| Submitted by: Mark R. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 15 February 2005 |
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General Grant and the Army of the Tennessee had invaded Tennessee from St. Louis. General P. G. T. Beauregard had been arguing to do what it took to push them back north rather than just engaging them. But what added strength to his argument was the knowledge that General Don Carlos Buell was driving south from Ohio to reinforce Grant.
General Albert Sidney Johnston would lead the attack on Grant with Beauregard as his second in command. Grant was playing a purely offensive game. He was preparing for attack and seizure, not defense. Johnston and Beauregard intended to attack on Friday, April 4, 1862, but could not get the attack together until Sunday morning. Beauregard was sure that by now the element of surprise was completely gone. William Sherman had gotten reports of Confederates in the area but ignored them.
General Benjamin Prentiss thought the Southerners were near and, though his men were untested, he sent out patrols on reconnaissance to see if they could find Southern soldiers around. Prentiss's men ran into thousands of yelling Rebel troops attacking. They stood and fought back waking the whole division. They joined the fight, fighting and retreating, fighting and retreating. Using a sunken road as a trench they stayed their ground and fought back. The time that Sherman lost by discounting the presence of the enemy was at least partially won back by Prentiss and his men.
The Confederates kept hitting the sunken road and being repelled in extremely bloody fighting. They called it the Hornet's Nest. Finally the South tried artillery. Sixty-two cannons were brought in to pound the Hornet's Nest for an hour, the largest concentration of artillery an American battlefield had ever seen. That weakened the line enough to be captured, but by now Grant had organized his lines.
Johnston got what should have been a minor leg injury. By chance, it severed a major artery and he bled to death in a few minutes. The fighting was chaotic the rest of the day. But Grant was able to get a cannon to bear on Confederate positions. The fighting was bloody and demoralizing.
At nightfall Beauregard was fairly sure it would take only a little mopping up in the morning. He did not count on the fact that between the cannon fire and the rain his men got none of the badly needed rest they expected. Many of Grant's men, equally demoralized deserted they positions and went down to the river, not sure where to go next. Then activity on the other side of the river attracted their attention. Buell's entire army from Ohio arrived one day too late to prevent slaughter, but a day too early to allow Beauregard his victory. The next morning it was the Union who staged the surprise attack. They advanced on the Confederate lines who fought back fiercely stopping the advance, but they could not break the line.
Toward afternoon Beauregard was convinced his men were nearing collapse. He retreated to Corinth. Grant sent Sherman in pursuit. Sherman found heavy resistance was still possible from Nathan Bedford Forrest and his men and did not pursue his attack.
The battle was over, but tens of thousands of dead and wounded remained. There were 20,000 killed or wounded. After a day or so Beauregard sent an emissary to Grant under a white flag requesting a truce long enough for the Confederates to collect and bury their dead. Grant sent back mail saying that he would comply, but the action was no longer necessary. He had his own men collect and bury the Confederate dead and that in the future he would always be happy to cooperate in any humanitarian action not inconsistent with his responsibilities. I assume someone eventually told Prentiss's men that their actions and courage won the battle of Shiloh for the Union.
Results of the battle:
US Grant's Army of the Tennessee:
1503 killed, 6601 wounded, 2830 missing
Don Carlos Buell's Army of the Ohio:
241 killed, 1807 wounded, 55 missing
Albert Sidney Johnston's Army of the Mississippi:
1728 killed, 8012 wounded, 959 missing
About even deaths, half Northern, half Southern.
Anyway, that's Shiloh. Shiloh is a Hebrew word for 'Peace.' The battle was named for Shiloh Church near the battlefield. One of the first field hospitals was set up at Shiloh because there was no other way to take care of all the wounded. This first time, they treated the wounded regardless of for which side they fought.
Historic note of interest: Grant was a fairly good tactician, but his qualities did not extend a long way beyond that. At one point (in 1864?) General Grant ordered all Jews to leave Tennessee. After some uproar an embarrassed Abraham Lincoln annulled the order. True story.
The Park Service has a twenty-five-minute film explaining the battle and then the visitor is set loose to drive around the battlefield and read signs and listen to some recorded messages. Most interesting places are the sunken road and pond where soldiers of either persuasion dragged themselves for a drink, many dying, bleeding into the water until the waters looked like blood. There also was a pretty good bookstore. (Uh, not originally, but now there is.)
Today the battlefield was occupied with butterflies. One landed on me and refused to leave me for about ten minutes, even getting a ride in a car for his efforts.
We drove to Memphis after that. We see whole fields engulfed in kudzu. Tall trees are completely enshrouded looking like something out of The Blob. The vine seems to attach to just about anything.
It is another longish drive and we stop for Mexican food along the way. I have Chile Rellenos.
Memphis has a lot of the same feel as New Orleans. This is the place that black music transformed and mutated into rock and roll, and they want everybody to know it. You don't see nearly as many Jesus references here as you see in other parts of the South. At least in Memphis, a lot of that religious zeal is taken up with their own home-grown Messiah, one Elvis Presley. You just have to drive down the main drag, Elvis Presley Blvd., past the Graceland Mansion to see the crowds outside and see how popular the King still is today. Our hotel has pictures of Elvis in the lobby. Wherever you look you are reminded that out of Memphis came the Great Presley. Back when the Beatles were so popular it was a point of trivia that Presley was still a bigger seller than the Beatles. The Beatles had 38 gold albums; Elvis had 61. And now that neither is producing any more, the Beatles seem to have dropped into relative obscurity. They seem a fixture of the past. The Elvis Presley cult, on the other hand, is stronger than ever. It really has taken on religious overtones. Elvis has died, but he is still with us. And there are those who think he has returned from Death and walks among us now. There actually is a book in the same series as DOS for Dummies, and Windows for Dummies. The book is called Elvis for Dummies. When I first saw it my reaction was 'that was my impression, too.' There have been serious efforts to have Elvis canonized as a Saint. Church representatives have given it little credence, I hope. But in large part their efforts have been because Elvis comes so close to actually fitting all the criteria for sainthood that he hurts the credibility of the whole canonization process. And there probably are people who are just waiting for the go-ahead to start praying to Elvis Presley. They just need to have confirmed that a dead rock and roll singer can carry their prayers to heaven.
We stayed at the Super 8, a motel in a distant part of Memphis. They perfumed the room. I am not sure why. It has a fridge and microwave, but it is not as well maintained as some of the places we stopped.
Once we were settled in the room we headed out to walk Beale Street. This is the local equivalent of Bourbon Street. This is where the Blues were invented. Every building has a celebrated history.
W. C. Handy, inventor of the blues, wrote in a song about the street:
The Seven Wonders of the world I have seen
and many are the places I have been;
Take my advice, folks, and see Beale Street first.
You will see pretty little browns dressed in beautiful gowns.
You will see tailor-mades and hand-me-downs;
You will see Honest men and pick-pockets skilled,
You will find that business never closes
until somebody gets killed.
You will see hog-nosed restaurants and chitterling cafes
and jugs that tell of bygone days.
You will see golden balls enough to pave the New Jerusalem.
I would rather be there than any place I know.
It is going to take a sergeant just to make me go-
I am going down the river maybe by and by, 'cause the river is wet and Beale's gone dry.
According to the city's visitors' guide 'Memphis' African-American roots are an integral part of the city's overall culture. A way station on the Underground Railroad, the city offered hope to runaway slaves...' Excuse me? I have heard of putting a good face on things but isn't this a little much? Now where did I get the impression that people from Memphis were on the side of slavery and the Underground Railroad had to be just as secret here as anywhere? I didn't think that Tennessee was any friend of the slaves. Anyway, Beale Street has been dubbed 'Home of the Blues.' Its Walk of Fame is one legendary building after another. This is the first I had hear of most of them, but I think in the right circles they are famous. In any case, one building after another is why the great blues was blown or where the blues legends bought their underwear. It was here that W. C. Handy wrote the first blues song in 1909.
We took the Walking Tour available from http://memphisguide.com/Beale which has a fairly detailed building-by-building account. The police station has a museum of police paraphernalia including a scale that was once used to weigh Machine Gun Kelly. The tour includes all the hot clubs in the six-or-so-block stretch.
At one end of town is an arena shaped like a 321-foot pyramid. There is a statue of Rameses II standing out front. When I was in Egypt, I don't remember seeing a statue of Elvis at Memphis, but it would not surprise me.
The other patron saint of Memphis is Danny Thomas who made as his cause the St. Jude Medical Center in the center of the downtown area. It has a building with an Islamic dome, intended to look like the Dome of the Rock. It was a tribute to Thomas's Lebanese origins, though the Dome is in Jerusalem.
We took the Elvis Presley Blvd. back toward the room, looking for a place to have dinner. We passed by Graceland and, of course, there was a crowd in front. We circled around. You can only stand outside the wall and catch a small glimpse of the mansion a thousand feet or so away. The stone wall is solid graffiti. Every square inch is covered. Mostly is where the Faithful have Magic-Markered on their devotions to 'The King.' And of course there were lots of people getting their pictures taken near the gates. Across the street they have his Personal Jet and stores where you can buy Elvis memorabilia and perhaps a relic or two.
We had a tough time finding a place to eat that did not look like a chain. Finally we ended up at a place called Ruby's near our motel. I think it must have been new and they did not have their procedures down. I ordered a fried catfish sandwich, Evelyn got Buffalo Wings. It took them something like thirty-five or forty minutes to prepare. The food would get a B or a B+. Not great, but decent. Good fries and more than we could finish. The guy was apologetic about the slow service. Then he accidentally gave me ten cents too much in my change and seemed a little surprised that I didn't keep it. I price my integrity a lot higher than ten cents.
Log writing in the room and I went to sleep putting the TV on timer and watching a piece on Byzantium. That is an upcoming vacation, I think. |
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