150th Civil War anniversary remembered at Shiloh site
A few months from now Captain Lee Millar will polish his saber and spin the cylinder on his Starr pistol. He will wiggle into an old military uniform that’s been hanging at the back of his closet.
The Captain will adjust the lapels of his gray jacket and don the accoutrements of war. His destination is some two hours drive east of his Memphis home. There, in the Tennessee hinterlands near weathered tombstones, Millar and thousands of brethren from re-enactment groups such as the 51st Tennessee Infantry intend to occupy Shiloh.
This act of willful defiance will not go unanswered or unnoticed. Nor do they want it to.
"It will be educational and a lot of fun,” Millar said.
Fun? Certainly not the word his ancestors at the Battle of Shiloh would have said four score and 70 years ago.
On the lips of those sullen-faced soldiers were terms such as “duty,” “brutal,” “slaughter” and, yes, “scared.” Two days of fighting at the Battle of Shiloh culminated in some 24,000 casualties—more than all previous American wars combined.
Park service events
Millar and his comrades are participating in the 150th anniversary of the Civil War hosted by the National Park Service. Sponsored by the Battle of Shiloh Association and Blue-GRay Alliance of Re-enactors, the Shiloh ceremonies are part of a series of commemorative events during the next four years.
The Battle of Shiloh is one of two signature events in 2012. The other is the Battle of Antietam, where President Abraham Lincoln delivered his Emancipation Proclamation.
“One fourth of Civil War soldiers never made it back home,” said Woody Harrell, superintendent of Shiloh National Military Park. “They wanted politicians to resolve issues peacefully.”
Talk of a brokered solution died in the blood-soaked ponds and swollen spring streams of Shiloh. Too many brothers and fathers and husbands were among the missing, wounded or dead. Neither side could be consoled by words alone.
Now it was personal. Now it was war, plain and simple.
Explaining Shiloh
“Historians have said that there are two Americas,” Harrell said. “There’s the one that existed before the Civil War and the one after.
“Everything in America today is still impacted by the Civil War—racial freedom, strong central government, establishing a standing army, conscription, state’s rights, federal taxes. Shiloh was the turning point.”
In 1862, you could stand on the porch of W. Manse George’s cabin and see the russet-mantled banks of the Tennessee River. The Manse family fled as General Ulysses Grant disembarked his troops downstream at Pittsburgh Landing.
Grant and other Union generals thought the real battle would take place at the railroad hub in Corinth, Miss., a two-day march from Shiloh. The Union army made camp in a rain-soaked clearing on Manse’s small farm.
Confederate troops amassed just three miles away. Concealed by heavy woodlands and thick underbrush, General Albert Johnston penciled out plans for a surprise attack on the Sabbath day, April 6, 1862.
The attack was crucial to saving Corinth. General Johnston wanted to decimate Grant’s Army of the Tennessee before it merged with other Union forces and marched on the rail yards.
“You can read about it in a book or see it on television,” Harrell said. “But, really, it’s better to go visit the site and walk the grounds to understand what happened.”
Shiloh itself was a church, a bend in the road, a one-room worship hall named after the Hebrew word for “peaceful.” Confederate soldiers gathered south of there for a pre-dawn assault. They overran Union positions and helped themselves to breakfast still sizzling on Union campfires.
“If a soldier at Shiloh looked at his comrades to his left and then to his right,” Harrell continued, “there was a good chance that one of them was not going to survive this battle.”
Shiloh preserved
The Shiloh battlefield encompasses some 4000 acres and was established in 1894. Veterans from the battle returned to identify troop movements, artillery positioning and firefights.
“We are fortunate to have one of the best preserved battlefields from the Civil War,” Harrell said. “It’s easy to picture what happened here.”
Grant’s troops were beaten back to the river’s edge but held. A farmhouse on the east side of the Tennessee River he had been using as a command center was turned into a field hospital. Grant went outside in a downpour, sat against an oak tree and smoked a cigar.
“Grant was stubborn,” Harrell said.
During the night Union General Don Buell arrived with 20,000 reinforcements. The counterattack Monday regained all the forfeited ground. Fighting petered out at dusk Monday evening. The following days Union soldiers cleared the battlefield and buried their comrades.
“If your great grandfather fought here we could give you a map and show you where he was positioned,” Harrell said.
Millar and members of the 51st Tennessee Infantry of re-enactors are studying Union and Confederate troop movements. Along with several thousand other participants, they will re-fight the Battle of Shiloh. They use muskets with gunpowder.
“There’s no live rounds or we’d run out of re-enactors pretty fast,” Millar said. “ We get together beforehand and decide who’s going to get killed in battle or who survives to fight the next day.”
Unlike their ancestors, re-enactors are always ready to switch sides depending on how many volunteers show up. They call this “galvanizing.”
“A lot of us own Union and Confederate uniforms,” Millar said. “Our goal is to educate people so they understand what Civil War soldiers went through.”
The Manse family cabin survived the 36-hour hellfire. The Shiloh church did not.
Civil War anniversary sites
The Sesquicentennial 150th Anniversary reenactment of the Battle of Shiloh will take place March 31 - April 1, 2012, adjacent to Shiloh National Military Park in McNairy County, Tenn.
For more information visit the following sites:
- Get more information about Battle of Shiloh re-nactment events at: http://shiloh150.org/
- Want to learn more about the Civil War ? Go to the National Park Service website dedicated to the 150th anniversary at http://www.nps.gov/cwindepth/
- Follow the sequence of Civil War history during the next four years at http://www.nps.gov/civilwar150/
- To learn more about the Shiloh National Military Park go to http://www.nps.gov/shil/index.htm
- Looking for 150th anniversary commemorative gifts for the Civil War enthusiast I your family? The National Park Service sponsors an on-line store at: http://civilwar.eparks.com/store/
- Learn more about re-enactment events during the next year by going to the American Civil War Blue-Gray Alliance at http://www.150thcivilwarevents.com/
- Young students can investigate unique Civil War stories at History for Kids site: http://www.tnhistoryforkids.org/places/shiloh
Article by Jay Alling, editor of Sensible Driver. Write to jay@sensibledriver.com.