The Irony of Shiloh

The distance was a bit long for a day trip, but the promise of a picnic and visiting a Tennessee battlefield site were enough to push us on the road to Shiloh.

Few battlefields can boast a more ironic name than Shiloh, named for a Methodist meeting house destroyed in the fighting. With its mass graves and unending rows of white markets, “place of peace” could not seem less fitting.

It might be tranquil now. In 1862, one of the Civil War’s bloodiest encounters left deep marks on the Tennessee River countryside. Of the 3,500 Union soldiers interred at the cemetery, 2,300 remain unidentified. Only two Confederates are buried in the cemetery; burial trenches house the remains of the Confederate dead. Five trenches have markers. Six to seven more mass graves go unaccounted.

Gen. Grant’s gunboats had occupied Pittsburgh Landing on the Tennessee, which was now plied by a handful of small boats. The river would have run wild, long before the series of TVA-built reservoirs calmed the waters. Here the water drifted toward the Ohio somewhat naturally.

 Among Civil War sites we visited, Shiloh has a definite solemnity. Both sides suffered devastating losses. With its striking figures that include Defeated Victory, The Confederate Memorial is one of the more striking pieces honoring Civil War dead. The soldiers and mythic figures topping the stone wall wear sad expressions that befit such a bloody conflict.

The fields and forests were covered in plagues detailing troop movements, and the large monuments for battalions from individual states. Rows of cannons illustrate where the artillery lines formed. Iowa monuments separate sections of rail fence near Hornet’s Nest, a dense thicket where thousands of Union troops dug in against an overwhelming Confederate force while Grant regrouped at his gunboats and prepared for a second assault. Command of the riverbanks and the delaying tactics at the Hornet’s Nest would ultimately give Grant the advantage.

Tennessee River from Indian village bluffs

The monuments are artistic but the battle’s ugliness weighs heavily. We ended up skipping Bloody Pond, which infamously turned red from the fighting due to soldiers trying to clean their wounds.

Fortunately, Shiloh isn’t strictly a battlefield. At a set of high river bluffs sits the remains of an Indian city that thrived between 1100 and 1300 C.E. A cluster of Indian mounds indicated the old city. The combination of bluffs and a bend in the river made it easily defensible. The largest mound stands on the bluff’s edge, high above the Tennessee River, and once housed a temple, a government building or a chief’s home. Steep ravines on either side separate the bluff, improving security for the ancient town.

Our picnic took place away from the battlefield, at a National Park Service-owned property with benches along a wooded ravine. Shiloh’s thickets sheltered a sizable population of deer, including one especially curious doe who watched us walk to and from the largest Indian mound.

Shiloh church reconstruction

On our way there, we rattled off another string Tennessee towns we would not typically encounter - Lexington, Adamsville (home to Sheriff Buford Pusser of Walking Tall fame), Savannah, Waynesboro.

A small cemetery next to the Shiloh Methodist Church included the grave of Ray Blanton, easily the most corrupt Tennessee governor in recent history. The gravestone proclaimed Blanton a “friend of the people.” Not everyone would agree.

Group shot at Metal Ford of Buffalo River (w/ Buddy Bison)

To avoid the deadly one-two punch of country roads and truck-clogged interstate, we jogged east to pick up the Natchez Trace. I missed the Trace; two years have passed since we drove the entire span from Nashville to Natchez. We had not returned since. Most Nashvillians don’t tread this quiet parkway, and it is better for their absence.

We stopped at two favorite destinations, the Metal Ford of the Buffalo River and Baker Bluff, which overlooks a farm on the Duck River that could be 19th century vintage. From a lone tom to a cadre of young turkeys nearing maturity, dozens grazed on the Trace’s grasslands in the summer evening.

Sun splintered through the swaying trees near its northern terminus, the heat of a Tennessee summer slowly dissipating. The Shiloh-Trace paired an ugly Civil War clash with the road that wriggling along Tennessee’s long history.