Nathan Bedford Forrest's Birth

Since earlier this week I showed Nathan Bedford Forrest's final resting place it only makes sense to show where he was born. He was born July 13, 1821 in a simple cabin along this road in Chapel Hill, Tennessee. Chapel Hill is near Spring Hill and is a very small town. Its pretty easy to get to. From I-65 take the exit for Henry Horton State Park (highway 99), the road will end at state highway 31, take that north a short distance and you'll be there. The monument is along the highway, you cannot miss it.

There is not much to see here either. Just the obelisk and a marker with some information about Forrest, and part of his farewell address to the troops in 1865.

Mud Island

Mud Island in Memphis is a neat place to go for two reasons. First it has a museum about the Mississippi river valley which includes a pretty good section on the Civil War. The Civil War exhibits are pretty neat too in that there are quite a number of scale models of ships and that the gallery takes you onto the gundeck of an ironclad, and then takes you up to the artillery position firing on the ironclad. Its dark in there so this is the best picture of the gundeck I have and none of the artillery position.


Then you go outside to find a scale model of the Mississippi River. You can walk the entire length of the river. This is a kid friendly area and even adults take off their shoes to cool off a bit.


Here's Cairo:


Its not just a model of the river it also tells you a lot about the river. Some markers are historical in nature. Here is the sign for battle at Belmont. You then find the corresponding marker to see exactly where B and C are.

In this case they are very close to each other. C is on the left.

At the end of the journey is a Gulf of Mexico, and a little farther on is a display of flags for all the nations that have controlled the Memphis area. They were at half mast because I was there during the mourning period for President Reagan.

According to this marker the naval battle for Memphis, the Battle of Plum Run Bend, was off in the distance. It was a Union victory and sealed the fate of the city. If the Confederates had won they would have held onto the city a little longer but ultimately they probably would have had to abandon it.

Memphis National Cemetery

The Memphis National Cemetery is a rather large cemetery. There are currently over 42,000 internments. I'm not sure the number of Civil War burials here but by sight it seemed like a lot. After initially being buried at Elmwood the Sultana victims were moved here. The story told at the cemetery is that the names were written on the coffins as they were removed from Elmwood so that they would be properly identified at the national cemetery. While the coffins were waiting to be reinterned a rain storm came up. Unfortunately the names had been written on the coffins in chalk so all the names washed away with the rain and the Sultana victims all lie in graves marked unknown.

The Minnesota monument, surrounded by soldiers from Minnesota.

The Illinois monument.

It was obviously a time of resodding at the cemetery.

Forrest Park

It is a source of continued controversy in Memphis but it also a nicely done statue. In 1905 the remains of Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife were moved from Elmwood Cemetery to this park. Many people, led by the NAACP, want his remains moved back to Elmwood (I guess the statue would be moved there too) as they detest Forrest's life (slave trader, leader of the Confederates at Fort Pillow and the involvement with the KKK). But for now nothing will happen as the park has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places, an event that happened about a month ago.

If you go be advised that this is not a great area of town. There were a number of bums on one side of the park. I parked across the street at an office supply store, took my pictures and got out before anyone knew I was there. Knowing the hatred blacks have for the park I figured being alone in the park with several bums was not the smartest thing I've done. I only have these four pictures, wish I had more, but maybe I'll go again in a group and will feel more secure.

Jefferson Davis Park

Along the riverfront in Memphis is a little park for Jefferson Davis. Davis lived in Memphis after the war (1869-1878) and there is a nice monument of him in the park.

The park also has this monument to J Harvey Mathes of the 37th Tennessee. James Harvey Mathes later became city editor of the Memphis Daily Argus and then later with the Memphis Public Ledger. He also wrote a book on Forrest that I found on google books. I have not read it but downloaded a copy so that I can read it. I also found online that his grandfather, William Mathes, was one of the first white children born in Tennessee.


Finally there are gun emplacements to protect the city from a river navy. Oh wait, those are modern guns. In one of my guidebooks it said that there were cannons here during the Civil War, the wall was different but the location is right. During the scrap metal drives for World War 2 the cannons were melted down. After the war cannon surplus was again given to the park but the vintage was wrong.

Elmwood Cemetery - Memphis

Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis is in a rundown part of town but it is well worth the visit. It is the oldest cemetery in Memphis and has quite a few Civil War generals buried there. Also all sorts of important people from Memphis' history are here, mayors, governors, senators, etc.

This is the Confederate section for common soldiers. The monument also has memorial plaques for some Confederate generals who are buried here but were from Memphis.

There are 20 Confederate generals buried here, as well as two Union generals. I don't have pictures of all of them, very few actually.

Here is Patton Anderson:

Nathan Bedford Forrest was buried here but was later moved to his own park (which has been quite the source of controversy for many years). The rest of his family though is buried here, including three brothers who were Confederate officers.

The victims of the Sultana were buried here but were later moved to the national cemetery.

Land of Lincoln

Land of Lincoln: Adventures in Abe's America by Andrew Ferguson

In my blog comments for the Springfield visit it was suggested that I read this book, so I hit the library and snagged a copy. I really enjoyed this book. The simplest description is that its a Lincoln version of Confederates in the Attic. That's probably not a totally fair comparison for either book but it fits. The category of books on travels in Civil War territory has existed since the eve of the war and will likely long continue.

Ferguson goes to a number of Lincoln sites, hitting places that Lincoln was at. This means trips to Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Virginia and Pennsylvania and Washington DC. He also makes some side trips to other areas to talk to prominent Lincoln collectors and scholars but he spends a lot of time in Illinois, for obvious reasons.

Ferguson tries to deal with the many sides of Lincoln. I'm not sure anyone can completely explain why Lincoln is this way but it seems that he cannot be pinned down to one particular point. There is something in him that everyone can love and hate. In an early scene in the book an anti-Lincoln man is told by Ferguson that a particular group of Lincoln scholars (who weren't venomously anti-Lincoln) complained that Lincoln was a wimp, and he responded "Jesus, even I don't think he was a wimp." For everyone who thinks Lincoln was a great president there is something about him that they can pick on as a weakness and for everyone who hates Lincoln there is something there that they think was a strength. He can be all things to all people, maybe that's part of being a politician or maybe its because Lincoln generally didn't reveal too much to other people.

I especially enjoyed the section on Springfield because I had just been there and some things were familiar. But I also enjoyed the last section of the book where he takes his family on a trip following Lincoln in reverse from Springfield to Hodgenville. Ferguson meets a lot of interesting characters along the way and sees some great sites. Some of them are great because of the artifacts there; at the Lincoln Homestead you can see the bed his mother used as a child and the household items that his father made by hand. Or for the oddities of the place; the reconstructed log cabin at Lincoln's birth site wouldn't fit the protective building so they cut it to fit, luckily it wasn't really the original cabin just a cabin everyone believed was the original.

I would highly recommend this book. It was a pretty quick read. I don't think I'd buy a copy for my own shelves but that's mostly a space issue. But if I ended up acquiring a cheap or free copy along the way I'd certainly keep it.

Atlanta Capitol Grounds

On one trip to Georgia we found ourselves with some unscheduled time before our flight home. So we went downtown to the capitol. I had heard that there were some monuments on the grounds. In fact its almost a monument garden there are so many monuments.

This is Joseph Brown, with his wife. Brown was governor of Georgia during the Civil War, and quite a thorn in Jefferson Davis' side. His monument also depicts scenes from two of the major battles in Georgia, Kennesaw Mountain and Dug Gap. This is a very well done monument and is in great condition.

There was also this very small marker for General William Wright. Apparently he was quite well liked as this marker was placed just three months after his death.

This is a somewhat strange monument that depicts the 33 Black state legislators who were expelled from the congress in 1868 because of their skin color. I don't remember seeing a date for the monument but I'm guessing from style that its a relatively modern piece.

One of the largest monuments on the grounds is for John B. Gordon. Another native son who became a general, but he also served as a US Senator and Georgia governor after the war. From 1873 to 1897 he was serving in one of those two jobs except when he took 1880-1886 off to work on his own railroad and mining interests. In the background you can also see the beautiful dome of the capitol.

There are also some information markers detailing events of the Atlanta campaign. For some reason though these were behind a metal barricade so that the pictures did not turn out well. I ended up taking these from a variety of angles so that I could later figure out what words were covered in these shots. They should install these somewhere else so that people could actually read them.

I can't find the guidebook right now but I know that this cannon's story is known, its not just a surplus barrel put here to look neat.

Finally, the capitol grounds were used as a campground by the 2nd Massachusetts while they served as Sherman's provost guard.

Shiloh

Today is the most important day of the war. Today the forces of Grant and Buell will end the Confederate attempt to turn the tide of the war. There will be times that the Confederates make gains again, there will be campaigns into Pennsylvania, Maryland and Kentucky. After the Kentucky campaign the forces will settle into an area farther north of Shiloh (Murfreesboro) but never again will the Confederates be doing this well in the Mississippi River Valley. Grant will make some stumbles along the way to capturing Vicksburg (the overland campaign that ends after the raid on Holly Springs being the largest stumble) but he will not have to fight for this ground again.

I am among those who think the war was decided in the western theater. I think that Virginia was a waste of manpower. That the only way the war could have been decided in Virginia was if Lee had captured Washington, and held it. That ultimately the Confederates should have left as few men in Virginia as needed to prevent the fall of Richmond and sent the rest west to try to defeat Grant along the Mississippi River or Buell/Rosecrans in Tennessee.

As a modern war this war was to be decided by who controlled the resources. Long gone is the time of two armies meeting in a field, slugging it out and the winner of the battle wins the war. Its simplistic to say that the west had more of the resources simply because it was bigger than Virginia but this is true. Virginia was more industrialized so it was a better location to turn the raw materials into usable war goods but it did not have the raw materials in the quantities the South needed.

One big resource was transportation, both by rail and river. Rivers could be a hindrance or a help. In a simplistic sense whoever controlled the rivers found them to be a great help. This is pretty obvious. And the greatest of all America rivers was the Mississippi. It the Confederates controlled it they would restrict Union trade to the rail network of the north, plus whatever portions of the Ohio River they controlled. One big benefit for both sides is the ability to transfer troops long distances, if they controlled the length of the river from Cairo to New Orleans. A force in Vicksburg could be easily sent to meet a problem along the river while the rail network from there would take a much more circuitous route. Of course not all flareups would be along the river but when they were this was a great way to quickly deal with the threat. If the Union controls the river they effectively cut Arkansas, Texas and most of Louisiana off from the rest of the Confederacy. This helps strengthen the blockade as well as deprive the Confederates of home grown supplies, such as cattle, from those states. It also allows the Union several entry points to launch more invasions of the South.

To win a long war the Confederacy needed to control their resources as long as possible. The rivers of the West make this very hard to accomplish. The rivers act as routes of invasion while the rivers in Virginia are much more impediments to an invading army. Grant is the first Union general to seize on this and exploit it with his victories at Forts Henry and Donelson. This opens up much of Kentucky and Tennessee. Johnston is forced to fall back from Bowling Green to Nashville and he quickly abandons that too, eventually retreating to Corinth to prepare for a counterattack with as many men as the Confederates can gather in the west. They strip coastal defenses knowing that they must risk big to stem the Union tide.

And on April 6th it nearly succeeds. Johnston's men surprise Grant's army at Pittsburg Landing and come close to pulling off a huge victory. They drive the Union from every position (some more stubbornly than others), they capture about 2000 men near the end of the day and seem on the verge of ultimate victory when Beauregard orders the final attack stopped. Beauregard has taken over command of the army following the death of Johnston, who was mortally wounded while cheering his men as they made a charge on the Peach Orchard.

We can argue whether or not the final attack had a real chance to succeed or not. I believe it did not but I've heard well reasoned arguments that it wasn't a foregone conclusion that it would fail. But in any respect the attack is not made, Grant's men finally get to rest after a hellish day of combat and Buell's army begins to arrive from a long march from Nashville. On April 7th the Union forces will have plenty of fresh men while the Confederates will have none. The fighting on April 7th won't be without drama but in hindsight the Confederates could only fight for a stalemate. They do pretty well but at the end of the day they know they must retreat to Corinth, that their attempt has failed.

Grant and Buell will not press their advantage on the 8th. And Halleck will take about 4 weeks to cover the 20 miles to Corinth, assuring the Confederates of a chance to escape that monstrous army group. The war would continue for three more years but on April 7th the Confederates lost their last opportunity to turn the tide.

Following in Lincoln's Footsteps

Following in Lincoln's Footsteps by Ralph Gary

After blogging about my visit to Springfield Chris suggested that I check out "Land of Lincoln: Adventures in Abe's America" by Andrew Ferguson. When I reserved that one from the library I also reserved Following in Lincoln's Footsteps. I'm glad I did.

Following in Lincoln's Footsteps really does follow Lincoln. If he was there, or even rumored to have been there, Gary has a note about it. The section on Springfield is very detailed and whenever I get back there I will use this book extensively. In fact I think I will have to buy this book (I found a used copy on amazon that will run $4 with shipping).

As an example of a rumored visit is the entry for Sheboygan, Wisconsin. "It is possible Lincoln visited sometime between 1835 and 1840 with the view of opening a law office, although this is not generally accepted." I had never heard about this which seems a little odd because I have spent a fair amount of time in Sheboygan as I have quite a bit of family back there. Its interesting to think what might have happened if he had really moved there. If he stayed in Sheboygan he probably would not have been in position to run for President. If he had later moved to Madison or Milwaukee maybe he would have ended up running for President. Its interesting to think how history might have been different based on the variable of where Lincoln decides to practice law in the 1840s.

Marching with the First Nebraska

Marching with the First Nebraska: A Civil War Diary - August Scherneckau
Edited by James E. Potter and Edith Robbins. Translated by Edith Robbins.
Illustrated, index, 335 pp., 2007. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma 73069. Cloth $34.95, plus shipping.

Marching with the First Nebraska combines Scherneckau’s diary and letters into an interesting story covering their less than dramatic service in the trans-Mississippi theater. Before Scherneckau enlisted in the regiment it had served at Fort Donelson and Shiloh. In September 1862 Scherneckau enlisted in the regiment which was then serving in Missouri.

The first action Scherneckau saw was in General John Davidson’s campaign in December 1862-February 1863 in northern Arkansas. This campaign was mostly about gathering forage than fighting Confederates. But even this Scherneckau makes interesting as he explains foraging in such a way that the reader gets a better appreciation for all the work involved. Some days Scherneckau spends picking corn from fields, loading wagons and other days Scherneckau spends it shucking the corn that the foragers brought in the day before.

After that excursion Scherneckau’s company is sent to St Louis to do guard duty, in the sense of a military police. This sounds like very tedious work but when he was not doing guard duty he seems to have quite a bit of free time, much more than most soldiers in the field experienced. Scherneckau went for walks around St Louis visiting camps, hospitals, museums, theaters and the naval yards to see ironclads being built for river warfare.

He also was part of the force that built Fort Davidson near Pilot Knob that would play such a pivotal role in the battle of September 27, 1864, Scherneckau’s regiment had moved back to St Louis by then. Soon after this the regiment was converted to cavalry. For some strange reason the regiment was not issued carbines, only sabers and revolvers to go along with their infantry rifles. Scherneckau even mentions at one point the regiment went through cavalry inspection and then did infantry inspection. Scherneckau rightly complains about having to handle so many weapons and do the extra inspections.

The last campaign discussed in Scherneckau’s diary would be done as cavalry as the regiment moved down to Little Rock, then garrisoned Batesville and Jacksonport. It was at Batesville that Scherneckau was wounded, but it did not occur in battle. He was on his way to the picket post, got lost, approached the sentry from the wrong direction and was fired upon. In fact he had not even fired his rifle at an enemy until the end of January 1864, roughly 16 months into his service.

While he is recovering from this wound his regiment received their veteran furlough and he returned to Grand Island. These men did not serve their full furloughs as the Indian War of 1864 kicks off and the regiment is called back into service to defend their state from the Indians. The work of protecting the wagon routes seemed to be never ending and the regiment ends up staying on active duty long past the end of the war, Scherneckau musters out in October 1865 but his comrades stay under arms until June 1866.

Scherneckau’s diary is full of other interesting tidbits. Scherneckau remarks on all he sees around him. He writes about the countryside and the cities he sees. He writes about the weather, about his comrades, politics and all sorts of things. I found a few things especially interesting, one is that Scherneckau says the first time he used his bayonet was to kill a pig.

Scherneckau’s opinions are also quite interesting. At one point in responding to a rumor that the regiment will be sent to the Kansas-Missouri border to enforce law and order, which would include stopping the attacks by the Kansans as well as the Missourians, Scherneckau says “the copperhead governor will find out that they have chosen the wrong men for this, since surely we will make common cause with the Kansas boys. We would help eradicate the border tramps, alias bushwhackers, with fire and sword.”

While Scherneckau’s diary is not filled with tales of battle it is still an interesting read because Scherneckau fills his pages with plenty of details of soldier life in the Trans Mississippi, especially one who spent lots of time doing guard duty. Scherneckau also was a keen observer of the world around him.

I was a little disappointed that Scherneckau enlisted too late to have been at Fort Donelson or Shiloh since I greatly enjoy researching Shiloh. But I did enjoy Scherneckau's diary because it is not something we normally come across in Civil War literature.


This review first appeared in Civil War News. It was on the first page of the review section. Not sure if that's by pure luck or because it was "front page worthy" After reading through and finding mistakes I think it was because it fit the space nicely.

Congratulations Josh McDaniels

Congratulations Josh McDaniels, you have pulled off one amazing April Fool's joke.

There is no other way to explain how he took over a team with a top notch offense, a lousy defense and a subpar special teams and reduced it to this. First he signed a bunch of older defensive players, then a bunch of mediocre running backs and a long snapper. Then he said he's going to get rid of the zone blocking running game that the Broncos have used to such effectiveness over the past 15 years, continuing producing one of the top running games in the league. There is a reason people copy what the Broncos did with that scheme. Injuries forced the Broncos to use 7 different running backs last year and the total rushing yards was still 12th in the league (the Patriots were 6th but they ran it 126 more times, if the Broncos ran the ball as much as the Patriots did the Broncos would have been the 2nd ranked attack and trailed the league leader by 55 yards as the Broncos had the 2nd best yards per carry average).

Then there is this whole Jay Cutler mess that last night seems to have taken its last turn. Cutler is most likely on his way out of town. So now we'll have a mediocre offense to go with the still lousy defense and special teams. Last year we pinned our hopes on winning 35-30. When Cutler, and the 7 different running backs, were not enough to put up 35 points we got creamed. Right now our quarterback will be Chris Simms. He hasn't played since a spleen injury in 2006. That's 45 missed games. In the 3 games he did play in 2006 he had 1 touchdown and 7 interceptions with a 54% completion rate. Cutler over the course of over 1200 attempts has a 62.5% completion rate. Simms is a huge downgrade.

With a healthy rushing attack and an improved defense it was conceivable that we could compete for a wild card, or maybe get some luck and take the division away from the Chargers. Now that doesn't seem possible at all. The 2009 schedule was going to be tough anyway (Cleveland, Pittsburgh, New England, Dallas, N.Y. Giants, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Philadelphia, and Washington) and now we'll have a mediocre team across the board.

Realistically I think we can beat Cincinnati and, nope that's it. We had our hands full against Cleveland last year and now our offense will be worse. In the division we will probably beat the Raiders twice and perhaps beat the Chiefs once. So we'll be staring at 3-13. With Cutler it would still be a tough schedule but I could see us finishing 7-9 or 8-8. That might not be good enough for a wild card, its usually not but you never know.

Hopefully later today Josh McDaniels will have a press conference where he says this was all a big joke. That Cutler and he made up a week ago but they thought this would be funny. If this truly is reality then its going to be a long year. The countdown to the draft will start around week 3 or 4. Here's hoping we don't tie Detroit's mark from last year, I wouldn't rule it out.