His orders weren’t confusing, he chose poorly as to implementing.
He was down river from the battle. near Crump’s Landing. He was ordered down a road that would have him approach the battle down the Purdy Rd, but, the Rebs had already passed it and the bridge over Owl Creek was blocked. He was ordered to come in by way of the Savannah Rd, but, instead of just telling everyone to spin around and march back the other way, he had his lead unit (now at the end of the column) march through the other troops. This took a lot of time that could have been used to have the tail end of his column appearing on the battlefield hours earlier.
He did perform well afterwards, and at the Battle of Monocacy Junction in 1864, but, his reputation as a soldier was too tarnished at this point to recover.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lew_Wallace
I recommend the chapter on Shiloh in Shelby Foote’s book. Great overview of the whole situation without too much detail.
If you are a wargamer, I recommend “Bloody April”, if you can find it. Regimental coverage of the battle. You can have Wallace ignore the countermarch and try to bust through the Owl Creek Bridge.
Ambrose Bierce
“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”
http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/OccOwl.shtml
I’m 70 yrs. old. My great-great grandfather was a Rebel
soldier in the Battle of Shiloh. When my grandmother was a
child; she asked him what it was like at Shiloh, and did he
kill anybody.
He answered her, “Izora; it was the biggest mess I’ve ever
seen in my life. Such a mess of confusion, I do not know if
I killed anybody or not. . but, I can’t see how I could have
kept from it if I had even wanted to. It was such a MESS!
I grew up with my parents taking me to Shiloh several times.
First time I ever saw THE BLOODY POND, it was dark, dark,
old blood-stained from where men from both sides crawled to
wash off their wounds. It has faded with time; but it was
stained dark for many years. Shiloh is a part of my life.
Just as WWII is a part of my life. My people have been
warriors.