Recent trip to Shiloh Battlefield

[Gray_Lensman]

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[Gray_Lensman]

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[Gray_Lensman]

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[Gray_Lensman]

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[Gray_Lensman]

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[Gray_Lensman]

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[Gray_Lensman]

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[Gray_Lensman]

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[Gray_Lensman]

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[marecone]

Great picks . Thanks for explanations too. And yes, those cannon balls are very similar to in game graphics.
If you have more picks please post it.

Godspeed

[Gray_Lensman]

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[Rafiki]

Thanks for bringing the battlefield to life for those of us who have never been anywhere near any of the battlefields of the ACW

I'll definitely be reading up on the battle and use your photos alongside to picture how it was.

[oldspec4]

Great pictures! I visited Shiloh in early October and spent a full 2 days literally walking the entire battlefield...and still didn't get to everything. I have a follow-up trip planned for next Spring very close to the April date of the battle. I'm also very interested in your Wilson's Creek pictures. I have a trip planned for the Pea Ridge/Wilson's Creek area in a few months.

[jhdeerslayer]

you lucky dog! I've been to many battlefields and Shiloh is by far my favorite. Its remoteness (was ten+ years ago anyway) and lack of civilization intrusions certainly helps.

[willgamer]

Wonderful pictures!

My wife and I moved to the Nashville area about a year ago. Talk about being in the center of Western theater battles! I had hoped to visit Shiloh by the end of the year, but it looks like Spring is more likely. However, we did get to go to Stone's River and Franklin.

Have you been to Chickamauga yet? IMHO, it's one of the best.

Safe travels...

[Ian Coote]

Nice Pictures,I visited there in 1988,makes me want to go back.Only problem is I live in Ontario and its quite the drive.

[Gray_Lensman]

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[oldspec4]

oldspec4: Don't forget Prairie Grove, 10 miles southwest of Fayetteville, Arkansas, 500 acres of historic battlefield.

While looking for more RR maps, I found this book at the Shiloh Center "The Civil War Battlefield Guide". I immediately saw it's usefulness. It contains over 300 battlefield descriptions (of the battles) and the present day description of the actual parks plus over 100 topographical maps. As I enjoy Matrix's (WCS) Forge of Freedom also, this book had an immediate obvious use of definitive battlefield histories, plus a guide to where they are located for the avid Civil War tour nuts like us. Here's an amazon link to it:

http://www.amazon.com/Civil-War-Battlefield-Guide-Second/dp/0395740126/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195662865&sr=1-1

p.s. I didn't even know there was a Battlefield to tour at Prairie Grove until I saw this book, so I will have to swing back down there soon. Wilson's Creek, Pea Ridge, and Prairie Grove are the closest to me since I actually live in Central MO. For those others who may be considering touring Battlefields, be sure to purchase the Audio CDs available at their Center's. The tours are much better when utilizing these CDs, especially Wilson's Creek, since it is not totally restored in some aspects.

willgamer: Several people have told me that Chickamauga is one of the best, so I will definitely be visiting it, along with Perryville KY, another historic battlefield that I didn't know existed until I acquired the book above.

Forgot about Prairie Grove...thx for that tip. For the major battlefields I use the US Army's War College Staff Ride as a guide for a detailed walk of the site. Chickamauga/Chattanooga/Stones River battlefields are excellent sites. Unfortunately, Stones River is being surrounded by shopping malls, etc. similar to many of the Eastern battlefied sites (Antietam excluded). Like you, I also have Perryville planned for next year.

[GShock]

Needless to say i can pick the atmosphere from the pics gray posted, imagine being there...It's places where history was built.

Impressive.

[anarchyintheuk]

Thanks for the pictures. The Tennessee always seems bigger on a map, no matter how many times I see it for some reason.

[Guru80]

Those pictures you took really gives some perspective. It would be suicide trying to cross the field and to do it repeatedly took sheer determination and courage. I coudn't even imagine marching head on into that volley of cannon fire which must have been coming at them with such an advantaged position in the tree line. That picture over the barrel of the Cannon says it all

[GShock]

I coudn't even imagine marching head on into that volley of cannon fire which must have been coming at them with such an advantaged position in the tree line. That picture over the barrel of the Cannon says it all

Yes...well...uhm...i think regardless of position, condition, advantages/disadvantages, fighting in that period, anywhere in the world, required heroism at the pure state. You move in the open, shoot in the open, reload in the open...which means you're constantly being shot at and you don't even have the consolation of saying "if they hit me the doctors will fix me, easy".

It stinks when compared to the concepts of nowadays professional armies.

Troopers demand to go to operational theaters to earn more money and if they die there's funds for their families. It's the opposite of fighting for a cause like in the ACW.

Having acknowledged how Gray studied and feels for the game, i guess this "report" also comes with a personal feeling of understanding the whole thing. It's a remarkable reportage he shared with us...worth of my second thank to Gray in the same topic!

[jhdeerslayer]

I found Perryville to be a tad but disappointing. It is basically part of a large picnic area/state park and really does not have a CW battlefield feel to it. Worth a stop, just don't expect much.

[LMUBill]

I found Perryville to be a tad but disappointing. It is basically part of a large picnic area/state park and really does not have a CW battlefield feel to it. Worth a stop, just don't expect much.

You must not have taken the walking tour then. Once you get away from the visitors center/picnic area along the tour the signs are really informative and describe the situation at that spot well. Plus they have taken pains to keep the battlefield in a general approximation of the way it looked a tthe time of the battle. There weren't than many building on portions of the battlefield that are in the park and none of them are standing but the locations of the "major players" are marked on the tour.

Plus a sizable chunk of the park property was just added to the park a year or two ago so they haven't really been able to do anything with it yet until they finish some of the archaelogical investigations.

Now if your definition of battlefield is having monuments everywhere then you are right. You can pretty much count the number of monuments (outside of the cemetery) on one hand.

[LMUBill]

Thanks for the pictures. The Tennessee always seems bigger on a map, no matter how many times I see it for some reason.

It is slightly wider and a bit deeper than it was at the time of the battle. TVA requires a certain depth in the main channel and the section of the river at the park is actually Kentucky Lake.

[DirkX]

does anyone know where/if there exist shots from the air/satelitte photos from the various battlefields of the Civil War ?
preferably in different zooms.

[Ian Coote]

does anyone know where/if there exist shots from the air/satelitte photos from the various battlefields of the Civil War ?
preferably in different zooms.

try google earth,as long as you know location of battlefield it should work.

[LMUBill]

does anyone know where/if there exist shots from the air/satelitte photos from the various battlefields of the Civil War ?
preferably in different zooms.

I know that Virtual Earth has color close-up (they call them Birds-eye views) of Shiloh, Vicksburg, Fortress Rosecrans in Murfreesboro (the city has that feature but not the Stones River battlefield), the Chattanooga portion of Chickamauga/Chattanooga, Kennesaw Mountain and Gettysburg . One can even tilt the ciew and see them in "3-d". You have to download a free plugin/viewer to see the birds-eye views though. They are at maps.live.com.

[Gray_Lensman]

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[LMUBill]

I much prefer the Audio CD tours in conjunction with the basic walking tour. I found them to be much more informative about each point of interest. Also, Shiloh's CD audio tour, varied the order of the stops to more chronologically follow the flow of the battle, which made the flow of events much more understandable and enjoyable.

As regards monuments, I would prefer, that they were erected separately away from the actual battlefield area (off to the side), except maybe in some special cases as sited above re: A.S. Johnston. I really dislike cluttering up the actual original battlefield with military unit monuments.

I'm not sure there is an audio tour for Perryville. I know the walking tour has doubled in length over the last year or so so if there was an audio tour then it probably hasn't been updated. The driving tour is not that much there either, but that is probably a good thing.

As for Shiloh, for the size of the battle and the importance I'm pleasantly surprised at how few monuments there are when compared to, say, Chickamauga/Chattanooga. I agree with you, there are still a lot, but the majority of them were placed there by the actual combatants so I can overlook that a bit.

Can you still visit the Indian mounds at the park or did the NPS finally cut off all access to them? The last time I was there (years ago) the road that went near them was still open to the public, but I read that some of it has since eroded away and the NPS closed it due to the costs of repairing it.