When you explore Tennessee with all the excitement for music at Nashville and Memphis, it is easy to miss a major Civil War Battlefield tucked in the rolling hills east of Memphis.    We decided to drive through the Shiloh NMP in our RV, the first time we had tried this, rather than finding a campground nearby and using our jeep.

The rig is decidedly not agile, but navigated all the roads well and only rarely rubbed on the tree branches hanging down 🙂

So getting back to the battlefield in April of 1862 (same time of year as we were visiting), the Union Army under Ulysses S. Grant traveled up the Tennessee River to a landing just north of Corinth, Mississippi, a key railroad junction.  Grant’s Army of 40,000 was camped near the small log church called the Shiloh Meeting House.  The trees were vibrant green in spring time beauty when General Johnston the Confederate Commander marched 44,000 troops  into the Union Army, seizing the initiative.

The Confederates hammered the Union lines all day, slowly backing the Union Army towards the river landing site.  When a particularly stubborn group of Union Soldiers in the “Hornet’s Nest” wouldn’t retreat, the Confederates massed their cannons to shred the Union defenders in the woods.

By nightfall General Grant and his worn army were defending the river landing site, pushed far back from their original positions.  Fortunately for the Yankees, General Buell landed several thousand fresh troops that night and the next day was a completely mirror image.  The Confederates were pushed back and back, finally retreating to Corinth.  In the following month the Union troops finally attacked Corinth and the result was a crippling blow to the Confederates communications and supplies on the western side of their new nation.  Because of this victory, General Grant was able to attack Vicksburg, another battlefield we visit later this trip 🙂

23,746 casualties from the two days of fighting at Shiloh seems insane, and it was, but it was also a clear sign of what the cost to both sides would be if this Civil War ever reached an end.   Now you drive the roads, read the markers of the troop positions, read the descriptions of the sequence of events at each sign in the quiet of a spring day with everything so pretty in the spring colors.   Can you hear the bugles?  Can you hear the roar of cannons or the splintering of trees as bullets send splinters all around you?  Can you hear the sobs of men dying after the battle has moved past them?   Both sides fought valiantly for their principles but the cost to America was tragic.

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