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.

---

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

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

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

Notes from the road, October 17, 2016

This week, I drove to history from Indian Removal in the 1830s through several Civil War sites, a whiskey distillery, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and ended with the Space Race in Huntsville. It’s been a busy week.

I started out going over the Smokies with a stop at the Museum of the Cherokee Indians in Cherokee, North Carolina.

Depictions of the three Cherokee leaders, Ortenaco, Cunse Slote, and Wogi, who went to England in 1762 to meet the English King. (From exhibit at the Museum of the Cherokee Indians)

Since I passed through Oklahoma at the end of July, I have crossed the Trail of Tears and wanted to see what the Cherokee Museum said about it. Here’s an interesting irony. A Cherokee ally saved Andrew Jackson’s life at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend but then as president in the 1830s, he forced some 16,000 Cherokees from their homelands to walk to Indian Territory in Oklahoma. They walked across nine states and over 2,000 miles, marshaled by local and state militias. Estimates vary, but between 2,000 to 6,000 perished along the way. Later in the week, I stopped by the Cherokee Removal Memorial Park in Tennessee where 90% of the deportees crossed the Tennessee River.

The crossing of the Tennessee River at Blythe's Ferry, Tennessee (Photo by Hunner)

I got a taste of the Smokies at the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest. You might remember Kilmer from the poem he wrote called “Trees.” It begins “I think I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree.” He later volunteered for World War I where he was killed by a sniper in the Second Battle of Marne. I walked through old growth trees and breathed in the rich poetry of the forest.

Old growth trees at the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest. Note the person to the right of the trunk.
(Photo by Hunner)

I also dove into World War II and the role that Oak Ridge in Tennessee played in creating an atomic bomb. I went on a public bus tour and saw the second nuclear reactor ever built. I am an atomic historian with a specialty on Los Alamos, so I was glad to learn more about the role that Oak Ridge played in enriching the uranium that went into the atom bomb. Thanks Stephen for the informative tour.

The second atomic reactor preserved at Oak Ridge. (Photo by Hunner)

In Chattanooga, I visited the Chickamauga National Military Park where Confederates routed Union forces in September 1863. Chattanooga sat as a key gateway to the South. The Confederates won Chickamauga and forced the Union army to retreat to Chattanooga until reinforcements could arrive. Come they did up the Tennessee River on steamboats, and at the end of November, General Grant and his soldiers counterattacked. They dislodged the Confederates from the top of Lookout Mountain in the Battle Above the Clouds. The next day, Union troops made a mad dash up Missionary Ridge which sealed a stunning victory and opened up the Deep South to Sherman’s invasion the next year.

The battlefield at Chickamauga (Photo by Hunner)

Viewing Chattanooga from Lookout Mountain. In the distance, Missionary Ridge is the low dark line  just beyond the city.
(Photo by Hunner)

Atop Missionary Ridge with Lookout Mountain looming in the background.
(Photo by Hunner)

I ran into several parkgonauts in Chattanooga. High above the city at the Point Park Visitors’ Center on Lookout Mountain, I ran into Kaylin and Justin, sister and brother Junior Rangers. They both liked the nature parks, especially Yellowstone. They have visited about twice as many parks as me. It is great to see such young parkgonauts.

Kaylin and Jason proudly show off their Junior Ranger outfits and badges.
(Photo by Hunner)

Also at Point Park, I talked with Brad Atkins from Indianapolis. His family specializes in Civil War parks and again, they have hit about twice as many of those parks as I have.

Having lunch at the Pickle Barrel back in Chattanooga, I struck up a conversation with a young man in an NPS ball cap. Patrick worked on trails at the Grand Canyon last summer and now is doing the same along the Natchez Trace. His crew goes out for nine days, camping and making trails, and then they get five days off. This just goes to show that there’s something for all of us in the parks. I am driven by U.S. history, others by a youthful embrace of our natural beauties, others by the Civil War,  and some to preserve nature by building trails. Good on all of you who enjoy our parks and historic sites.

For all those who ever wanted a free shot of Jack Daniels, here it is. (Photo by Hunner) 

I then stopped at the Jack Daniels Distillery in Lynchburg, Tennessee. Hey, whiskey is history too. As our guide Ron said: “Whiskey greases the wheels of politics.” Many frontier families supplemented their income by turning corn into whiskey as did Jack Daniels, who had his own distillery by the age of 16. In 1866, Daniels was first in line to register his distillery, making it the oldest such one in the country.   I had an informative, entertaining, and a slightly intoxicating tour of how whiskey is made.

Tour guide Ron gives us a short lesson on the finer aspects of sipping Tennessee whiskey
(Photo by Hunner)

West of Lynchburg, I jumped onto the Natchez Trace Parkway to visit the grave of someone I have followed across the country—Meriwether Lewis. The co-leader of the Corps of Discovery was traveling on the Trace with the maps and journals from his trip to the Pacific and back when he stopped for the night at a log cabin. He was found dead the next morning, whether of foul play or by suicide is unknown.

The memorial over Meriwether Lewis's grave on the Natchez Trace Parkway.
(Photo by Hunner)

I next went to the place where Grant won a reputation for being a fighting general and won a welcome Union victory in the early part of the war. In April 1862, the Confederate Army under General Albert Sidney Johnston and the Union forces under General Ulysses Grant stumbled into each other at Shiloh Church. Grant wanted to capture the railroad hub of Corinth to the south. The resulting two-day battle claimed a staggering 3,500 men killed with another 20,000 wounded or missing. The victory at Shiloh opened up the Tennessee River for the Union and allowed steamboats coming down the Ohio River to land its soldiers deeper into the South. It also brought Grant to Lincoln’s attention who eventually appointed him in charge of the entire U.S. army.

Confederate cannons aimed at the Hornet's Nest at Shiloh. (Photo by Hunner)

John Wesley Powell, who later had such an influence on the American West, lost an arm at Shiloh. His biographer, Wallace Stegner, described it like this: “Losing one’s right arm is a misfortune; to some it would be a disaster, to others an excuse. It affected Wes Powell’s like about as much as a stone fallen into a swift stream affects the course of the river. With a velocity as his, he simply foamed over it.”[1]

Powell led the first expedition down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, rowing with his one arm.

South of Shiloh about thirty miles is Corinth, where the Confederate army retreated to after Shiloh.

The crossroads of the Charleston-Memphis Railroad and the Mobile-Ohio Railroad at Corinth, Mississippi.
(Photo by Hunner)

Corinth was like Chattanooga, a hub for railroad transportation into the south. The Confederacy’s longest east-west railroad line as well as the longest north-south route crossed here. In May 1862, Union forces attacked and forced the Confederates to abandon the town. The South tried to recapture it in October 1862 but failed.

Union forces occupied and fortified Corinth until the beginning of 1864, severing the east and west sections of the South and also cutting the Deep South from its northern states. Occupied Corinth also attracted "Contrabands,” slaves who had freed themselves and sought refuge with the Union Army. Eventually, 1,000 ex-slaves from Corinth’s Contraband Camp volunteered to fight in the Civil War as the 1^st Alabama Infantry Regiment of African Descent.

No photos from the Corinth Contraband camp exist but here is what it might have looked like. (From exhibit at the Civil War Interpretive Center, Corinth, Mississippi)

Two of the 200,000 African American Union soldiers who fought in the Civil War.
(From the exhibit at the Civil war Interpretive Center)

After Corinth, I hooked back east since I wanted to stop by a couple of possible historic sites in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. I first tried to find a Tennessee Valley Authority museum near the Wilson Dam. Muscle Shoals was the first headquarters of the TVA which electrified this region with hydroelectric power in the 1930s. I had no luck. Then I sought FAME, the music studio where Aretha Franklin recorded RESPECT and other songs. I did find it, but being Sunday, it was closed. “C. L. O. S. E. D. —Find out what it means to me.”

FAME Recording Studio, Muscle Shoals, Alabama. (Photo by Hunner)

On Monday, I spent the afternoon at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. They built rockets, humongous rockets. I talked with docent Bill Vaughn who worked on the environmental systems which helped humans live in space and reach the moon. With the stages of a massive Saturn V rocket hanging overhead, he broke down how a rocket that weighed 6,000,000 pounds escaped the earth. The first stage lit the candle with 600,000 gallons of fuel which burned in 2 1/2 minutes to produce 7,500,000 pounds of thrust. Having attained escape velocity from the earth, this part of the assembly disconnected and fell into the Atlantic Ocean. The fuel in the second stage burned enough to establish an earth orbit and then that fuel tank was jettisoned over the Indian Ocean. The third stage powered the module towards the moon and then peeled off into the cosmos about halfway there. I had forgotten the simplicity and the complexity of the Moon Shot. Thanks Bill for reminding me about that inspiring time. The Space and Rocket Center also holds Space Camps for students who are driven by science and adventure. I look forward to hearing about some of you getting us back on the moon in ten years.

Docent Bill Vaughn talked with me underneath the lunar module at the top of a Saturn V rocket. The third stage starts at the dark band above his head and runs back to the yellow circle, which begins the second stage. The first stage extends from where the banner hangs on the left to the doors seen at the end of the hall. (Photo by Hunner)

This coming week, Driven by History will continue to roll through the South. I will visit civil rights sites, a battlefield that dates to a war in the 1830s, and a  World War II air base. I am lucky to listen to so many good FM radio stations  playing blues, jazz, and local music in Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Thanks NPR.

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[1] Wallace Stegner, Beyond the 100^th Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West, 17.