The Battle of ShilohThe confrontation had been a slaughter on both sides. Corpses littered areas of the battlefield to the extent that, as General Grant described, ''it would have been possible to walk across the clearing in any direction stepping on dead bodies without a foot touching the ground.'' Nearly 100,000 troops had faced each other and almost 24,000 ended as casualties. This horrendous outcome was a wake-up call to the nation announcing that the continuing war would be costly for both sides.