StarDestroyer.Net BBS

wikipedia.org wrote:On the main Union defensive line, starting at about 9:00 a.m., men of Prentiss's and W. H. L. Wallace's divisions established and held a position nicknamed the Hornet's Nest, in a field along a road now popularly called the "Sunken Road," although there is little physical justification for that name. The Confederates assaulted the position for several hours rather than simply bypassing it, and they suffered heavy casualties during these assaults—historians' estimates of the number of separate charges range from 8 to 14. The Union forces to the left and right of the Nest were forced back, and Prentiss's position became a salient in the line. Coordination among units in the Nest was poor, and units withdrew based solely on their individual commanders' decisions. This pressure increased with the mortal wounding of Wallace, who commanded the largest concentration of troops in the position. Regiments became disorganized and companies disintegrated. However, it was not until the Confederates assembled over 50 cannons to blast the line at close range that they were able to surround the position, and the Hornet's Nest fell after holding out for seven hours. Surrounded on three sides, General Prentiss surrendered himself and the remains of his division to the Confederates. A large portion of the Union survivors, numbering from 2,200 to 2,400 men, were captured, but their sacrifice bought time for Grant to establish a final defense line near Pittsburg Landing.

While dealing with the Hornet's Nest, the South suffered a serious setback in the death of their commanding general. Johnston was mortally wounded at about 2:30 p.m. while leading attacks on the Union left through the widow Bell's cotton field against the Peach Orchard when he was shot in his left leg. Deeming the leg wound to be insignificant, he had sent his personal surgeon away to care for some wounded captured Union soldiers, and in the doctor's absence, he bled to death within an hour, his boot filling with blood from a severed popliteal artery. This was a significant loss for the Confederacy. Jefferson Davis considered Albert Sidney Johnston to be the most effective general they had. (This was two months before Robert E. Lee emerged as the pre-eminent Confederate general.) Johnston was the highest-ranking officer from either side to be killed in combat during the Civil War. Beauregard assumed command, but from his position in the rear he may have had only a vague idea of the disposition of forces at the front.[36] He ordered Johnston's body shrouded for secrecy to avoid damaging morale in the army and then resumed attacks against the Hornet's Nest. This was likely a tactical error. The Union flanks were slowly pulling back to form a semicircular line around Pittsburg Landing, and if Beauregard had concentrated his forces against the flanks, he might have defeated the Union Army and then reduced the Hornet's Nest salient at his leisure.

“Well, Grant, we’ve had the devil’s own day, haven’t we?” Grant looked up. “Yes,” he replied, followed by a puff. “Yes. Lick ‘em tomorrow, though.”

Sea Skimmer wrote:Union prisoner of war camps were often not vastly better. 20% of the Confederate population at Fort Delaware died for example, against 28% of Union troops at Andersonville which at one point sent union prisoners to a union fort to go free, only to have them sent back as the forts commander would not accept responsibility for them fearing his own supplies would run out. Starvation was less prevalent certainly, but starvation in certain southern camps was also linked into the general collapse of all transport in the south, and the south would have been very happy to continue prisoner exchanges throughout the war and avoid the entire problem. Some confederate prison camps had the highest POW survival rates of the war, a few basically were concentration camps but it would be false to generalize that to all of them.

Rogue 9 wrote: The South was entirely happy to continue exchanges of white prisoners of war. Black ones were sold into slavery, even ones that had been born free in the North, and the Lincoln administration refused a prisoner exchange system on those terms while Jefferson Davis' government would accept no others. The South threatened to execute black POWs for the crime of servile insurrection, but the threat of reprisal against their own captured officers mostly stayed the official hand (the response to which was sometimes massacres of surrendering troops in the field, Forrest's being the most famous).