149 Years Ago, the Battle Ended

When I heard it on the radio this morning, it took me by surprise: today is the 149th anniversary of the end of the Battle of Shiloh.  I guess the dates aren’t as fixed in my head as other details about the bloody two-day battle, like the fact that my great-great grandfather, Jasper Riggs, survived, and so many others didn’t: total Union and Confederate casualties were about 23,000.

A battlefield marker for Jasper’s regiment, the 45th Illinois Infantry.

We visited the Shiloh National Military Park last October, and I was struck by the serene beauty of the place, the stillness.  There weren’t many visitors the day we were there; it’s not as visited as battlefields like Vicksburg or Gettysburg.  Located in rural, southern Tennessee, 45 miles north of Corinth, Miss., it’s not a place people visit as an afterthought; people go there with purpose.

The Shiloh National Cemetery is located on a bluff, with a view of the Tennessee River.  The cemetery holds 3,584 Civil War dead, 2,359 of them unknown.

If you haven’t ever visited a Civil War battle site, I highly recommend it, even if you’re not a huge history buff.  It’s a great place to reflect, to ponder the cost of war, the think about the ideals our country was founded upon, and how we might better live up to them.  Take your kids, or your grandkids, or your nieces and nephews, and see the park through a young person’s eyes.  The parks have scheduled commemorative programs and events from now through 2015 marking the war’s sesquicentennial.

 

Top and bottom views of the Iowa State Memorial at Shiloh.

Like I did in a previous post about Shiloh, I’d like to quote Jesse A. Miller, who spoke at the 1906 dedication of a monument to his dad’s regiment, the Sixth Iowa (a dedication my great-grandfather, G. Oliver Riggs, attended as a member of the 51st/55th Regimental Band).

 

I think Smith’s words are worth repeating:

I, as one who was born after the war, as one who knows nothing of the war 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.