also symbolic of "this horrid and unnatural war as william tecumsee sherman wrote. more than once as he spoke of the tragic clash when americans fought americans in the bloodiest of all american wars. i think it fitting that the colonel's word came during the first day of the first truly great battle of the war. that sunday, suggested biographer, lloyd lewis, just may have been relative to the number of troops engaged. and i emphasize that, relative off to the number of troops engaged. lewis said it just may have been the bloodiest single day of the war. grant considered shiloh, the severest battle ever fought in the western theater. and bloody shiloh, to borrow a bit of wily's book title was probably even more bloody than the casualty figures which for so long have been generally accepted. 23,746. i refer particularly to the number of lives that were lost in great clash. on average -- about 15% of the men wounded in civil wars died their wound. this factor would raise the number of deaths resulting for shiloh, making a total of almost 6,000 dead. furthermore -- gen