Random Thoughts

The summer is slipping past and battlefield hiking in the cooler weather of fall beckons. My kids tramped across Shiloh, Franklin, Murfreesboro, and Ft. Clinch with my parents while on their summer vacation. I wish I could have been there with them, especially for the always haunting visit to Shiloh. The ghosts of Shiloh still echo the commands and cries from those bloody two days in 1862. The kids enjoyed the visit to Shiloh, tracked down a couple of our ancestors' regiments to include the 52d Tennessee, 4th Tennessee, and 9th Tennessee, gazed at the Bloody Pond, pondered the attacks on the Hornet's Nest, and asked the inevitable what ifs about Albert Sidney Johnston. This well preserved and marked battlefield is the example for all. It is easy to track the ebb and flow of the battle. We can walk in the steps of a regiment or a brigade as it fought across the West Tennessee fields and woodlots. We can see and understand how the terrain, troop dispositions, and command decisions affected the battle's outcome. If you choose one Civil War Battlefield to visit in your lifetime, make it Shiloh.