I suppose the country lying between Corinth and Pittsburg Landing could boast a few inhabitants other than alligators. What manner of people they were it is impossible to say, inasmuch as the fighting dispersed, or possibly exterminated them; perhaps in merely classing them as non-saurian I shall describe them with sufficient particularity and at the same time avert from myself the natural suspicion attaching to a writer who points out to persons who do not know him the peculiarities of persons whom he does not know. One thing, however, I hope I may without offense affirm of these swamp-dwellers - they were pious. To what deity their veneration was given - whether, like the Egyptians, they worshiped the crocodile, or, like other Americans, adored themselves, I do not presume to guess. But whoever, or whatever, may have been the divinity whose ends they shaped, unto Him, or It, they had builded a temple. This humble edifice, centrally situated in the heart of a solitude, and conveniently accessible to the supersylvan crow, had been christened Shiloh Chapel, whence the name of the battle. The fact of a Christian church - assuming it to have been a Christian church - giving name to a wholesale cutting of Christian throats by Christian hands need not be dwelt on here; the frequency of its recurrence in the history of our species has somewhat abated the moral interest that would otherwise attach to it.
-What I Saw of Shiloh, by Ambrose Beirce
Could be the defining example of “the fog of battle”.
http://www.online-literature.com/poe/2037/
Shiloh was the result of a tactical blunder by Grant, placing half his army across the Tennessee within marching distance to the Confederates. Johnston was too good a general to miss such an opportunity.
There were two Union Generals named Wallace involved in the battle, one Major General Lew Wallace was much critized for his execution of ambiguous orders from Grant and was somewhat scapegoated in the North for the resulting casualties, though some historians believe that had he done as his critics suggested, the result would have been the loss of his division, in return for little gain for the North. (When Grant clarified his orders, Wallace took the time to reorganize his division so that it would arrive at the battle in good order, rather than heading in pell-mell to be chewed up by Conferate cannon and shot.)
Wallace was a deeply religous Christian, and later wrote the novel Ben Hur, the story of man bent on redemption and revenge, but who learns that redemption comes not through revenge, but through love and faith.
Ambrose was tripping.
gators are not common that far north...I have heard of some around Reelfoot lake to the west...a New Madrid fault footprint
when I was a boy gators were uncommon north of the coastal areas in Mississippi
we had seen a few around Greenwood MS and Tallulah LA in my youth but above the TN line is rare..even today..but they are found
i had a bull gator attack my pickup at night on a clay road near Coy Alabama in 1984 which is around 150 miles north of Bayou LaBatre
this northern migration has been a second half 20th century phenom...no doubt they are more plentiful 200 miles or so north of Gulf..or further..now