The Battle of Shiloh and the Organizations Engaged
By David W. Reed
(October 2008 Civil War News)

Illustrated, appendix, index, maps on CD-Rom, 122 pp., 2008 reprint. University of Tennessee Press, 110 Conference Center, 600 Henley St., Knoxville, TN 37996-4108, $33 plus shipping.

Reviewer: Paul Taylor
Paul Taylor is the author/editor of four books on the Civil War. His forthcoming biography of Union officer and engineer Orlando M. Poe will be published by Kent State University Press. Visit www.paulrtaylor.com for details.

Review:
David W. Reed was a 5-foot-7-inch 20-year-old farm lad when he enlisted in the 12th Iowa Infantry in September 1861. Following its initial training, the 12th marched south and took part in Grant’s victories at Forts Henry and Donelson. By early April 1862, it found itself on the banks of the Tennessee River at Pittsburg Landing, Tenn.

There Reed and his comrades waited for what would become known as the Battle of Shiloh. His regiment was engaged in the first day’s horrific fighting at the “hornet’s nest” and just as his regiment was forced to surrender, Reed took a bullet in the thigh. His participation in that historic and legendary two-day engagement was clearly over.

He eventually recovered from his wound and lived to the ripe old age of 75, though in some respects, David Reed never really left the Shiloh battlefield.

In addition to a successful professional career, Reed was active in numerous veterans’ organizations and wrote of Shiloh often in the decades following the war.

In 1895, he became the historian of the Shiloh National Military Park Commission, which was established by Congress to oversee the park’s creation. His hand was everywhere, including writing or supervising the text for the hundreds of markers and tablets throughout the park.

Reed’s crowning work was a slim volume entitled The Battle of Shiloh and the Organizations Engaged. It represented the Shiloh Battlefield Park Commission’s official history of the April 6 and 7, 1862, battle.

Within its covers, Reed gives the reader a concise, 16-page overview of the engagement and the days leading up to it. This is followed by an order of battle for both sides, which leads to the heart of the book: a detailed description of the movements of every division and brigade at Shiloh. Numerous tables of strengths and losses for the armies round out Reed’s work.

It should be noted that this is not a light, easy read. As is the case with many works of its era, it has a rather dry feel when compared to modern styles. In fact, the book seems more like a reference work than a smooth-flowing tactical narrative.

Nevertheless, unlike all of the post-1965 Shiloh studies, The Battle of Shiloh and the Organizations Engaged offers a very succinct but highly authoritative overview of the battle from one who was there and made its study his life’s avocation.

Reed’s slender book was first published in 1902 by the Government Printing Office in an austere, 2,500-copy edition. Copies were given away free to any veteran who “saw the elephant” at Shiloh, in large measure to solicit their input and correct any glaring mistakes. Within a handful of years, those 2,500 copies were gone.

Reed and the government reissued the book in 1909 as a revised second edition which corrected some of the first edition’s minor errors. That second edition was also reprinted in 1913 due to the continuing demand, but never reprinted thereafter.

Though a book of such historical importance, it remained out of print for the better part of a century until the University of Tennessee Press saw fit to republish it earlier this year. That 1913 reprint of the corrected second edition is the version offered here, with a wonderful introduction by Shiloh expert Timothy B. Smith that places The Battle of Shiloh in its proper historical context.

Reed’s original book also included battle line and troop movement maps of such detail and accuracy that they are now on display as wall-size exhibits within the Shiloh National Battlefield Park’s Visitor Center. As an added bonus, these spectacular color maps are reproduced on a CD-Rom that comes with the book.

A sturdy reprint of this classic work has been long overdue and this one is heartily recommended by this reviewer for it is the historical wellspring from which all modern Shiloh historiography flows.

In addition to its scholarly qualities, it is also indispensable for Civil Warriors who want to visit the field and track the movement of the various divisions and brigades.

I would suggest pairing Reed’s cornerstone work along with a contemporary study that encompasses more recent scholarship and a modern, stylistic narrative, say O. Edward Cunningham’s recently published Shiloh and the Western Campaign of 1862.

These two books digested together will give the reader an excellent, in-depth knowledge of those two fateful days in April 1862.