Battle of Shiloh

Albert Sidney Johnston and P. G. T. Beauregard launched a surprise attack against Ulysses S. Grant’s army near Pittsburg Landing on 6 April 1862. Confederate troops drove the Union line back towards the Tennessee River but failed to destroy it before nightfall.

Johnston was killed during the first day. Reinforcements under Don Carlos Buell arrived, and Grant counterattacked on 7 April, forcing Beauregard to withdraw towards Corinth.

This context supports fiction about Grant, Johnston, Beauregard, William Tecumseh Sherman and ordinary soldiers confronting the first exceptionally bloody battle in the western theatre.