Shiloh

(Jon says to let you know that some pictures are now in the posts of recent days.)

Between Memphis and Nashville we stopped at Shiloh, the National Park that memorializes the Civil War battle in northern Mississippi. Jon has always been interested in Civil War history, and as many people already know, will only visit the sites where the Union "won" the battle. The others are too depressing. They are all depressing, really.

National parks and other similar venues now always have an introductory movie, and this is a superb way to get oriented.  Some movies are better than others, and this one (Jon said) was the best yet. They filmed the whole thing right on site, there were hundreds of re-enactors and they actually were actors, not just place holders.  The story was so real that I could barely watch it.  

I have probably forgotten important details by now, but essentially the army from the north was preparing to disable a critical train crossing in Corinth, MS -- one which made it possible for supplies to get to the south from Charleston and which connected to the Mississippi River. This was relatively early in the war, in early April 1862 when the north still thought they could win pretty quickly. They took weeks and weeks to bring the men and their equipment in dozens of rented steamboats down the river, and they were assembling for a battle.  Of course the south knew this and they were also preparing to defend this strategic spot.  The Union people were waiting for everyone to arrive and the Confederates were determined to surprise them. Between the two sides, they assembled over 120,000 men and more cannons than had ever been in one place.  For two long and terrible days they killed each other, shooting and maiming each other from extremely close range.  In the end there were over 23,000 men dead or hurt or lost.  And no ground had been gained.  Because the southerners ended up withdrawing, having lost a greater proportion of their soldiers, the north won that battle.  One very important Confederate general was killed, which was was very hard on the southern forces. The film focused on a few soldiers who survived to tell the story, becoming newspaper editors etc in later life.  

I try not to think about war in general. I can never understand the premise, that the way to win is to kill more people.  In thiinking about it yesterday, I came to another realization -- that the way you know you have won is when you have demoralized the other side to the point where they give up. And you demoralize them by overwhelming them with your power to kill and your willingness to continue to kill.  We were trying to think of an analogous war to this one (as not all wars are the same, despite the similarities) and Syria came to mind.

The park looked a lot like Gettysburg, with monuments spread all over many acres of mowed fields, and signs telling which army was where, at what point.  Without the movie it would have been hard to be even slightly curious about all this detail. As it was, we only went to about half of the points of interest before heading out.

We stopped at a supermarket in Tennessee, looking for lunch.  It was the first hummus-free store we have seen in a very long time.  French onion dip was the closest food type.  We did buy a bottle of authentic looking local sorghum for future use.  

Tennessee is much more interesting than Mississippi, topographically.  Beautiful rolling hills, big expanses of farms, and it looks like it would be all sorts of green in the summer.  We went on only the small roads (making it very hard for Jon to have phone calls with his work people, as we were in and out of cell service all day).  Sort of like traveling through Virginia on Beulah Road and Route 7, with very little traffic.

We made a second pilgrimage to Ann Patchett's book store, Parnassus, in Nashville and I bought some books.  The store seems to be thriving and they are getting ready to take over the store next door.

Dinner at a small sandwich shop that only sources from local farmers -- Rebecca S knew about it and met us there. Perfect.  Then we walked down the block to a small business that makes Mexican popsicles.  Who knew you could make a living on popsicles? Apparently Nashville is the right place for this.