Joshism
Captain
- Joined
- Apr 30, 2012
- Location
- Jupiter, FL
I spent two weeks this month traveling around the SE US, including many first-time visits for me to Civil War battlefields and museums. I have previously only been to Gettysburg, Antietam, various Virginia battlefields, and some forts. I had a friend with me who is a fellow history major, but is not a Civil War buff. here are my thoughts on the Civil War sites I visited:
Vicksburg
It was great to travel both siege lines and see so much of the former workers preserved. Thayer's Approach was especially fascinating. The USS Cairo was also great. The amount of monuments on this battlefield are staggering and some of them are quite impressive, especially the open dome Illinois monument.
Visiting on a Tuesday there were a large number of pedestrians (mostly joggers). The visitor center is woefully inadequate for this park. It really needs a large modern center to encompass the entire Vicksburg Campaign and 1863 siege warfare. The monuments are artistically impressive, but the signage is almost entirely in the form of old iron tablets listing minutia that 99% of visitors will not read. Sight lines between the Union and Confederate lines are completely obscured along the majority of the line by modern tree growth.
Of personal interest I was disappointed the Coonskin Tower is only mentioned in passing (as far as I saw). I think that is one of the neatest things about the entire siege.
The CD audio tour purchased from the gift shop is decent, but several decades old. It talks about "stopping the cassette tape!"
Time: 5.5 hours
Tupelo
The only preserved part of the battlefield is probably smaller than a football field with a few monuments and marked graves, plus a small interpretive sign. Not really worth bothering with.
Corinth
The Corinth Civil War Interpretive Center is a sleek, modern museum. It includes the most substantial look at the war itself that I encountered at any of my dedicated Civil War stops. In addition to military operations in and around Corinth, there is also an interesting exhibit on the "contraband camp" at Corinth. It doesn't go very deep into Corinth and Iuka though. If you're visiting Shiloh it's worth including the time for this museum as well, especially since it is free.
Time: 1 hour
Shiloh
The battlefield preservation here seems really well in terms of historical roads and trees-where-they-were-in-1862. The most significant observation I noticed as that many of the farm fields are on small ridges or hilltops meaning they do not provide quite the same field of fire as one might expect. Especially the field south of the Hornet's Nest: the fenceline along the "Sunken Road" (which is apparently no longer sunken anywhere that I saw) and Ruggle's Battery are barely visible from one another because the clear field between them is bisected by a low ridgeline.
I chanced upon a gentleman at the replica Shiloh Church giving a talk about the history of the wood churches and the active stone and brick church next door.
Some of the open fields had not been mowed in awhile resulting in difficult seeing where markers were.
The effort to distinguish the iron unit markers by color and shape helps, but they are not different enough to avoid periodic confusion.
The park's driving tour is not very helpful in understanding the battle. The only audio tour available at the gift shop was from the same series as the dated Vicksburg tour so we chose not to purchase it. Separate tours for the first and second days fighting would probably be a good idea. The visitor center is small, but features a lengthy video about the battle.
Time: 4 hours (visitor center + general driving survey of the whole battlefield)
Stones River
Given that this was one of the bloodiest battles of the war it is a shame what has been done here (or perhaps more accurately not done). There was a sleek, modern visitor center and the rangers were friendly (one turned out to hail from the same area of FL where I live). The driving tour is very brief and the rain that date limited exploration on foot. Of all the battlefields I visited this seemed likely the most most in need of bike and foot exploration. Signs are almost non-existent on this battlefield and only at most half of the battlefield is even intact. Seeing the rock-strewn cedar forests and the imposing location of Mendenhall's Battery were pretty neat though. A real shame.
Time: 2 hours, including driving between disconnected sections of the battlefield. It would have been worth spending a couple more hours in good weather and with a good walking tour guidebook (if one exists).
Chattanooga
I didn't visit what's left of Missionary Ridge, but I did go to Lookout Mountain. It's still a very imposing height with an amazing view. As a bonus, the previous day's rain provided a morning of heavy fog giving a really "Battle Above The Clouds" (and sometimes IN the clouds) feel. We went to Point Park, including walking down the Ochs Museum which has a few interesting exhibits and a great view of Moccasin Bend. We also went to the small visitor center just outside Point Park which is most notable for the huge 'Hooker at Lookout Mountain' painting.
Overall, it felt more like a scenic jaunt than history.
Chickamauga
A friend had loaned me the 2 hour audio tour narrated by Peter Cozzens which is well worth it, especially since the park's tour completely skips the fighting on Sept 19th! Cozzens' audio tour is itself incomplete, skipping some important stops like the Kelly Field salient and Wilder Tower, which I made a point to see. This battlefield is a great example of subtle terrain that one only really appreciates in person. I had really wanted to read David Powell's books before visiting, but I didn't get to do so. (I had read Cozzens several years ago.) Snodgrass Hill is fairly imposing terrain. Wilder Tower is pretty neat, but trees have gotten so tall that it's not very useful anymore for surveying the battlefield.
The visitor center was real nice - the best I saw on my visits this trip. I was particularly pleased with the light-up map which seems a rarity (First Manassas has one) which I find a great way to illustrate the flow of a battle. There was also a good demonstration video of loading and firing a Spingfield muzzleloader vs a Spencer breechloader. I was here on a Saturday afternoon and the park seemed fairly busy, although the amount of thru traffic on the main road through the park (the old LaFayette Road) was at times problematic.
Time: 5 hours - probably the best battlefield to visit in the Western Theater.
Kennesaw Mountain
Do not visit this battlefield on a weekend! We tried to go here on a Sunday morning and the place was an absolute zoo. Sadly, it was not due to anything historic, but instead due to a huge number of local Atlanta area residents using the park for walking, often with their dogs.
The visitor center was also a great disappointment. While it gives a wide presentation of the entire Atlanta Campaign, the place is so dimly lit that half of the text is unreadable. The text would still be problematic even with properly lighting: I'm 6'3" and many panels had text that ran from eye level down to my knees!
Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History
This is really a three-part museum: railroads in the Civil War, the Glover Machine Works (a local railroad locomotive manufacturer), and the Great Locomotive Chase including The General (the original, not a replica). They have a very cheesy half-hour movie about the Chase which is basically just a cheesy knock-off of the Fess Parker movie.
Great place to visit if you're a big railroad buff, but not really remarkable for Civil War buffs. I'd recommend just reading "Stealing the General" by Russell Bonds instead.
Time: 1.5 hours
Atlanta History Center
The Atlanta History Center is the future home of the Atlanta Cyclorama and from my visit there I think it will be a great home for it. This is a real top-notch museum with a large and I think permanent exhibit about the entire Civil War. Nothing groundbreaking, but like the Tredegar museum it is really good to see a modern look at the war in a major Southern city. The museum has various permanent and rotating indoor exhibits, plus a large outdoor garden and living history sites. I only had about 90 minutes here before they closed. I'll definitely come back in a few years when the Cyclorama opens (I think they're aiming for 2018). When all the exhibit halls are open this is a place you can spend the better part of a day.
Andersonville
The site of the prison is marked out, but only the main gate and one corner have been replicated. The lay of the land was rather surprising as the stream through the middle of the prison cuts quite the valley through the middle.
Besides the prison site, there is also modern POW museum which is very sleek and has some good videos interviewing former POWs, but the emphasis on the "POW experience" is a bit too artistic. I don't mean to say inaccurate, but don't expect to come away being able to compare and contrast life in Andersonville to life in the Hanoi Hilton.
Time: 3 hours
General Thoughts
Boy was I spoiled by Civil War sites in Virginia! I was blown away by all the modern signage there, most if I think sponsored by the Civil War Trust for the 150th anniversary. Gettysburg was also top-notch when I was there in 2009. Sadly, the western battlefields feel very neglected and incredibly dated. Given how intact and significant Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Chickamauga were this is rather sad.
I can also happily report all the videos at the NPS visitor centers have been modernized. I've seen a few comments on here about how some of them used to be really hokey and dated so thankfully those are all gone.
Bonus Thought
If you plan to visit Shiloh and Vicksburg, include an extra 3 days in your trip itinerary to travel the entire Natchez Trace from Natchez to Nashville. Lots to see and do along the way, plus great scenery.
Vicksburg
It was great to travel both siege lines and see so much of the former workers preserved. Thayer's Approach was especially fascinating. The USS Cairo was also great. The amount of monuments on this battlefield are staggering and some of them are quite impressive, especially the open dome Illinois monument.
Visiting on a Tuesday there were a large number of pedestrians (mostly joggers). The visitor center is woefully inadequate for this park. It really needs a large modern center to encompass the entire Vicksburg Campaign and 1863 siege warfare. The monuments are artistically impressive, but the signage is almost entirely in the form of old iron tablets listing minutia that 99% of visitors will not read. Sight lines between the Union and Confederate lines are completely obscured along the majority of the line by modern tree growth.
Of personal interest I was disappointed the Coonskin Tower is only mentioned in passing (as far as I saw). I think that is one of the neatest things about the entire siege.
The CD audio tour purchased from the gift shop is decent, but several decades old. It talks about "stopping the cassette tape!"
Time: 5.5 hours
Tupelo
The only preserved part of the battlefield is probably smaller than a football field with a few monuments and marked graves, plus a small interpretive sign. Not really worth bothering with.
Corinth
The Corinth Civil War Interpretive Center is a sleek, modern museum. It includes the most substantial look at the war itself that I encountered at any of my dedicated Civil War stops. In addition to military operations in and around Corinth, there is also an interesting exhibit on the "contraband camp" at Corinth. It doesn't go very deep into Corinth and Iuka though. If you're visiting Shiloh it's worth including the time for this museum as well, especially since it is free.
Time: 1 hour
Shiloh
The battlefield preservation here seems really well in terms of historical roads and trees-where-they-were-in-1862. The most significant observation I noticed as that many of the farm fields are on small ridges or hilltops meaning they do not provide quite the same field of fire as one might expect. Especially the field south of the Hornet's Nest: the fenceline along the "Sunken Road" (which is apparently no longer sunken anywhere that I saw) and Ruggle's Battery are barely visible from one another because the clear field between them is bisected by a low ridgeline.
I chanced upon a gentleman at the replica Shiloh Church giving a talk about the history of the wood churches and the active stone and brick church next door.
Some of the open fields had not been mowed in awhile resulting in difficult seeing where markers were.
The effort to distinguish the iron unit markers by color and shape helps, but they are not different enough to avoid periodic confusion.
The park's driving tour is not very helpful in understanding the battle. The only audio tour available at the gift shop was from the same series as the dated Vicksburg tour so we chose not to purchase it. Separate tours for the first and second days fighting would probably be a good idea. The visitor center is small, but features a lengthy video about the battle.
Time: 4 hours (visitor center + general driving survey of the whole battlefield)
Stones River
Given that this was one of the bloodiest battles of the war it is a shame what has been done here (or perhaps more accurately not done). There was a sleek, modern visitor center and the rangers were friendly (one turned out to hail from the same area of FL where I live). The driving tour is very brief and the rain that date limited exploration on foot. Of all the battlefields I visited this seemed likely the most most in need of bike and foot exploration. Signs are almost non-existent on this battlefield and only at most half of the battlefield is even intact. Seeing the rock-strewn cedar forests and the imposing location of Mendenhall's Battery were pretty neat though. A real shame.
Time: 2 hours, including driving between disconnected sections of the battlefield. It would have been worth spending a couple more hours in good weather and with a good walking tour guidebook (if one exists).
Chattanooga
I didn't visit what's left of Missionary Ridge, but I did go to Lookout Mountain. It's still a very imposing height with an amazing view. As a bonus, the previous day's rain provided a morning of heavy fog giving a really "Battle Above The Clouds" (and sometimes IN the clouds) feel. We went to Point Park, including walking down the Ochs Museum which has a few interesting exhibits and a great view of Moccasin Bend. We also went to the small visitor center just outside Point Park which is most notable for the huge 'Hooker at Lookout Mountain' painting.
Overall, it felt more like a scenic jaunt than history.
Chickamauga
A friend had loaned me the 2 hour audio tour narrated by Peter Cozzens which is well worth it, especially since the park's tour completely skips the fighting on Sept 19th! Cozzens' audio tour is itself incomplete, skipping some important stops like the Kelly Field salient and Wilder Tower, which I made a point to see. This battlefield is a great example of subtle terrain that one only really appreciates in person. I had really wanted to read David Powell's books before visiting, but I didn't get to do so. (I had read Cozzens several years ago.) Snodgrass Hill is fairly imposing terrain. Wilder Tower is pretty neat, but trees have gotten so tall that it's not very useful anymore for surveying the battlefield.
The visitor center was real nice - the best I saw on my visits this trip. I was particularly pleased with the light-up map which seems a rarity (First Manassas has one) which I find a great way to illustrate the flow of a battle. There was also a good demonstration video of loading and firing a Spingfield muzzleloader vs a Spencer breechloader. I was here on a Saturday afternoon and the park seemed fairly busy, although the amount of thru traffic on the main road through the park (the old LaFayette Road) was at times problematic.
Time: 5 hours - probably the best battlefield to visit in the Western Theater.
Kennesaw Mountain
Do not visit this battlefield on a weekend! We tried to go here on a Sunday morning and the place was an absolute zoo. Sadly, it was not due to anything historic, but instead due to a huge number of local Atlanta area residents using the park for walking, often with their dogs.
The visitor center was also a great disappointment. While it gives a wide presentation of the entire Atlanta Campaign, the place is so dimly lit that half of the text is unreadable. The text would still be problematic even with properly lighting: I'm 6'3" and many panels had text that ran from eye level down to my knees!
Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History
This is really a three-part museum: railroads in the Civil War, the Glover Machine Works (a local railroad locomotive manufacturer), and the Great Locomotive Chase including The General (the original, not a replica). They have a very cheesy half-hour movie about the Chase which is basically just a cheesy knock-off of the Fess Parker movie.
Great place to visit if you're a big railroad buff, but not really remarkable for Civil War buffs. I'd recommend just reading "Stealing the General" by Russell Bonds instead.
Time: 1.5 hours
Atlanta History Center
The Atlanta History Center is the future home of the Atlanta Cyclorama and from my visit there I think it will be a great home for it. This is a real top-notch museum with a large and I think permanent exhibit about the entire Civil War. Nothing groundbreaking, but like the Tredegar museum it is really good to see a modern look at the war in a major Southern city. The museum has various permanent and rotating indoor exhibits, plus a large outdoor garden and living history sites. I only had about 90 minutes here before they closed. I'll definitely come back in a few years when the Cyclorama opens (I think they're aiming for 2018). When all the exhibit halls are open this is a place you can spend the better part of a day.
Andersonville
The site of the prison is marked out, but only the main gate and one corner have been replicated. The lay of the land was rather surprising as the stream through the middle of the prison cuts quite the valley through the middle.
Besides the prison site, there is also modern POW museum which is very sleek and has some good videos interviewing former POWs, but the emphasis on the "POW experience" is a bit too artistic. I don't mean to say inaccurate, but don't expect to come away being able to compare and contrast life in Andersonville to life in the Hanoi Hilton.
Time: 3 hours
General Thoughts
Boy was I spoiled by Civil War sites in Virginia! I was blown away by all the modern signage there, most if I think sponsored by the Civil War Trust for the 150th anniversary. Gettysburg was also top-notch when I was there in 2009. Sadly, the western battlefields feel very neglected and incredibly dated. Given how intact and significant Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Chickamauga were this is rather sad.
I can also happily report all the videos at the NPS visitor centers have been modernized. I've seen a few comments on here about how some of them used to be really hokey and dated so thankfully those are all gone.
Bonus Thought
If you plan to visit Shiloh and Vicksburg, include an extra 3 days in your trip itinerary to travel the entire Natchez Trace from Natchez to Nashville. Lots to see and do along the way, plus great scenery.