigade was transferred from George H. Thomas’s 1st Division to the 5th Division, to replace the loss of Cruft’s 13th Brigade.

The 5th Division departed Nashville with the rest of Buell’s army on March 16–17, 1862, and was blocked at the destroyed bridge over the Duck River until March 30, when they forded the river the day after Nelson’s 4th Division demonstrated that it could be done. The 5th Division then followed the leading 4th Division on the road to Savannah, 75 miles away on the Tennessee River. On Sunday evening, April 6, Crittenden’s two brigades and two batteries steamed upriver from Savannah, arriving at Pittsburg Landing between 9:00 and 11:00 p.m., and bivouacked along the Corinth Road in the rear of Nelson’s division.

On Monday morning the 5th Division lined up on Nelson’s right at Cloud Field, at about 8:00 a.m., with Smith’s brigade on the left and Boyle’s brigade on the right.

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