At Corinth, the earth moves, an army disappears. 

The rail lines at Corinth were Grant’s first objective, but to take them would first require the bloody battle of Shiloh, a conflict that left more American soldiers dead than all the casualties of the nation’s previous wars combined. After their defeat, the Confederate Army under the direction of General P. T. Beauregard retreated to Corinth, to care for the wounded, and to continue to expand the trenches and earthworks begun before Shiloh. 

These “field fortifications” were the latest advance in military strategy, used by both sides. As they followed the Confederates from Shiloh, the Union Army under the command of General Henry Halleck advanced slowly, fortifying their own positions with earthworks all along the way. The fortifications stretched for miles, setting up what was, in terms of manpower, the largest siege that would ever be conducted in the Western hemisphere.

Lacking siege guns and facing water and food shortages, Beauregard engineered a surprise retreat that would become as legendary as the siege itself. He began immediate evacuations by rail, and as the empty rail cars returned to the city, Confederates cheered as if greeting reinforcements. Buglers blew taps; campfires were stoked. False cannons, called Quaker cannon because they couldn’t fire, were made from tree stumps painted black. The next morning Halleck marched his men into a deserted city.

It was no hollow triumph, however—the rail lines were taken, and now the city became a haven for the thousands of escaped slaves who flooded the city, so many that the Contraband Camp was set up to house them.

Grant’s army was now positioned in Mississippi, a fact that precipitated the next battle, in Iuka.