The assault was made with dash and courage. For four hours the battle raged with fury. The shattered regiments that had been surprised and crushed the day before, yielded at one time before the onslaughts of the Confederates. By noon Beauregard had sent into the shambles his last brigade and reserves and shortly afterwards gave his first order to withdraw his army.
Breckinridge's division covered the retreat and there was no attempt at pursuit. Grant was only too glad to save his army. The first great battle of the war had been fought and won by the genius of the South's commander and its results thrown away by the hero of Bull Run.
Never was the wisdom of a great leader more thoroughly vindicated than was Jefferson Davis in the record Albert Sidney Johnston made at Shiloh. The men who had been loudest in demanding his removal stood dumb before the story of his genius.
The death list of this battle sent a shiver of horror through the North and the South. All other battles of the war were but skirmishes to this.
The Confederate losses in killed, wounded and missing were ten thousand six hundred and ninety-nine. At Bull Run the combined armies of Joseph E. Johnston and Beauregard lost but one thousand nine hundred and sixty-four men.
Grant's army lost thirteen thousand one hundred and sixty-two in killed, wounded and prisoners. McDowell at Bull Run had lost but two thousand seven hundred, and yet was removed from his command.
The rage against Grant in the North was unbounded. The demand for his removal was so determined, so universal, so persistent, it was necessary for Abraham Lincoln to bow to it temporarily.
Lincoln positively refused to sacrifice his fighting General for his first error, but sent Halleck into the field as Commander-in-Chief and left Grant in command of his division.
The bulldog fighter of the North learned his lesson at Shiloh. The South never again caught him napping.
Great as the losses were to the North they were as nothing to the disaster which this bloody field brought to the Confederacy. Albert Sidney Johnston alive was equal to an army of a hundred thousand men—dead; his loss was irreparable.