Shiloh: A Place of Peace

It seems contradictory to find peace at a battlefield that saw so much bloodshed over a two-day period in 1862.  But on our family’s visit Wednesday to Shiloh National Military Park, it was difficult to imagine a more peaceful place.

A battlefield marker showing where my great-grandfather, Jasper Riggs, fought with the 45th Illinois Infantry.

Known for being one of the most pristine Civil War battlefields, Shiloh is located off the beaten path, about two hours east of Memphis, and 45 miles north of Corinth, Miss.  I haven’t looked up the park’s attendance figures, but during our afternoon there we often felt like we had the entire 4,200-acre park to ourselves.

It was much more populated when my great-great grandfather, Jasper Riggs, was encamped there in April 1962 as a member of the 45th Illinois Infantry, Co. I.  Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and about 40,000 Union troops were positioned west of Pittsburg Landing near Shiloh Church, waiting for Gen. Don Carlos Buell to arrive with reinforcements so the Union could advance on Corinth, a strategic railroad crossroads.  Anticipating the Union’s strategy, Confederate Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston launched a surprise attack with 44,000 troops the morning of April 6.

Jasper Riggs was encamped at this site when the Battle of Shiloh began on April 6, 1862.

According to the official regimental history, members of Jasper’s regiment had just had their morning inspection and had stacked their arms, preparing to eat breakfast, when they learned of the attack.

The breakfast call had just sounded, when the “long roll” was beat on the color line, and in three minutes, at most, the men had their arms in their hands, and the officers were in their places.  The order was to move to the left and front, “double quick,” to support Sherman.  The Forty-fifth went into the fight at Shiloh with about 500 men.  It was in the front line from first to last of the two days’ fight.  On Sunday it fought mainly on its “own hook” after the first engagement, under the command of Colonel Smith, and fought back and forth over the same ground a number of times.  Late in the day it fell back, leisurely, and took its place with its Brigade and Division, on the right of the line, when the final stand was made.  Here the Forty-fifth laid on its arms during the night in the rain, and moved forward on Monday morning at daylight. 

The Confederates pushed the Union troops, including Jasper’s regiment, back toward the Tennessee River on the battle’s first day.  Buell’s troops arrived by river overnight, and by the end of the second day, the Union recovered all the ground it had lost, and the Confederates retreated.

Both the North and the South were shocked by the reports of the battle’s 23,000 casualties.  Of the 500 men in Jasper’s regiment, 26 were killed, and 199 were wounded or missing.  Jasper survived, as did his older brother General Washington Riggs, who fought with the 17th Illinois Infantry.

The Shiloh National Military Park was established by the federal government in 1894.  Forty-four years after the battle, Jasper’s son, my great-grandfather G. Oliver Riggs, traveled to the park in November 1906 with an Iowa delegation to dedicate monuments to Iowa solders who had fought there.  G. Oliver played the cornet with the 51st/55th Regimental Band, directed by his longtime friend George Landers.

Iowa Gov. Albert Cummins and other delegation members in front of the Iowa State Memorial.

While we were searching for the markers that showed the movement of Jasper’s regiment during the battle (they were not easy to find, even with a detailed park map), we also found many of the Iowa regimental monuments G. Oliver visited in 1906.  During that tour, the Iowa delegation stopped at each of the 11 Iowa regimental monuments for brief ceremonies that included a speech, a prayer and a song by the band.  The band also participated in a ceremony in front of the towering Iowa State Memorial, and performed a sacred concert in the Shiloh National Cemetery.

I learned from a browsing through a book in the gift shop that the Iowa State Monument was damaged three years after the dedication when a cyclone struck the park.  The tall column broke in a couple of pieces and had to be rebuilt.

The Iowa State Monument as it looks today.

 

I could write more about our experience at the park, but I’d rather close with the last few paragraphs of a speech by Jesse A. Miller, the son of Lt. Colonel Alexander Miller of the Sixth Iowa Regiment.  The younger Miller spoke these words at the Nov. 22, 1906 dedication of the monument to his dad’s regiment:

This monument is erected to the memory of those who fought and suffered here, and it is a fitting memorial.  The thing it teaches to us is not so much the valor of those who died and suffered here, as that we who come after them must live a big and noble life to merit what our forefathers have done for us.  I, as one who was born after the war, as one who knows nothing of the wear except as I have heard and read, feel that I am a better man and will live a better life for having visited these battlefields; and I believe that the people of all the states of this Union would be better citizens if they would visit the battlefield and see what we have seen and hear what we have heard.  I hope that as the days go by and as the years roll on, that annually there will be pilgrimages from the north and from the south to these fields, that inspiration may be received by others as it has been received by us, and that these memorials will ever tend to raise the citizenship of this country and make the people of this nation a better and higher type of civilization than any that has gone before.