Historians have expanded on the veteran’s
remembrances and continue to argue the importance
of the Hornet’s Nest. Almost all the
major monographs on the battle, as well as
media presentations such as Shiloh: Portrait of a
Battle, focus on the action that took place in the
center of the battlefield. These works even
portray the action in the area as a series of
Confederate attacks across the open Duncan farmland.
When these attacks failed, they argue, the
Confederates had to assemble the largest
concentration of artillery ever to appear on
the North American continent. In portraying
the Hornet’s Nest as the savior of Grant’s
There is perhaps no more famous Civil War
icon than the Hornet’s Nest at Shiloh. Ranking
with Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg, Bloody
Lane at Antietam, and the Stone Wall at
Fredericksburg, Shiloh’s Hornet’s Nest is well
known to even the most amateur of Civil War
buffs.
Shiloh’s Hornet’s Nest lies in the center of the
battlefield and was the scene of heavy combat
on both days of the battle. On the first day,
elements of three Union divisions manned the
line along a little-used farm road that ran
through the J.R. Duncan land. Duncan and his
family worked a small cotton field that bordered
the road to the south. With its open fields of fire
and road cover, there is little wonder that the
Duncan plot became one of the most important
localities on the battlefield.
Heavy fighting raged in the area of the Hornet’s
Nest on the first day, with no less that eight
distinct Confederate attacks turned back by the
determined defenders of the Sunken Road.
Attesting to the fury in the area, Confederates so
named the location because, they said, the
enemy’s bullets sounded like swarms of angry
hornets.
The number of dead and wounded in the area
shows that the Hornet’s Nest did not see the
heaviest fighting at Shiloh. An 1867 document
produced by laborers locating bodies on the
battlefield states that the heaviest concentrations
of dead lay on the eastern and western sectors of
the battlefield and that the dead were fairly light
in the center, where the Hornet’s Nest was located.
That in itself states that casualties were
fewer in the center where, according to myth,
the heaviest and most important fighting took
place. Supporting this point are casualty figures
for the units engaged in the Hornet’s Nest.
Colonel James M. Tuttle’s brigade of four Iowa
regiments, which held the Hornet’s Nest and the
Sunken Road in front of Duncan Field,
sustained a total of 235 killed and wounded in the
battle - a number less than some individual
regiments sustained on other parts of the field.
If the Hornet’s Nest was not the central event in
the Battle of Shiloh, why then did it become so
important to historians? The answer is simple.
For years after the Civil War, veterans of the
Hornet’s Nest emphasized their role in the
battle, claiming that their sacrifice had provided
Grant with enough time to establish a last line
of defense. Division commander Brigadier
General Benjamin M. Prentiss wrote a widelycirculated
report after the battle, which emphasized his role in
the battle as well as that of his
troops. Even after the war, veterans still claimed
the defense of the Hornet’s Nest was the central
event of Shiloh. A veterans’ organization, the
“Hornet’s Nest Brigade,” even held annual
reunions.
army, historians made it an American icon.
