It's all about the railroads...

We've been visiting Civil War battle sites for the last 4 days and I could go on and on boring you with the details for the battles at Shiloh, Corinth, Chattanooga and Chickamauga. 

But really, the story of these battles is that they were about control of the crossroads for the railroads.  Without those crossroads, the south couldn't get their cotton to the harbors to ship off to England and other consumers.  Without those crossroads, they couldn't ship the grain from Tennessee to the cities that needed them on the East Coast. Without those crossroads, the South couldn't move their troops, except by foot or horseback to where they needed to be.

So in 1862 the Northern generals first plotted and planned to take Corinth -Shiloh was the South's attempt to keep them from reaching Corinth. When the Southern generals failed to stop Grant, they fell back to Corinth and a good old fashioned siege occurred till the South finally retreated, burning the town but leaving the tracks.

In 1863 the Northern generals set their eyes on Chattanooga, another crossroads town. And again the South tried to stop them at Chickamauga, and failed.  Instead of cutting the Northern forces off before they could reach Chattanooga, they actually pushed them towards the town.

These were all very bloody conflicts, thousands of young men ages 18-24 lost their lives fighting for their respective causes in the conflicts At Chattanooga and Chickamauga 6 generals also lost their lives - back then they actually put themselves in harms way. And the newly re- United States lost  a whole generation of brilliant and not so brilliant, kind and not so kind young men who would never have a family or see their children grow to adulthood.  Imagine what our world might have been like if those men had had the opportunity to grow to be old.  What might they have discovered, invented, built, created?  That's the true cost of war.




Before Shiloh and our Civil War travels, we stopped at Memphis and had a more lighthearted two days - although Memphis is the sight of Martin Luther King's assassination so we had to visit the Lorraine Motel and the National Civil Rights Museum that is attached. Sobering.  But we also visited the Memphis Rock and Soul Museum and in the afternoon break from the thunderstorms that have been following us, the Memphis Botanic Gardens - I'm a sucker for Roses and Japanese gardens.  Then of course there was the obligatory nod to barbeque... and an evening of fun drinking a few beers and watching a rather good Elvis Impersonator at the Jerry Lee Lewis Bar. We got so far as to drive to the entrance of Graceland but when it was $15 just to park your car, we turned around and headed back out to the Pink Palace and the 3D showing of Jerusalem instead.

Tomorrow we are off to the Great Smoky Mountains.  We had intended to go to Gatlinburg, but when we discovered it would cost us over $50 a night to stay there... in Serendipity, not a hotel, we rerouted ourselves to the south and are going to Bryson City, North Carolina.  We've been promised a creekside site with full hookups for $30.  We're there for the park, not the Dollywood stuff, so we don't mind missing that part of Tennessee.