Civil War–Franklin

We visited another Civil War battle site on Monday—The Battle of Franklin.  It was a bloody fight in a town south of Nashville.  Confederate General Hood hoped to drive Union troops out of Tennessee by defeating them in Franklin and Nashville.  He didn’t succeed and the two sides suffered 10,000 casualties, dead and wounded. 

We visited two historic houses in Franklin, the Carter House and the Lotz House.  We had toured the Carter House in 2001, but the site had undergone major improvements since then.  The house was built in 1830 by Fountain Branch Carter.  In 1862 Federal Troops occupied the town of Franklin.  A major battle occurred on November 30, 1864, forcing Carter’s family to seek cover in the basement of the house.  The neighboring Lotz family joined the Carters as the battled raged on the land surrounding the house.  One of Carter’s sons, Captain Theodric “Tod” Carter, was mortally injured while fighting for the South that day and was brought to the family home to be cared for till he died. He hadn’t been home for three years before the battle.  The first time he was reunited with his family occurred as he was carried into the house and later died.

During our tour, we could still see bullet holes in the wall of two buildings.

On the porch of the Carter House, you can see damage from a canon ball.

We weren’t allowed to take photographs inside the house.  Here is our tour guide, Bobby, as we started toward the house.

Here is a look at the back porch, where we entered the  house.

And a view of the front of the house.

This is the smoke house on the property.

The kitchen was located in a separate building and we could take pictures there.

We also toured the Lotz House located across the intersection from the Carter House.   Johann Albert Lotz was a master carpenter and piano builder who came to the US from Germany.  He built the home to show his customers the work he could do for them. It is a shame we couldn’t take photos there, because the interior is beautiful.  He built it himself in 1858, and restored it after the war.  It was used as a hospital by the Union army.  At first, they were told it would be stripped, with the wood used to build breastworks. Although it was damaged, being turned into a hospital saved it from much worse destruction.

The beautiful curved stairway in the home was an example of his work.  The newel post on the stair bannister was made from the leg of one of his pianos.  It was turned upside down.  In the top, there was a medallion that signified the home was paid for.  The deed was stored in a small compartment in the base of the post. 

The Lotz family was very talented.  The daughter was a painter, the son an inventor. 

This is the front of the house.  The red flag indicates that the building was a hospital.

Civil War -- Shiloh

One of the major battles of the American Civil War was fought April 6 and 7, 1862, along the Tennessee River and around the Shiloh Methodist Church. Today we visited the Shiloh National Military Park. More than 23,000 casualties were suffered by both sides, with 3,482 dead. The battle was the single largest one fought on US soil up to that time and signaled the change in fortunes for the Confederate Army. It was the first large Union victory. When we visit a national park, we almost always watch their introductory video first.  The Shiloh movie, Shiloh, Fiery Trial is 45 minutes and worth it. It provides a wonderful overview of the battle and the people involved. If you go to the park, don't miss it.

There is no way I can explain the battle to you. You can learn more about it online. But if you have never visited a Civil War battlefield park, I can give you a feel for what there is to see.

The National Cemetery, where most of the Union dead were buried, is right behind the Visitor Center.



If you click on the photo below, you can see that some graves are marked with the soldier's name but many have only a square stone with a number. Those bodies were unidentified.



Every Civil War battlefield we have visited is dotted with numerous monuments, many funded and placed by friends and veterans' groups from the states that sent soldiers to fight. Other monuments, like the ones below, are for field officers and their commands. This one names Brig. Gen. W. H. L Wallace, commander of the 2nd Division of the (Union) Army of the Tennessee.



This one honors Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston, commander of the (Confederate) Army of the Mississippi. He was killed during the battle. To this day, he is the only American general killed in battle.



Numerous monuments commemorate the troops from various states that fought and died. Below are ones from Arkansas and Illinois.





Confederate soldiers killed during the battle were not buried in the National Cemetery. After the battle ended, they were buried by Union soliders in several mass graves, like this one.



The United Daughters of the Confederacy raised the funds for this beautiful monument honoring all the confederate soldiers who died in the battle.



The wooden Shiloh Methodist Church was at the center of the battle, used to house the wounded and as Confederate headquarters for a time. This building is a carefully reconstructed reproduction of the original church, using local 150-year-old hand-sawed timbers.



The cemetery at the church, which was established in 1851, is still in use today. It feels strange to see the battlefield signs describing troop placement located among the gravestones.





There must be many surviving canons from the Civil War period. They are placed at numerous location on the battlefield to indicate where artillery batteries were located.



The battlefield was also a good place to listen to birds. If I could identify birds by their songs, I could tell you what we heard. We did see a large American Bald Eagle nest. One eagle was perched nearby and the other parent is feeding the young in the nest. I was told that bird had just flown in with a catfish.



We are parked at the Parkers Crossroads RV Park, about 50 miles from Shiloh. Almost no part of Tennesse was spared from fighting during the Civil War and the visitor center for the Parker's Crossroads battlefield is less than a mile from the campground.



In the Visitor's Center, we learned about General Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate cavalry officer who caused untold problems for the Union. He won here and escaped across the nearby Tennessee.



We walked a path through part of the battlefield.



And found yet another canon.

The Adirondacks

I love seeing Adirondack chairs. This is my favorite picture of them, taken in Nova Scotia as we drove the Cabot trail.



We spent five nights in Adirondack Park at Lake George and these were the only Adirondack chairs I saw. They're OK, but not really picturesque.

The Adirondack Park is a publicly-protected area located in northeast New York. It is the largest park and the largest state-level protected area in the contiguous United States, and the largest National Historic Landmark. The park covers some 6.1 million acres (9,400 mi²/24,700 km²), a land area about the size of Vermont, or of the Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Glacier and Great Smoky Mountains National Parks combined.

We have seen a lot of Civil War sites in the past month. When we moved to northern (do they call it Upstate?) New York, we entered the world of the French and Indian War and the Revolutionary War.

One day we drove north along Lake George, which links Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence River to the Hudson River, towardFort Ticonderoga. Along the way we saw these neat sailboats.



Fort Ticonderoga was called Fort Carillion by the French when they built in 1755. Here in 1758 a small French force under Marquis de Montcalm repelled a British attack led by Lord Jeffery Amherst. That battle devastated the 42nd Highland ("Black Watch") regiment. After the French won the battle, they withdrew and Amherst rebuilt the fort, renaming it "Ticonderoga."

We visited Ticonderoga because of a Celtic Festival being held there. The gathering honors the Highland regiment badly beaten that day. First we came on this tower, honoring that regiment and showing memorial wreaths laid to commemorate those who died here.



At the fort there were booths selling various Scottish wares.



Including one erected by the St. Andrew's society. We couldn't overlook that one.



We saw pipe and drum bands.



And Celtic bands.



Some people were dressed in their clan costumes, but others were not.



The weekend we spent in the Adirondacks coincided with the Upper Hudson River Valley Volunteer Fireman's convention. Two fire companies were in our campground. This group parked their fire engine in one of the campsites.



The week before had seen the community host Americade, a week-long motorcycle gathering. A few of the bikes were still in the village of Lake George when we visited there.



The Monday we were there we also saw a funeral procession come to town with the body of a local man killed in Afghanistan. He had volunteered to be the gunner on a sortie and was killed. Many people from the town lined the street as the funeral procession made its way to the church. A reminder that we are at war today, as we were in the 1700s.

As we walked around the town we found that three different boats offered tours of the Lake. This is the one with the most memorable name.



At one time there was a "Millionaire's Row" of houses along the lake. This was a traditional summer destination. Don't you remember reading about families with lake cottages where the wife and children spent the summer at the cottage and the father came up on weekends? Lake George is certainly close enough to New York City and Albany to be one of those places.

Civil War History

It is only 108 miles from Richmond, VA, the capital of the Confederate States of America, and Washington, DC, the capital of the United States of America. That helps to explain why so many battles of the Civil War were fought in this area. In the past we have visited Civil War battlefields in Pennsylvania, Mississippi, and Tennessee. During our stay here in Virginia we are learning a lot more about the war.

Last week we visited three sites in Richmond. First stop was the Civil War Medical Museum where we learned about Chimborazo Hospital, the South's state-of-art convalescence hospital. When Richmond was flooded with casualties after the first battle of Manassas, quickly overwhelming the existing hospitals, Southern leaders ordered the construction of five general hospitals in Richmond. The largest and most famous was Chimborazo. None of the hospital's buildings still exist, but the museum is housed in a 20th century building on the same site.

"Under the yellow flag," the symbol of military hospitals during the war, more than 76,000 Confederate sick and wounded were treated there.



Between 75 and 80 wards--well-ventilated wooden buildings--were designed to house 3,000 patients. After some major battles, as many as 4,000 were treated there. The death rate during that terrible war is hard to comprehend. According to one display at the Museum of the Confederacy, approximately 850,000 men served in the Southern army. Nearly one-third of them--260,000--died in that service, more from disease than from fighting. In addition, another 216,000 were held in Union prisons at some point.

The Chimborazo museum had a very informative film. After watching that we learned a lot from the National Park volunteer on duty. A fellow RVer, we really enjoyed talking to him. I'm sorry I didn't get his name, but he sure represents park volunteers well.



Our next stop was at the Museum of the Confederacy, located right in the center of downtown Richmond. What with street construction and the busy Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center right there, finding the museum was a test. It is located right next to the Confederate White House, the home were Jefferson Davis lived during the war. We chose not to tour the house, but we understand it is impressive. This is a view of the front door.



The museum gives a great overview of the course of the Civil War, the life of the average soldier and the evolution of public opinion in the 150 years since. The displays include many personal effects of Southern generals, such as this display showing General Robert E. Lee's field tent.



Also, this one showing an officer's uniform.



I got a kick out of these nicknames for the soldiers from the different states of the Confederacy.



And I was touched by this quote from an unknown soldier's letter home. I forget that many people were illiterate at that time in our history.



One floor of displays discussed how, after the war, there were annual commemorations celebrating events of the war. People around the state became increasingly uncomfortable keeping the hard feelings of the war alive that way. Most, if not all, of those events have been discontinued. I also read that there were efforts in the first decades after the war to "win the peace" by making sure the Emancipation Proclamation didn't bring equality between white and black. That conflict wasn't resolved until the last part of the 20th Century.

From the Museum of the Confederacy we drove to the National Park Service Richmond National Battlefield Visitor Center. It is located along the James River at the site of the Tredegar Iron Works, the industrial facility that manufactured much of the Confederacy's artillery, ammunition and other war-related materials.



The iron works are located on the Haxall Canal,



using water power to run some of its equipment. This is one of the huge wheels we saw.



In the days immediately following the end of the Civil War, President Lincoln came to Richmond and walked through the damaged city. This statue behind the iron works includes a line from his second inaugural address, "to bind up the nation's wounds."
Hopefully, that has been largely accomplished.



On a lighter note, as we arrived at the visitor center on a very hot day, we saw these young people cooling off in the James River.