Shiloh National Military Park, Shiloh, Tennessee and Corinth, Mississippi

After the Confederate victory at Manassas and its invasion and retreat from New Mexico, both sides hunkered down, went into winter headquarters, recruited and trained new soldiers, and sought ways to implement their overall strategies. The focus of this posting is the Union campaign into the South using the waterways of the Ohio, Tennessee, and Mississippi Rivers. We will look at the Battle of Shiloh this week and Antietam next week.

The woodlands of the South hindered overland travel. The thick forests slowed foot and wagon passage and prevented the rapid movement of large numbers of soldiers and materiel. A better way, used by humans for millennia, is water. The major rivers that coursed through the South -- the Mississippi, the Tennessee, the Cumberland, and the Ohio -- opened up wide avenues for transportation and invasion. River travel became so important in this theater of the war that the Union leased almost 150 steamboats to prosecute the war.

Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River (Photo by Hunner)

The Union forces pried open the Tennessee River in February 1862 when General Grant’s troops captured Forts Henry and Donelson and forced the Southern troops to abandon northwestern Tennessee. Once those forts fell, Union troops steamed upriver in paddle wheeled riverboats to Pittsburg Landing, about thirty miles north of Corinth Mississippi. Corinth, a key railroad junction, connected the Deep South with its north and west and proved a prime target for the North to divide and conquer the South.

General Grant had fought gallantly in the Mexican-American War but grew bored with the peacetime Army and his drinking led to his resigning from the military. Once the Civil War started, he took over first supplying troops and eventually leading the soldiers from his state of Ohio. At Shiloh, he had 40,000 soldiers.

General Grant, left, and General Johnston below, faced each other at Shiloh.

Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston had other ideas. He marched his 44,000 men from Corinth to force the issue on open ground around the small Shiloh Church, near the Union beachhead at Pittsburg Landing. Over the thirty-four hour battle, nearly 24,000 men were killed, wounded, or captured.

Grant had orders not to engage the enemy until General Don Carlos Buell’s troops coming from Nashville joined him. But on April 6^th, a Union patrol encountered a Confederate picket line around 5 am. They exchanged gunfire for an hour, and then General Johnston launched his Army of the Mississippi against the Union forces. For the rest of the morning, rebel troops pushed back the Northerners’ three-mile wide front in vicious fighting. 

At the Hornet’s Nest (so named for the buzz of bullets flying through the air) in the center of the Union line, forces defended at least three assaults. After six hours of intense and bloody combat, the Northerners still held the dense oak thicket at the center of the battlefield. Confederates brought artillery from other parts of the battlefield and pounded the Hornet’s Nest from 300 yards away into submission. 2,200 Union soldiers surrendered due to “the Confederates [concentrating on them] the greatest collection of artillery yet to appear on the American Continent.”[1] 

On top, the Hornets' Nest point of the battle.  Above, Confderate cannons lined up to pound the Hornets' Nest at the tree line in the distance. (Photo by Hunner)

After capturing the Hornet’s Nest, Johnston’s forces advanced, threatening the Union base at Pittsburg Landing. Northern soldiers straggled back to the earthworks around the landing all afternoon and aided by a heavily wooded ravine in front of them, held their position as the day ended. Johnston and his staff predicted an easy victory the next day.

The battle map toward the end of the first day, April 6th. (From  exhibit panel on driving tour of battlefield).

But the battle was already turning against the men in gray as the advance units of Buell’s Army of the Ohio were ferried across the Tennessee River and joined the defense of Pittsburg Landing. That Sunday night, more than 20,000 Northerners crossed the river. 

Steamboats supplying the Union war effort along a river in the SOuth (From exhibit at the Shiloh Visitors Center).

On April 7^th, Grant’s and Buell’s Divisions attacked the Confederates and drove them back. Riding near the frontline, Johnston was struck by a bullet which severed his femoral artery, and he died on the battlefield. Thus fell the highest ranking officer from either side during the Civil War. Beauregard, who had already distinguished himself at Fort Sumter and at First Manassas, took over command of the Southerners. Pressed by the fresh Union troops, Beauregard ordered his troops to leave the field around 4 pm. They retreated to Corinth.

Gerneral PGT Beauregard who replaced Gen. Johnston (From exhibit in Shiloh Visitor's Center)

A total of 23,746 men were killed, wounded, or missing. Both sides suffered greatly but “the battle mutilated the western army of the Confederacy, which lost key officers, 10,000 men, and perhaps its best opportunity to destroy a Union army in the field.”[2]

The Union army followed the Confederates to the railroad town of Corinth, Mississippi for a final reckoning. Two of the most important railroads in the Confederacy crossed at Corinth—the Memphis & Charleston and the Mobile & Ohio. 

The crossroads at Corinth today (Photo by Hunner)

They linked the Mississippi River to the Atlantic seaboard and the Gulf Coast to Kentucky. This made Corinth the most strategic transportation hub in the western part of the Confederate states. Under siege from April 29 to May 30, Confederate troops built several miles of rifle pits, trenches, and earthworks around the small town. They abandoned Corinth in May but returned at the beginning of October to retake the town. One observer said: “In places, you could walk on the dead.” This intense assault by the Confederates on the earthworks that they had initially built earlier that spring failed with 8,000 men combined from both sides killed, wounded, or missing.

At the same time as the attack on Corinth in October 1862, a Confederate force under General Bragg marched through Kentucky toward Cincinnati, more important to the Union than Chicago as an industrial and railroad center. If the South could cross the Ohio River and capture Cincinnati, they could accomplish subject the Union with what Grant was trying to do to the Confederacy. Bragg’s invasion failed at the Battle of Perryville. As military historian John Keegan explains about the defeats at Corinth and Perryville: “the failure in the West was a grave blow to the Confederacy, reducing their range of strategic options to the well-worn pattern of keeping alive Union fears of an advance against Washington or feints at Pennsylvania and Maryland, theaters where the North enjoyed permanent advantages.”[3]

After May 1862, slaves who had fled their plantations found refuge in Corinth. Called “contrabands of war,” some 6,000 African-American ex-slaves created a thriving community of homes, a church and school, a hospital, and a cooperative farm. From the Corinth Contraband Camp, nearly 2,000 ex-slaves enlisted in the Union’s First Alabama Regiment of African Descent to join the over 150,000 Blacks who fought in the Civil War.

"Contrabands of War" African Americans who fled planations and found
refuge behind Union lines (From exhibit at Cornith Civil War Interpretive Center) 

Freed slaves fighting for the Union
(From Corinth Interpretive Center)

The soldiers required special care from the devastation that minnié ball bullets and artillery shells wreck on the human body. To care for the wounded, each regiment of 200-300 soldiers had a surgeon, an assistant surgeon, and a hospital steward. During a battle, the number of casualties often overwhelmed the surgeons, who treated them just behind the front lines. Triage was fast. Soldiers with minor wounds underwent dressing and then returned to combat. Those more seriously wounded were evacuated to a field hospital further away from the battle, often a barn or residence.

Wounded outside a field hospital in the Peninsular Campaign in Virginia, 1862 (From exhibit at Corinth Civil War Interpretive Center)

The surgeon's tool kit for treating the wounded from combat ( From exhibit at the Corinth Civil War Intrepretive Center)

Shattered limbs had little chance of healing as the many splinters of bone and open wounds proved difficult to treat. Amputation was rapid, partially because the ether or chloroform wore off quickly and partially because new casualties arrived constantly. Without antibiotics, gangrene from a wound could set in and kill a patient. If a soldier survived the cutting off of a limb, they still could succumb to complications like pneumonia.

Medical officers from both armies cared for the 16,420 wounded men after Shiloh. Once stabilized, most of the 8,408 Union wounded went by steamboat to Savannah, Tennessee. Most of the Confederate wounded first went to Corinth and then by railroad to other towns and cities in the western Confederacy. At Corinth, almost every building served as a hospital to care for the men. Churches, aid societies, and soldiers’ families rushed medical supplies and people to help. As with most Civil War battles, nearby towns served as hospitals for months afterward.

Kate Cumming, a nurse at Shiloh after the battle (From exhibit at the Shiloh Visitors' Center).

One of those who heeded the call for help was Kate Cumming, whose brother fought at Shiloh. Here are some quotes from her journal: “Corinth is more unhealthy than ever. The cars have just come in, loaded outside and inside with troops…they have endured all kinds of hardships; going many days with nothing but parched corn to eat, and walking hundreds of miles…without shoes.” Another entry: “I have been through the ward to see if the men are in want of anything; but all are sound asleep under the influence of morphine. Much of that is administered; more than for their good…. I expressed this opinion to one of the doctors; he smiled, and said it was not as bad as to let them suffer.” Here is another observation from Kate: “There is a Mr. Pinkerton from Georgia shot through the head. A curtain is drawn across a corner where he is lying to hide the hideous spectacle, as his brains are oozing out.”[4]

Bernard Irwin's field hospital at Shiloh lcreated a new way to take care of the wounded after a battle that was used throughout the war. (From exhibit at Shiloh Visitors' Center)

The battle at Shiloh Church and the subsequent siege and occupation of Corinth shifted the war in the West. Vital transportation and communication lines were severed for the Confederacy, and the paths to both Chattanooga on the Tennessee River and Vicksburg on the Mississippi River lay open to Grant and his men. If the Union could crack Chattanooga, a path to Atlanta would open up. But Chattanooga would prove a tough nut to crack.

Steamboats played a vital role in the river campaigns in the South. (From exhibit at the Shiloh Visitors' Center)

Shiloh became a National Military Park in 1894 managed by the Department of War and was transferred to the National Park Service in 1933.

---

[1] From the exhibit panel at the Shiloh NMP Visitors’ Center.

[2] From the Shiloh Visitors’ Center.

[3] John Keegan, The American Civil War (New York: Vintage Books, 2009), 160-61.

[4] Kate Cumming, A Journal of Hospital Life in the Confederate Army of Tennessee. Quotes found in the exhibit at the Corinth Civil War Interpretive Center.

Manassas National Battlefield Park, Manassas, Virginia and the Glorieta Battlefield unit of the Pecos National Historical Park, Pecos, New Mexico

The rupture had happened, the first cannons fired. Now how to put soldiers in the field ready to fight? And not just fight, but win? In this posting, we will look at two early battles in the Civil War that foretell the bloody future as well as the broad shadow it cast upon the continent —the First Battle of Manassas and the Confederate invasion of New Mexico culminating in the Battle of Glorieta east of Santa Fe. Manassas and Glorieta offer ample examples of how each side made mistakes and capitalized on the mistakes of the other side.

A Confederate cannon pointed at the Union stronghold of Henry House. (Photo by Hunner)

In the summer of 1861, as the nascent armies formed and moved towards each other, each side came up with their master plan. Lincoln and his generals decided to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond in Virginia and attack the rest of the South through the Ohio, Tennessee, and Mississippi Rivers. Davis and his Confederate generals chose a strategy similar to that of George Washington during the Revolution —fight a defensive war and keep the South’s armies in the field. With these best laid plans and with politicians and newspapers crying out for action, the North and South grappled near a stream called Bull Run.

Armies at the beginnings of wars often fail to fight effectively. Generals struggle to adapt to new weapons and tactics, inexperienced soldiers face death and mayhem, jealousy and infighting with officers all contributed to mistakes that cost men their lives and lost each side opportunities to seize a crippling victory and put an early end to the war. Manassas was just the beginning of the North and the South figuring out how to fight.

Two classmates from West Point’s class of 1838 commanded the opposing armies at Manassas. General P. G. T. Beauregard from Louisiana had distinguished himself in the Mexican American War and in 1861 was the head of West Point. He left there to take charge of the Confederate forces in Virginia. He had to protect Richmond and threaten Washington. Beauregard’s army on the eve of battle amounted to 20,000 troops, but Johnston’s soldiers in the Shenandoah Valley rushed to the battle at a key moment.

The commander of the Union forces, General Irvin McDowell, also served in the Mexican American War and was an instructor at West Point. On July 1, 1861, the Union Army had 186,000 soldiers, of which McDowell devoted 30,000 to attack Beauregard. Both sides thought that an early victory would led to a quick war. Both looked to Manassas for that victory.

A replica of the Henry House is the white one on the right  This would have been the view that Confederates had as they advanced on this strong hold of Union cannons. (Photo by Hunner). 

The Union’s march on Manassas slowed due to ambling troops and supply wagon delays. Men carried only three days of rations with not enough supply trains to deliver more. On July 21^st, McDowell’s troops tried to skirt around the Confederate left, but scouts saw the glinting of the sun off of weapons in the slow moving columns and warned Beauregard that his flank was getting turned. Then the two sides fell on each other with fury and fear. At first, Union soldiers and cannonry pushed the Confederates back toward the railroad line. An eager battery led by Capt. James Ricketts advanced to the hill near the Henry House and blasted shrapnel into the advancing Confederates as sharpshooters picked off the Union artillery men.  

Enter General Thomas J. Jackson. Also a veteran of combat during the Mexican American War, Jackson commanded of a large contingent of Virginians. At Manassas, the arrival of his troops in the afternoon rallied the retreating Southerners and gave rise to “There stands Jackson like a stone wall! Rally behind the Virginians!” 

Statue of Stonewall Jackson at the spot he stood to rally the Confederates at the First Battle of Manassas
(Photo by Hunner)

More Confederate troops arriving by train from the Shenandoah Valley flooded onto the battlefield and started pushing Union soldiers back. Perhaps the mad dash to the rear by a horse drawn wagons dispatched to get more ammunition for Ricketts’ cannons set off the retreat among the green Union troops.

Ricketts' batteries near Henry House (Courtesy Manassas NBP web site)

The retreat turned onto a rout as Northern soldiers fled to D. C. Union forces hunkered down around their capital with Confederates poised only twenty-five miles away. In the eleven hour long battle at Manassas, the South lost 2,000 men killed, wounded, or missing. The North lost 3,000.

The number of casualties shocked everyone. Much worse would come. Manassas smacked away any notion that this would be a quick war.

Confederate artillery proved vital for their victory at Manassas (Photo by Hunner) 

After Manassas, most northern states quickly responded to Lincoln’s call for more troops, but they saddled the federal army with a major flaw. Troops voted for their officers who sometimes had little combat or even military experience. Many Confederate officers graduated from West Point or fought in the Mexican American War. At first, Southern troops had better leadership, while Northerners had better engineers.  

An important lesson learned at this early point was the importance of railroads in the Civil War. They provided rapid deployment of troops as well as supplied the necessary materiel and food to keep men fighting. Railroads also brought the battered wounded back to hospitals. Railroad junctions proved vital for rapid responses to wide flung theaters of the war.

Another early lesson was to standardize uniforms and flags to prevent confusion in combat about whether you were fighting was friend or foe. 

In the same month as the First Battle of Manassas, action out West also gave the South an early victory. On July 24th, 1861, 250 Texans invaded southern New Mexico and captured the village of Mesilla in a brief exchange of muskets and mountain howitzer fire. That winter, General Sibley and his 2,500 men reinforced Mesilla with the ultimate goal of capturing the gold and silver mines in Colorado. If that went well, they wanted to continue onto the ports in California.

Once assembled at Mesilla, the Confederates marched up the Camino Real to Santa Fe. They avoided the strongly defended Fort Craig but did beat back the Union forces who guarded the ford of the Rio Grande at Valverde on February 21st. Union troops retreated before the advancing troops, burning supplies along the way. Within a few weeks, a Confederate flag flew over the Palace of the Governors on the central plaza in Santa Fe.

Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe (Photo by Hunner)

After resting in ancient Santa Fe, the Confederates headed east along the Santa Fe Trail towards Colorado. Twenty-five miles out, they ran into Union soldiers and cannons at Glorieta. The Union forces fell back, waiting for reinforcements and getting closer to their own heavily defended Fort Union fifty miles away.

Live fire demonstration of a Mountain Howitzer at Glorieta (Courtesy Pecos NHP website) 

On March 28, 1862, the two sides with about 1,300 soldiers each clashed along the Santa Fe Trail. By day’s end, Union forces had retreated another mile or so. As both sides bedded down, news came to electrify the New Mexicans and Coloradans. The previous night, a column of Union soldiers led by Major John Chivington slipped around the Confederates and found the 100 plus wagons that held all of the Texans’ ammunition, supplies, and personal belongings. Although the South was winning on the battlefield, it had to retreat back down the Camino Real with little food and low morale. Several years later, Chivington led the raid at Sand Creek.

Why mention the Battle of Glorieta along with First Manassas? First, from Virginia westward, across farmlands, through dense forests, and over swollen rivers and parched deserts, armies fought in large and small battles. This was a continental wide conflict with many side theaters. In fact, two weeks after Glorieta, the Battle of Shiloh on the Tennessee River began to pry open the South to water borne invaders from the North. We will go to Shiloh and Corinth in next week’s blog.  Second, the Union forces that remained in New Mexico then targeted Apaches and Navajos for removal to an inhospitable stretch of the Pecos River far away from their ancestral homelands. Third, as a proud New Mexican, I take any opportunity to tell the history of my state.

The Civil War did not go well at first for the North. Both sides bivouacked for the winter of 1861-62, recruited and trained new soldiers, and looked for the weaknesses in their enemies. Each side hoped for decisive victories in the coming year.

The ruins of the Pecos Pueblo became a National Monument to preserve the Indian town and the Spanish colonial church. In 1990 with the addition of the Forked Lightening Ranch and the Glorieta Battlefield, it became the Pecos National Historical Park.

Notes from the Road, October 31, 2016

I had a fire under me these last two weeks—probably because I saw the end of this part of my road trip to the National Parks and wanted to cover a lot of ground. Or maybe I am just channeling the craziness of our times. Or maybe I was like a horse that was smelling the barn. In these two weeks, I went from Huntsville Alabama to Las Cruces, New Mexico. At the end of this posting, I have an update on the parks on the Atlantic Coast hit by Hurricane Matthew.

When I left Huntsville, I dropped south to Birmingham to drive along the civil rights’ trails in Alabama and Georgia. I visited an old friend from NMSU who is now teaching at Georgia State University. Phil, Gabby, and Ben are thriving in Atlanta. He is making interesting films with his students around the country and in Hungary. Then I dropped even farther south to the Gulf Coast around Biloxi, Mississippi. After that, I went into Cajun country and gave my first lecture about my travels this year. Thank-you Thomas and the Public History Program at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette for sponsoring me at ULL. I then stopped off at Houston to visit the U.S.S. Texas where my grandfather served in World War I and visited some more ex-pat friends from New Mexico—Nancy and Mike.  Here’s a bit more in-depth details about my travels since October 17^th.

From exhibit at the Selma to Montgomery Civil Rights Heritage Trail

The struggle to end segregation and obtain voting rights for minority citizens consumed the U.S. in the 1950s and 60s. This fight brought a radical change to the United States. While the legacy of slavery continues to create inequality in our country, the right to vote and the end to legal racial segregation have moved us toward fulfilling the promise of the Declaration of Independence of equality for all.

I started on the civil rights’ trail at the Kelly Ingram Park in Birmingham. The photos and TV footage of police attacking teenagers with German shepherds and of firemen blasting protestors with high pressure fire hoses shocked the public in 1963.

From the exhibit at the Civil Rights Institute, Birmingham

At the park, a young man approached me and asked if I wanted a tour. So for $5, he gave me a tour of the park. We first went to a sculpture of four girls seemingly carefree. It is a tribute to the four girls who died in the bombing of the 16^th Avenue Baptist Church in September 1965. The church was a headquarters for the protests.

I listened to my guide as he read the captions on the historical markers. This might have been his first tour. While his history was a little thin, I was glad to talk to someone who was born and raised in Birmingham.

My guide at the Ingram Park in Birmingham

At one point, another person who I had seen guiding people around yelled at us saying we needed to know our history. This man told us that the fire hoses employed against the protestors were high pressure ones, used to put out fires on battleships. Part of the response to such tactics was to sit down and wrap your arms and hands around your neck and head to protect those vital parts of yourself.

Across the street from the park is the Civil Rights Institute. I had visited this museum over twenty years ago, and it is still a powerful testament to the will of the people of Birmingham to fight for their rights as citizens. At its entrance is a book for people to write what they did for civil rights. At the conference that I had attended twenty-five years ago, Julian Bond gave a keynote speech where he said that he went through that book and noticed that the first mention of Martin Luther King, Jr. came after more than 300 people had entered their memories. He pointed out that the civil rights protest movement did have its leaders, but it was a ground swell of Americans from all walks of life who fueled the protests and fought for the end of segregation.

The museum focuses on the role that Birmingham played with graphic images of police attacking children, of bodies tumbled down sidewalks by fire hoses, and of four girls killed by a KKK bomb as they prepared to attend a church service. Birmingham also served as the place where King wrote his letter from the Birmingham jail that helped publicize the movement. The Institute also has an oral history center where people record their memories about the civil rights movement, and then researchers can access those interviews.

The four girls killed at the 16th Avenue Church (From exhibit at Civil Rights Institute)

Down the highway at Montgomery Alabama, the Rosa Parks Museum is a moving tribute to her as well as to the tens of thousands of African Americans who boycotted the public buses in 1954-1955. Sparked by Parks’ refusal to give up her seat to a white rider, African Americans found alternative ways to get around the city for over a year. This was an early success of the growing protest movement to use boycotts and passive non-violent resistance to change the Jim Crow laws of the county. Unfortunately, the museum did not allow photos in the exhibit area but there was a fascinating media installation using a replica of a bus from the time period where we could see inside the bus and follow Parks’ refusal to move and subsequent arrest.

From the exhibit at the Civil Rights Institute

I then drove the Selma to Montgomery Civil Rights Trail. In March 1965, to protest the lack of voting rights in Alabama, a march set out from Selma for the state capitol fifty-five miles away. Just outside of Selma after the Pettus Bridge crossed the Selma River, police stopped the marchers with force and drove them back to the city. The news coverage of this shocked the nation. A young John Lewis, now a US Representative from Alabama, led the march and got trampled. After President Johnson called out the National Guard to protect the protesters, the marchers set out again and arrived at the capitol in five days. It was a major moment in the Civil Rights movement.

John Lewis in the white coat at the head of the march from Selma to Montgomery (From the exhibit at the Selma to Montgomery Civil Rights Heritage Trail)

Marching to Montgomery (From the exhibit at the Selma to Montgomery Civil Rights Heritage Trail)

Tuskegee drew my attention next for two reasons. First, the Tuskegee Institute has been a college since 1881. There George Washington Carver taught, researched, and mentored for decades and found new ways for farmers, especially black farmers to use peanuts and other crops. The Institute also trained African Americans in a variety of skills and trades.

On top, George Washington Carver at his lab at the Institute.  Above, students at the Institute learning shoe-making.
(From the Tuskegee Institute NHS)

Not far away, Black airmen trained as pilots and then went to Europe to help win World War II. One of the airfields they used is preserved by the NPS.

On top, the hangers at the airfield. Above, pilots learning to fly combat missions
(From the exhibit at the Tuskegee Airmen NHS) 

On the way to Atlanta, I visited the Horseshoe Bend National Military Park. At this little known battlthe in 1814, Andrew Jackson and his militia and Indian allies defeated a group of the Creek Nation which led to all of the Creeks removal to Indian Territory in present day Oklahoma.

Creeks defend at Horseshoe Bend (From the exhibit at Horseshoe Bend NMP)

In Atlanta, I first drove up Kennesaw Mountain where the South had a last ditch defense to prevent the Union from entering Atlanta in 1864.

Confederate cannon defending the top of Kennesaw Mountain (Photo by Hunner)

The Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta (Photo by Hunner)

I then went to the Martin Luther King, Jr. NHP. At the Ebenezer Baptist Church, at the Visitors’ Center, at his and Coretta Scott’s King grave, it evoked the spirit of the times and of King himself.

Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King's crypt at the King NHS (Photo by Hunner)

I then drove to the Gulf coast and over to Louisiana where I gave my first lecture on my travels at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. The next day, I drove to Houston and presented a copy of the diary that my grandfather wrote while on the battleship the U.S.S. Texas when he was in the Navy in World War I. I got a great tour of the battleship by Albert who took me into some of the places that are not open to the general public. It was amazing to be in the exact places on the warship where my grandfather had been as young man 100 years ago. Thanks Albert and Sarah from the Texas.

Photo of the band on the U.S.S. Texas given to me during my visit.  My grandfather might be one of the clarinetists.  

After a pleasant visit with transplanted friends Mike and Nancy in Houston, I visited the LBJ NHP in Johnson City, Texas. I was smelling the barn by then and anxious to get home after three months on the road, but I had to stop at the LBJ Ranch. There, I joined a tour of the Texas White House led by Rangeer Charlotte. LBJ went to his ranch over seventy times in the five years he was president—a quarter of his time in office. His Great Society shaped the country that we live into today in minor and major ways. And then he went to war and divided the country. More about all of these places in future blogs.

So after three months on the road going east and south, after 19,000 miles and as many photos, and after numerous parks and historic sites, I am now back home. I will continue writing up the places that I visited where history actually happened in the coming weeks. I also will figure out how to turn these postings into a book. Let me know if you have any suggestions.

Here’s an update on the NPS units damaged by Hurricane Matthew:

The worst hit is Fort Pulaski—it is closed until further notice due to the damage from Mathew. 

The others are opened with some damage or disruption of services. Fort Sumter reopened on Oct. 12 with no restrooms on the island. The ferries’ heads are available. 

Fort Matanzas in Florida is open but the ferry service is down due to damage to the dock.

The following units are open: Castillo de San Marcos NM, Wright Brothers NM at Kitty Hawk,  a

Thomas Edison National Historical Park, West Orange, New Jersey

Imagine life without recorded music, movies, instantaneous communication. Even more basically, imagine life without electricity. The origins of our digital era with its amenities began during a great age of invention in the last quarter of the 19^th century, epitomized by Thomas Alva Edison. He and his team created products that continue to impact the lives of billions of people worldwide. In this posting, we will visit his red brick laboratory complex at West Orange, New Jersey. It is an incredible window into Edison and his empire of inventions, some of which started in this laboratory. From lighting the night to providing recorded music and theater for consumption by a mass audience, Edison revolutionized our world.

In the Chemistry lab building at Edison NHP (Photo by Hunner)

Born in 1847, Edison was the youngest of seven children and did not speak until he turned four. As a teenager, he worked on the Grand Trunk Railroad selling candies and newspapers, and perhaps his deafness began then, when a station master boxed his ears in punishment for a fire he started during a chemical experiment in a baggage car. Later, Edison commented: “Even though I am nearly deaf, I seem to be gifted with a kind of inner hearing which enables me to detect sounds and noises that the listeners do not perceive.”  

While a teenager, he learned to decode telegraph messages. In the 1860s, telegraphs connected the country as messages sped across distances that previously took weeks and even months to travel. Telegraphy, like digital technology today, transformed the country. Here’s another similarity: the dots and dashes in Morse Code share the binary cypher of the digital’s 0s and 1s.

Telegraph key with Leyden jar batteries (Photo by Hunner)

In 1863, Edison became an itinerant telegraph operator, filling in for the operators who left to serve in the Signal Corps during the Civil War. He wrote down news reports, sent business orders, and coordinated the safe passage of the trains. While there, Edison invented a machine which recorded rapidly incoming messages and then replayed them more slowly. As the energy that transported the telegrams, electricity attracted Edison’s inventive mind.

Electricity has been around a long time. The Greeks noticed a weird attractive charge when they rubbed amber. William Gilbert, a 17^th century English physician named static electricity “elektron,” the Greek name for amber. Electrical innovators started storing this electricity in glass containers filled with water. In 1746, Pieter van Musschenbrock of the University of Leyden touched such a jar and was jolted to the floor. These early batteries were subsequently called Leyden jars. In 1831, the Englishman Michael Faraday rotated wire between magnetic poles and produced an electrical charge. Using this knowledge, he created “dynamos,” which generated powerful electrical currents.

Back in the telegraph office at Western Union, Edison discovered how to send messages over a single line in both directions, boosting the traffic that existing lines could carry.  At the time, the major users of telegraphs included railroad companies, news organizations, and stock market firms. Stock prices came out as dots and dashes on a paper ticker tape which Edison then transformed into spoken words. From this, he recorded “Mary had a little lamb” onto a tin foil cylinder, and the recording industry began.

Edison claimed to make a small invention every ten days and a big one every six months. All told, he held a world record 1,093 patents which included among ones for phonographs, incandescent light bulbs, generation and distribution systems to light homes and businesses, nickel-iron-alkaline storage batteries, multiplex transmitting telegraph systems, early motion picture viewers, electrographic vote recorders, and cement. He was also working on making synthetic rubber.

Here’s his greatest invention— bringing light to night. True, gas lights illuminated buildings and streets, but they caused fires. Edison’s challenge was two-fold. First, make a low wattage incandescent light bulb. Second, build a network that safely transmitted hazardous electrical currents across city blocks and into buildings. In 1878, he carbonized a thin thread of cotton, attached it to platinum posts and then vacuum sealed it in a glass bulb. Passing a current through it lit the bulb which burned for hours with very little use of electricity. Edison prepared to show the public his latest invention.

On New Year’s Eve in 1879, people thronged to Edison’s lab at Menlo Park, New Jersey to witness the forty lamps that lit up its buildings and grounds. Biographer Mark Essig described the scene: “those assembled were among the first people in the world to see the marvelous glow of incandescent light. No flame, no flicker, no soot, no fumes—just pure steady light.”[1] With a workable light bulb, Edison then announced that he would build a commercial station in New York. He set out to “subdivide the light” for homes and businesses.

To safely electrify the tip of Manhattan, Edison had to build a reliable generator and a distribution system of wires, conductors, and insulators. Using his campus at Menlo Park, the electrical team tested different generators. They also coated copper wire with various types of insulation, strung the wire on poles, and sent electricity through the system. After months of trial and error, Edison successfully activated the Menlo Park system on November 2, 1880. Now he was ready to electrify New York City.   

With the confidence and the drive needed to make electricity a commercial success, Edison chose a fifty-one square block segment of lower Manhattan, centered around Wall Street. He installed a dynamo at the station on Pearl Street and then proceeded to bury his conducting lines underground, resulting in frequent delays and mounting costs. Nonetheless, on September 4^th, 1882, the generators at the Pearl Street station spun up, and lights flickered on at the office of one of Edison’s main financial backers, Drexel, Morgan and Company. Only fifty-nine customers that day could switch on their lights, but incandescent lighting spread quickly through New York City.

Edison moved the invention factory from Menlo Park to West Orange in 1887. The lighting business’s success helped finance the expansion. This complex (which is the Edison National Historical Park) holds buildings for experiments in chemistry, metallurgy, a powerhouse, a main laboratory, and the Black Maria, Edison’s movie studio.  The main three story lab building has a library, heavy and precision machine shops, a supply room, and a recording studio.

Edison's headquarters at West Orange. The  five story building behind where his inventions were commercially manufactured. (Photo by Hunner)

Edison's library at West Orange (Photo by Hunner)

Today, visitors can see many of the machines and materials that Edison and his team used.

You can look into the storeroom which held everything from human hair and exotic plants to metal tools and platinum. As Edison noted, the supply room held “everything from elephant hide to a Senator’s eyeball.” The rest of the first floor is overwhelmed with all types of heavy machinery and tools. The generator at one end of the large room ran large overhead belts that powered the lathes, drills, saws, and grinders to build anything from a lady’s watch to a locomotive.

The historic photo on left shows how  the heavy equipment workshop has not changed. (Photo by Hunner) 

The top floor was devoted to sound. A Steinway piano sits in one room surrounded by phonographs and wax cylinders that recorded music while another has a wide range of megaphones to broadcast sound. The largest megaphone in this room stands eight feet nigh.

A megaphone and the cylinders for recorded sound projection sound  (Photo by Hunner) 

As I walked past the cabinets that held light bulbs, a variety of phonographs, movie projectors, a miner’s safety cap with light, and numerous other products of Edison’s imagination, I realized that these were the first jukeboxes, the first electric violins and guitars, the first movie projectors, and the first I-Pods. Most of the electrical devices so essential to our lives today have some DNA from Thomas Edison.

Amplified violins (Photo by Hunner)

Tucked into a corner of the Edison Park is Black Maria, the first movie studio in the world. This weirdly shaped building showcases Edison’s pioneering efforts in creating motion pictures. In 1888, Edison and his team created the Kinetoscope which used a revolving shutter to expose still images of a moving object onto celluloid film.

Edison's movie studio, the Black Maria (Photo by Hunner)

By 1894, the West Orange team turned to the commercial application of moving pictures. They built a wooden cabinet that allowed individuals to view things like horses galloping or trains. Edison balked at making a movie projector, thinking that the market was in these penny arcade shows.[2]

A kinetoscope-- notice the viewer at top for one person (from wikimedia)

In addition to what he invented, Edison also changed the way inventors worked. As biographer Paul Israel notes: “As he invented a system of electric lighting, Edison was simultaneously reinventing the system of invention.”[3] While he turned his good ideas into ground breaking inventions, he also created the corporate invention factory that protected those new ideas and turned them into profitable consumer products.

He also looked to the future and foresaw the need for alternative energy: “We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature’s inexhaustible sources of energy--sun, wind and tide! ….  I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.” From practical products to visions for tomorrow, Edison revolutionized the world we live in. He helped create our electronic and now digital world, and his diverse inventions continue to define and inform our era.

Edison died in 1931, but this lab continued until 1935. Then it closed, and everything in it mothballed. The family eventually turned the campus over to the NPS in the early 1960s. Upon inventorying the site, the NPS found over 400,000 objects on the grounds, from a rhinoceros horn in the stock room to the massive machinery in the main building to phonographs and movie projectors. Many historic sites have buildings and artifacts that are replicas of the original. Not here. These are the actual buildings, labs, and equipment that Edison and his team of inventors and engineers worked with as they changed our world.

Edison's elevator from the heavy equipment shop floor (Photo by Hunner)

In 1963, Congress established the Edison National Historic Site which included the lab complex and Edison’s nearby private resident, Glenmount. In 2009, Congress redesignated the site as the Thomas Edison National Historic Park.

Next week, we return to the Civil War and visit some of the early battlefield parks.

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[1] Essig, Edison and the Electric Chair, 39.

[2] Josephson, Edison, A Biography, 284-90.

[3] Israel, Edison, a Life of Invention,167.