Earlier this year when we were making a trip to Memphis and Arkansas, we stayed one night nearby Shiloh National Military Park in Tennessee. I really didn’t know anything about it other than that one of my relatives on my grandfather’s side (Major General Leonidas Polk — he was also an Episcopal Bishop — and was, before the war, one of the founders of the University of the South) led the First Corps, Army of Mississippi here.
The battle was from April 6-7, 1862 and was, at the time, the bloodiest battle in our country’s history.
There were 13,047 Union casualties and losses and 10,699 for the CSA.
The original Shiloh church didn’t survive the battle, but was reconstructed in 2006, sponsored by the Sons:
One of the other really interesting parts of the park were the Indian mounds:
The park calls these mounds the ‘largest surviving prehistoric site in the Tennessee River Valley and one of the least disturbed areas of earthen mounds in the eastern United States. The town here at the mounds existed about 800 years ago.
This is the view of the Tennessee River from the top of the tallest one:
