said -- well, i'm not quite the check player you are, general, i can't see it. and johnston chuckles and says yes, that mates them. he'll never recall those people, he'll never have the ability to recall those people. those people have asked what's johnston doing on the right? johnston is taking care of any reserve that can go out and aid the federal front. johnston does not have to go near the river to destroy grant. all he has to do is start the ball rolling. the federals are going to come to him. when the alarm sounds, they rally on the front. all he has to do is gain leverage on the flank and turn it and the battle is his. and that's what he assumed but guess what, folks? we know the difference. because we know reality. he did not. he's facing his judgment on faulty intelligence. how many times have we based our judgments on not knowing the true picture in our lives? you can drop the maps. i'm going to finish this thing up.

you want the full story? you want the 16-hour death march? join me at shiloh. staff calls it the death march, by the way. i'm still alive. although tim pointed out i had less than -- just a little over 24 hours to live. anyway, in later years, veterans of shiloh declared the battle the bloodiest in their experience. southerners stated it possessed the heaviest firing of the war. and union veterans referred to being as scared as at shiloh. the battle's realities have always laid shrouded in confusion and mystery of time and space, in the words of ulysses s. grant persistently misunderstood. and indeed as author shelby

foote explains, how should they understand this? they were put into a cauldron of pure hell because from inside foote believed shiloh resembled armageddon. the confederacy lost its best opportunity to win the war in the west the battle of general grant and others hoped might signal the war's end proves just the beginning of a total war. americans north and south, free and slave, you heard those words before, i lived with them for two years, faced three more aprils of destruction, sacrifice and unimaginable carnage. two days after shiloh with the outcome still in doubt, confederate general beauregard set his troops to work throwing up earthwork fortifications to defend the corinth crossroads and cabled the haunting prediction to his superiors in richmond, if defeated here, we lose the mississippi valley and probably our cause. thus in the spring of 1862, the momentous relationship possessed by western rivers, dirt roads, and the juncture of iron rails

served to reveal why shiloh and corinth remain linked in time and space. it's a shared significance forged by war, helping to define the most violent and socially important crossroads in the american experience. thank you. [ applause ] >> good afternoon. i fully understand that i'm the last speaker between you and lunch. so i will be brief. what i want to talk about, though, is what paul harvey would call the rest of the story. we've heard a lot about the battle itself. the two-day battle.

we've had our panel discussion and stacy taking us through the maps. but there's a lot more to the history of shiloh than two days of battle. now, granted, those are the most important parts of the story of shiloh. but there's a lot actually prior to the battle. many of you probably have visited the indian mounds. there's a whole civilization there prior to the white man coming. and then the celtment. the civilians of shiloh. it's a very interesting, fascinating story. of course, the two days of battle itself, the most fascinating of all, the most interesting, the most pivotal in terms of what we're doing here, but post-battle there's a very interesting story about the preservation, how the federal government came in, preserved the battlefield as we know it today, that we're able to visit today, and then other entities such as the civil war trust, of course, doing their work. so the rest of the story

basically is a success story from beginning to end. go back to the veterans themselves preserving the battlefield originally up through today's park service and civil war trust. it's a success story from beginning to end. now, let me take you very quickly through the story of the preservation movement itself. the first actual preservation at shiloh occurs four years after the battle when the national cemetery is established in 1866. basically ten acres of land right there at pittsburg landing are preserved as a federal national cemetery. in my mind it's probably the most beautiful national cemetery in existence. i like arlington, i like a lot of others but right there on the bank of the river is absolutely beautiful. the federal government of course comes in, disinters the union soldiers that they could find, there are probably others out there still today but all they could find disinterred, took home to the national cemetery and created basically what we see there today. what's significant about this

and other national cemeteries, you go to fort donaldson or vicksburg or chattanooga or gettysburg or antietam. any of those cemetery, logically the soldiers are buried in close proximity to where they were originally buried. where they fell. so it's going to be on the battlefield itself. so in kind of a roundabout way, although they were not doing it in terms of preservation, they were actually preserving part of the battlefield when they reburied those dead at shiloh national cemetery. and you see that all around even though this national cemetery at chattanooga, we're talking about tennessee here was not most of the dead, a lot of the dead who come from chickamauga, of course but it is actually on a part of the battle of chat nooga when union forces were attacking, one of the generals talks about how he could see the union line going up and over the small

crest where the cemetery would eventually be. so the national cemetery first preservation movement, although it was not intended specifically for preservation, it was more memorial features than preservation, but it did in part preserve a portion of the battlefield. now, for 30 years after that there is no major preservation effort at shiloh. there are a few other things going on in the nation that kind of precluded that. in fact, there's little or no preservation at all going on in terms of the civil war. basically, what you have is a long grueling time of reconstruction. we're trying to reconstruct what we tore apart in 1860s and that will last until of course the compromise of 1877 and that presidential election. it's during that time, of course, we're still bickering over the larger issues that led us to war to begin with, sure secession is dealt with and slavery is dealt with but each of those issues has a

foundational racial issue and we're still dealing with this racial issue through reconstruction and into the 1870s and some of that lingers on into the 1880s and in part even today. but we're still very much divided in the 1870s, getting into the 1880s. several events help to reconcile the two parts. the centennial, 1876, the centennial of the declaration of independence and our july the fourth of course will help in that. eventually, some of the wars in the 1890s, the spanish-american war and so on in some part will help reconcile us as well. but in large part it's the movement, or not one large part but a very significant part, is this movement that comes in the 1890s in which the federal government steps in and preserves battlefields that brings the two sections together.

for instance, prior to the 1890s, there was very little preservation effort anywhere except gettysburg and that had been done by a partisan association. it was very partisan. it had been totally one-sided. the confederates, you wouldn't seen know the confederates fought there. they didn't mention them. didn't commemorate them. when the federal government steps in in 1890s they begin to commemorate both sides and the confederates get the idea hey this is a nonpartisan thing, we'll be included, we'll be included fairly and we can get behind this and get involved in this. so the 1890s is very much a conciliatory time. they leave behind those old divisive issues of race and slavery and secession that's been dividing us for decades and decades and decades. we're leaving that behind. we're focusing on new issues of the bravery and the courage of our civil war soldiers, both sides, and we can bond together

as americans again in that movement. so shiloh is very much -- the establishment of shiloh is very much a part of this reconciliationist period during the 189 0s. and it's during this time that we see five civil war battlefields preserved in one degree or another. and those are of course the five most famous and best preserved battlefields today. those being gettysburg, antietam, vicksburg, chick mauga, and of course shiloh. shiloh itself, its golden age begins in 1894 when congress establishes the shiloh national park. thereafter a commission is appointed to basically build what we see out at the battlefield today. they were pretty much done within a matter of 10 or 15 years, the tablet, monuments, most of the monuments, the artillery pieces go up within the first 10 or 15 years of the existence of shiloh battlefield national military park. now, there are several stars that align that help produce what we see out there.

tay. and we can compare this a little bit to what we're doing today. and we can really see that this probably is shiloh's golden age. for instance, you have in the 1890s, and this is not just shiloh but battlefield-wide, all over the nation, you have pristine battlefields that are still available to be preserved at this point. bear in mind this is prior to that second industrial revolution when we get major mobilization and we get major urbanization, suburbs and all that and most civil war battlefields obviously are fought normally around transportation routes and where they cross. and where they cross, of course, a village or a town, eventually a city will crop up. you start naming civil war battlefields. fredricksburg, gettysburg, richmond, petersburg, vicksburg, chattanooga, nashville, franklin, most of these are fought right around towns and eventually urbanization will take those battlefields and begin to consume them. but this is a time when we still

have relatively pristine battlefields. shiloh is a little bit of an anomaly. it's way out in the middle of nowhere. there are no urban areas at shiloh to take over. so that's a little bit different. but overall this is a time when you have pristine battlefields. you also have a time period, another star that will symbolically align, this is a period when congress will appropriate huge sums of money to acquire these battlefields. today we have to work for what we acquire mainly through the civil war trust. the park service doesn't vuft have a whole bunch of extra money to be buying landish does it? the government is strapped. we all know about the trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars that we're in the hole. so we don't have a whole lot of money to be doing, that and we work through private entities like the civil war trust. but this was a time period when veterans of the civil war itself dominated congress. i did a study one time and by 1890 congress is still

dominated, a majority of the congressmen are civil war veterans in the early 1890s, and that will go down of course as they get older and as time passes. but congress is still interested in appropriating money to save battlefields. and that's a significant feature. the biggest thing, though, the biggest star that will align and really is significant at shiloh and gettysburg and vicksburg and elsewhere is we still have veterans who can come back to these battlefields and pinpoint this is where i was, this is where i thought, this is where i was wounded, this is where my unit was. granted there are various controversies and the veterans will get into it, but no, we weren't here, we were over there, and we held this ridge, not that ridge. and there's some significant debate about exactly where we were. but contrast that to today. for instance we talked about fallen timbers as a done deal. and that's absolutely wonderful the work that the civil war preservation trust is doing in combination with the national park service. but you go out the fallen

timbers and we basically have to proximate where the various lines were, where forrest was when he made his famous charge into union lines and all that. we don't have a relatively sure position of where that is. we have to kind of approximate. what would we give to have veterans that could come back to fallen timbers and tell us this is where i saw forrest ride across the field or this is where the union line was when forrest attacked, or -- and fallen timbers is just one example. but the veterans were able to come back to shiloh and say this is where we did this, this is where this happened, and they were able to pinpoint these areas. you see this at vicksburg, at chickam theauga, gettysburg, antietam as well. the later generation of parks created in the 1930s, 1940s you can't pinpoint to any degree of accuracy that you can at these earlier battlefields.

so this was the golden age of shiloh, when this battlefield was established. it's part of a larger movement, but it's a key feature of our favorite battlefield here. now, there are later preservation efforts at shiloh, of course. we know about some of the major reconstruction that's done during the new deal, for instance, when the concrete roads go in, the visitor center that we visit today goes up at that time, the bookstore that's there now goes up at that time. later on mission 66, park service term, will create the bypass out there and do some additional things, add on to the visitor center and then of course there are later acquisitions. really we get into more in terms of the preservation story in the recent past. and just recently we've talked about fallen timbers and the 490-something acres that the trust is working on now. originally the park in 1890s and early 1900s contained about 3,400 acres.

so there's been a few hundred acres added through the years. a lot of that in some pretty big chunks. in later times. but the biggest acquisition, of course, that has come recently and probably the most impressive is the movement down to corinth. as we've heard, we cannot divorce corinth from shiloh. they're both one and the same in terms of this campaign. so the effort at building the interpretive center at corinth and taking in some of those areas down there is very impressive and i think the veterans of the 1890s would be very impressed with what's been preserved and what's going on at corinth. now, there's a little bit of a side component to this preservation. and i want to talk about that for just a second, and then we could all go get lunch and visit the facilities and all that. part of the preservation movement is the fostering of the

official story of what we know about any given place. normally it falls to the people who preserve a place to interpret and educate about the place. and the park service does a wonderful example, or job of preserving -- not only preserving the areas but also interpreting and educating. i have to hand it to the civil war trust. they do a very good job of interpreting to their members and to the public what they are preserving. how many of you have gotten things in the mail about, you know, the maps showing the target property, what they're wanting and what happened here and how that fits in with the various -- the various troop moments and so on. so the civil war trust is, i think, aware of their responsibility to interpret what they preserve. they don't just preserve it and drop it. they work with the park service and work with other entities and even in themselves they've taken the lead.

eventually they're beginning to take the lead in creating new material, in fact. they're leading the way kind of with these animated maps that we're beginning to see. and we'll hear more about that in terms of shiloh in the future as well. but part of the preservation story, and i'll finish with this, that began in the 1890s helped foster what is today probably the dominant memory or the collective memory of the general public today. i always give the example when i go around speaking of the reed maps in the shiloh visitor center. when you go to shiloh tomorrow or the next day, go into the visitor center and look at those maps and you can tell immediately what the general public thinks are the most important points at shiloh because they have touched those maps so many times that it's worn off a little place on the map. at pittsburg landing, at shiloh church, at bloody pond, at various places like that that we've been told are the most

important points, that the film says, the old film said you go see this and people come out of the film and say hey, there's shiloh church, there's bloody pond, what we heard about. if you look at the sunken road in the hornet's nest, though, you won't see just a round globe of where people touched it but you'll see all up and down the sunken road it's all worn as if people are emphasizing by rubbing their finger over the hornet's nest in the sunken road this is important, this is what i saw in the film, we got to go out and see that. the collective memory, the public memory that we know today of shiloh, and there's been some revision, we heard some revision of that up here in a lot of different ways. mr. sword talked about the new material that's coming out, the new ways of looking at the battle that we just heard about. all of that is predicated on the official story that if you ask pretty much anybody out in the public, if jay leno went jaywalking and asked anybody about shiloh, they would,

anybody that knows anything about it, they would mention the hornet's nest and the sunken road, of course, being the dominant things at shiloh. a lot of that goes back to the original preservation movement most of these folks are from iowa. the chairman of this veteran commission that establishes the park in 1890s is from iowa. the probably i wouldn't say a more dominant figure but as dominant a figure is the congressman who sponsored the bill to establish the national park. his name is david henderson.

he was a representative. and he was soldier in the 12th iowa. but and he was representative after the war. he's the one that sponsored the legislation. he would aid in preserving vicksburg as well. he would actually retire as speaker of the house. he's a very prominent individual and able to throw his weight around. both figuratively and literally. the connection that henderson has to shiloh, he fought at shiloh. he was here. he knew what it looked like. he knew what it sounded like. all those tangible things that we don't know about today, what it looked like to be covered with tents. what it sounded like to hear the musketry and the canons. when you go to reenactments and that kind of stuff. the fear that you feel. all of that. he knew it. there's a more tangible connection that he has, though, if you walk out into shiloh national cemetery, david b. henderson has a brother, thomas, that's buried in shiloh national cemetery. he's wanting to preserve this battlefield. he was there. his brother is buried there.

you can see the complex. i would say the dominant factor in producing our collective memory, what the public thinks is the most important today about shiloh, would be a man named david w. reed who also fought in the 12th iowa. he becomes the park historian. he's the first park historian. he fought at shiloh. he writes books about shiloh. he interprets shiloh. these reed maps i talk about are named after him. he locates the troops position there. granted, you get this story of the hornet's nest and some of these other issues prior to the establishment of the park. the professor was talking about the infighting between the union generals. you get those different theories and stories among each other.

and we weren't surprised, yes, you were surprised, and i saved you when i came in says bulan and grant says i had it under control and johnson's son says beauregard threw away the victory and all of those major historic graphical concerns and those fights have been in place prior to the establishment of the park as has this idea of the hornet's nest, 1880s, this panorama chicago where general priut himself speaks and it is the institution of the national park and the people can come here and read, emphasizing, the hornet's nest and how the action of the hornet nest saved the day for the union. he calls it the thriopoly of the war to put it on a grand scale. what is reed's connection with this? well, he fought in the 12th iowa. do we have to guess where the 12th iowa fought in the battle

of shiloh? right smack in the middle of the hornet's nest. you can see his connection. that idea is built on and institutionalized in terms of the park and preserve the park when visitors go there. for decades and decades visitors were handed a brochure that told them if they bothered to read it that the hornet's nest saved grant's army and where the major thing was done. probably the most effective tool for getting the story out to the public. a lot of the general public doesn't read books. i would say millions and millions of people saw the film that was shown for 56 years at the visitor's center and that thing was pure hornet's nest. that's basically what it showed, what it emphasized, what it interpreted, and as a result people would come out of that film and rub their finger on the map and say we have to see this and this is important and the film said it was and they read on the brochure, this was important and they said it was. over time it has been built on and added to and the connection here between the preservation and the interpretation of the

story that is -- that happened here on the land that is preserved, the connection between the memory and the preservation i think is very real, and i think it is very important that we understand what happens is extremely important to understand what happened at the battle. we have a good taste of that today. i think it is almost as important to understand the various arguments and the historic graphical controversies and the building of the collective memory of terms of preservation movement after the battle. we talk about a lot in military history winning the peace and we could argue about when the civil war ended d it end in 1865 when the fighting part ended in 165 -- 1865 and who actually won the peace after that? who won the vietnam war? who won the peace after that?

we're experiencing that in iraq now. it is still to be determined who wins the iraq war, who is going to win the peace after the actual fighting is done. in our case here i think it is almost as important to know the story after the actual event as it is to know the actual event itself. what did they say the man who shot liberty valance when the legend becomes the fact print the legend. kind of the thing going on here. i appreciate the opportunity to alert you to the rest of the story as paul harvey would say, and i encourage you of course to go out to shiloh and look at the preserved battlefield and think about the battle after the battle. obviously the battle itself is the most important but the battle after the battle is important as well. thank you. [ applause ] >> let's have another round of applause for stacy and tim. please remain seated if you can. we want to close out today's event with the re-enactors from

the 13th usct to come and retire the united states flag that they presented earlier this morning. gentlemen.

retrieve colors. >> detail, forward. march.

>> there is no better way to end this event than with veterans showing respect to other veterans. please keep that in mind when you go out to the park this afternoon. my last announcement is real simple. if you have a smartphone, get it out and download the tennessee civil war app. we now have the only state to put together an educational, informational application for your smartphone and kids across the nation will have a ball with it. you guys have a great afternoon. thank you so much for attending. [ applause ]