Tennessee American Civil War Tour : Day 4 Shiloh

I apologise now for my lack of posting, this is mainly due to the frustratingly appalling Wi-fi in my hotel in Savannah and I just had to give up for a couple of days. I am now in Chattanooga where it appears to work so I can catch up. So I had set aside a whole day to visit Shiloh, those of you that know the battle will know it is quite large, and the battlefield is pretty much preserved in its entirety it is also a complex battle when you are on the ground as some areas saw fighting on both days and in fact changed sides more than once. The National Park has done a tremendous job in my view of capturing this complexity for those who are interested whilst keeping the overall ‘highlight’ tour manageable. Again I won’t attempt to go through the whole battle just share some of my snaps and highlights.

The visitors centre has a small but interesting set of artefacts the quality is high as to be expected

There are twenty stops on the driving tour but I wanted to walk as much of the battlefield as I could, I think if you drive and just did the twenty official stops it would take 2 hours or so. First up I walked down to Pittsburg landing seems steeper than I had expected but the bank has been reinforced at some point

There are a LOT of monuments so I tended to ignore these

This line represents the end of day one final battle line for the Union army it was at this location that grant has set up hos heavy guns as a last defence. It is a noticeable ridge dropping away to the left

Duncan’s Field stubborn resistance here from Union Forces throughout the morning and early afternoon of day one, the fence marks the line of what became known as the sunken road ( not really sunken in my view) which stretches across the central part of the Union battle line.

Ruffles Battery this line marked the location where the rebels amassed 50 plus cannon to crack the hornets nest

A view across Duncan’s Field from the battery towards the Hornets nest

This is where things get complex, directly behind me a Union battery, over run late morning on day one the battery beyond that marks the location of the Rebel battery which then pushed forward in the afternoon

The information boards are in my view outstanding and some of the best I have seen

Water Oaks Pond, the area was overrun very quickly on day one but this saw some of the hardest fighting on day two changing hands at least twice

A reconstruction of Shiloh church

I took this as it shows quite well the difficult nature of the ground to the south of Shiloh Church, this is one of the streams the confederates had to advance across on day one

Freely field where the action kicked off, they have managed to keep things quite historical. The confederates advanced form the tree line in the distance directly towards where I am standing

Again in the centre of the battlefield on the edge of the Daniel Davis Wheatfield, but looking west,  that is the Hamburg Purdy road to the right, that have   Given Buell’s Forces a different colour (yellow) this battery has advanced across the Wheatfield late morning of day two and is flanking the Rebels in the  centre where they eventually give way and retreat, something I hadn’t appreciated until my visit was how much fighting took place on day two and the number of successful counterattack’s by the rebels

Again the Davis Wheatfield day one again with the Rebel right flank now bogged down

The location where General Johnston died

An authentic building but moved to this location, there were several on the battlefield at the time, in the distance the Peach Orchard, they have planted new peach trees but they are too spindly at the moment

The hornets nest, generally considered now to be less important than the original history, even so around 1200 or so Union troops were eventually surrounded here and captured. Interestingly it is not much of a feature in terms of terrain ?

There was of course lots more to see but I didn’t document every spot, when I was driving out I did a final tour in the car and as the park got quieter there were significant numbers of deer coming out of the woods.

On my way back to Savannah I had to take this shot, for those that know their history Crump’s 

Landing is just up from Pittsburg landing and was where the Union reinforcements dallied on day one. No idea is we are Related to the original Crump but I guess there is a chance.

All in all a very enjoyable day, the weather was great rather like a splendid English summer day. The battlefield is well preserved and well laid out, I learnt a lot on the day, it would no doubt much more detailed study but I am marching on to Corinth 😀