19th Alabama (Joseph Wheeler) Monument

I've always found this monument fascinating. There was to be no monuments for an individual. When you tour Shiloh you will see no busts or equestrian monuments. Nothing that glorifies a general about the common soldier. But then you come across this monument. Its technically for the 19th Alabama but its really for Joseph Wheeler. I've always wondered how this came to pass, did the commissioners decide that since it didn't have a bust it was okay? Did they make the side that only says "Wheeler" face away from the road for that reason or was that the plan all along? It is located along the Hamburg-Savannah Road on the west side of Cloud Field.

Crescent Monument

Louisiana regiments confuse me. Not all of them but a great many do. More than other states they seem to have designations that are not numeric, yet they do also have a numeric designation that they hardly are ever referred to by. [In an upcoming post I'll do more to explain one particular regiment that confuses me completely, it sustains losses at Shiloh yet I can find no mention that it was at Shiloh] One such regiment is the Crescent Regiment. I've seen it referred to as the 24th Louisiana but usually it is simply the Crescent Regiment.

After Corinth its term of service expired and the remaining men were put into the 18th Louisiana. Later the regiment was reorganized and it reclaimed the men who had gone into the 18th Louisiana. In 1863 two other units were added to the regiment to form the Consolidated Crescent Regiment.

At Shiloh it was part of the group that surrounded the Hornet’s Nest on April 6th. The next day it supported the Washington Artillery. Its losses in the battle were 23 killed, 84 wounded and 20 missing. This monument is located east of the intersection of the Eastern Corinth Road and the Hamburg-Purdy Road.

(front of monument)
CRESCENT REGIMENT,
LOUISIANA INFANTRY,
COL. MARSHALL J. SMITH,
POND'S BRIGADE,
RUGGLES' DIVISION,
BRAGG'S CORPS,
ARMY OF THE MISSISSIPPI

(back of monument)
On left of Confederate line Sunday morning to guard bridge over Owl Creek. At 2:00 p.m. ordered to center near Duncan house to engage right of the enemy under Gen. Prentiss in Hornets' Nest, where, at about 5:30 p.m. he surrendered. On Monday joined the 19th Louisiana were in support of Washington Artillery. Later with Col. Wheeler's command formed rear guard of retreat. Casualties both days, 127. Erected by a private of Co. B.

Shiloh

I had originally intended to begin posts on Shiloh around the anniversary but here we are a few weeks later and I'm just starting it. So be prepared for a ton on Shiloh now, I will follow the pattern of my recent efforts for Chickamauga and Chattanooga in which I showed tons of views of the terrain and monuments, with some interruptions for book reviews and other observations. That occupied much of the last 6 months and I expect Shiloh to be done in similar depth. I'll be starting off with Confederate monuments and progressing from there.

Symposium Books

After our successful symposium we did end up with some extra books. Some titles we did a good job of guessing how many we'd need and others we did not do as good a job. We will be selling our excess titles here. Send me an email and I will respond with total shipping costs and I can send you a paypal invoice, or you can send a check.

Echoes of Thunder: A Guide to the Seven Days Battles by Matt Spruill. Signed by the author. I can have this one personalized too if you'd like. Roundtable price $23, retail $24.95
Winter Lightning: A guide to the Battle of Stones River by Matt Spruill. Signed by the author. I can have this one personalized too if you'd like. Roundtable price $23, retail $24.95
Stones River: Bloody Winter in Tennessee by James Lee McDonough. Signed by the author. Roundtable price $21, retail $23.95

War In Kentucky: From Shiloh to Perryville by James Lee McDonough. Signed by the author. Roundtable price $15, retail $17.95
A Southern Boy in Blue: The Memoir of Marcus Woodcock, 9th Kentucky Infantry (USA) by Kenneth Noe. Signed by the author. Roundtable price $15, retail $18
Doctor Quintard, Chaplain C.S.A. and Second Bishop of Tennessee: The Memoir and Civil War Diary of Charles Todd Quintard by Sam Davis Elliott. Signed by the author. Roundtable price $35, retail $42.95

Soldier of Tennessee: General Alexander P. Stewart and the Civil War in the West by Sam Davis Elliott. Signed by the author. Roundtable price $23, retail $22.95
Champion Hill: Decisive Battle for Vicksburg by Timothy B. Smith. Signed by the author. Roundtable price $18, retail $22.95

We also ordered in a few other titles. None of these are signed.

Civil War Tennessee: Battles and Leaders by Thomas Lawrence Connelly. Roundtable price $6, retail $7

Tennessee's Forgotten Warriors: Frank Cheatham and His Confederate Division by Christopher Losson. Roundtable price $24, retail $29
Memoirs of the Stuart Horse Artillery Battalion by Robert J. Trout. Roundtable price $35, retail $45
Chimborazo: The Confederacy's Largest Hospital by Carol C. Green. Roundtable price $18, retail $22.95

This post also appears at http://rmcwrt.blogspot.com/

How the South Could Have Won the Civil War by Bevin Alexander

How the South Could Have Won the Civil War: The Fatal Errors That Led to Confederate Defeat by Bevin Alexander.

This book suffers from one huge flaw, the war in the West is essentially ignored. Every so often there will be a sentence about a big battle in the West, but basically the author feels that if the Confederates win in the East they win the war. I would have liked at least a chapter explaining how an Eastern theater win translates into a war victory. I'm willing to buy that early in the war a huge Eastern theater win might have ended the war, but by 1863 too much has been lost in the West, that I don't think Lincoln would have quit after one huge Eastern theater loss.

But I did like this book. Even if you don't buy all of Alexander's arguments (and I didn't) it made you think about things in a different light. In fact I agreed with most of his points until the Gettysburg chapter. In there he keeps making the point that Lee should have done everything he could to get to Philadelphia first. That once he knows Meade is close he should have continued towards Philly instead of concentrating at Gettysburg, Lee is at least a few days march ahead of Meade and he should continue north, select the good ground and make Meade fight him. That Meade will be forced into a battle to save Philadelphia as Lincoln/Stanton/Halleck will be burning up the telegraph lines with messages to him to attack. I don't think this is true because even with Harrisburg out of the picture Philadelphia is not isolated and troops could have been rushed there from the north or from Washington to defend the place until Meade arrived. Then Lee might have found himself between two armies.

Then if Lee selects Gettysburg as his area for the battle Alexander feels that Lee should have retreated to Cashtown and used that ridge line to make his stand. Or even sat on Seminary Ridge and let Meade attack him. I don't think these would have worked out so well. It might have, but Meade had his cavalry with him and could have scouted for the best flank to hit. Lee's cavalry was at least a day away yet, but maybe Meade would have waited until the 3rd to strike, and then Stuart would have been in place to block Meade's cavalry. A whole lot of what ifs which I don't think Alexander deals with too well. In all of these Alexander makes the point that the defender usually wins the battle. But its much more than Lee going on the defensive at Seminary Ridge to guarantee victory, and Alexander makes it seem that simple. That once Lee is done maneuvering Meade (or any of the previous army commanders) into the spot he wants to fight at all he has to do is become the defender and he's the winner. This is too simplistic, it does not account for an Antietam at which McClellan might have won the day as the attacker if only he had kept attacking.


Alexander says that the best method of fighting was to anchor one flank on a hill or river, fight a defensive battle and then to strike the enemy's flank by using your flank that was not pinned down to a topographic item. That this was the method Jackson advocated but not what Lee always chose. At one point he says Longstreet also came to see Jackson's point and that after Jackson's death Longstreet advocated the same sort of battles to Lee. In one of those "what if Jackson had been at Gettysburg" moments Alexander says that Jackson might have been able to convince Lee to fight the battle differently, more along the Jackson model, that Longstreet tried to talk Lee into that sort of battle and that Jackson had more influence with Lee than Longstreet to convince him to fight differently. I thought it weird that Longstreet and Jackson were being compared similarly, but I can see his point. Alexander points out at every battle how Jackson's method was applied, and sometimes was not at all. At some battles it just was not possible because the position chosen did not allow the Confederates to make the flanking counter attack. Alexander stresses the point that better ground should have been chosen that would allow for this. That defeating the enemy is only part of the equation, that the Confederates need to score huge wins to win the war and the easiest way to knock out an army is to deliver a huge blow on the heels of a defeat. For instance, just imagine the destruction Jackson could have done to the battered elements of Burnside's army after Fredericksburg if a flanking counter attack had been possible. Instead the big guns across the river kept Lee's army away.


Alexander had one statement that I thought was particularly interesting. In a section on the Shenandoah campaign (page 63) he wrote: "War is fundamentally a struggle between two intellects rather than a conflict of masses. Jackson, in his surprise descent on Front Royal, was attacking the mind of Nathaniel Banks more than the forces of Colonel Kenly. Jackson had chosen a long and roundabout march rather than hazard a direct attack on Banks at Strasburg. He did this because physical obstacles are inherently less formidable than the hazards of battle. Human resistance is the one great incalculable in warfare. No general can predict human response, and therefore great generals avoid battles whenever they can." I thought this was a very interesting point and one I agree with. The truly successful generals in the war tended to avoid battles, instead achieving their aims through maneuver. Sherman seems to be the poster boy for this style as once he's an army commander his forces mainly maneuver to gain territory instead of relying on winning huge battles.

Rocky Mountain Civil War Roundtable

I have created a new blog dedicated specifically to the Rocky Mountain Civil War Roundtable, http://rmcwrt.blogspot.com/. I have included the symposium recaps over there. There will probably only be 1 or 2 posts a week over there, mainly announcements of upcoming events plus recaps of meetings. That means unless it directly pertains to me I will not post roundtable news on this blog anymore. If there is something especially worthwhile there I will probably give it some publicity here but that's about it.

Sam Davis Elliott

Our final speaker was Sam Davis Elliott talking about General Alexander P. Stewart, about whom he has written a fine biography. I'll admit I have not read the biography, but I have a copy and will one day soon read it.

Stewart is one of those commanders who have largely been forgotten. This is a bit strange in that he was one of the few a corps commanders in the Army of Tennessee. There are artillery captains in the Army of Northern Virginia that have had more written about them.

One thing I did know about Stewart is that he largely escaped most of the bickering in the Army of Tennessee. While much of the high command was dividing into pro or anti Bragg factions Stewart somehow managed to walk a thin line between both groups.

Sam mentioned that he got the bug to write about Stewart after passing his statue on the courthouse grounds in Chattanooga. Somehow I did not know about this statue, and I've been to Chattanooga a number of times. Next time I'm there I'll make a point of visiting the courthouse to see the statue.

The last time I was in Chattanooga I happened to meet Sam. I had gone back there for a week of wandering and on my last day there I participated in a ranger led hike of the Wauhatchie. As we gathered in the parking lot we introduced ourselves to each other and we finally met in person after exchanging emails over the various message boards we both belong to. The idea of the symposium was in my mind at that time, I think at that point we were still discussing if we though we could pull it off. As we walked up Tyndale Hill the ranger asked if we wanted to do some bushwhacking to the very top (the trail was not officially open yet). I think Sam was the first to speak and his answer was something along the lines of "how else would we spend our time, lets go up there, be among the first to see it." That sort of bushwhacking mentality is the same as our study groups' have and I knew right then that he was one of us. Once we started inviting people to the symposium he was one of the first ones we asked, he cemented it that day on Tyndale Hill. I knew if he had that sort of enthusiasm about bushwhacking to see entrenchments he could easily project that enthusiasm into a talk. And I was right, I really enjoyed the talk and mentally moved the Stewart book to the top of my to-read-list.

Matt Spruill

Our fourth speaker was fellow round table member Matt Spruill. Even though he's a member he was no slouch when it came to presentations. I've always enjoyed discussing the war with Matt because he offers a perspective from a modern military officer. Also Matt does a good job of giving a balanced view of things. He will not blast a general's decisions without first exploring the position that general was in; what did he know of the situation, what were the options available to him? Then if a general still made a poor decision he will not hold back with his opinion, but he makes you think critically of what options really did face the general in the heat of the moment. The decision might seem bad at first but when you look at all the sides of the issue often times you come away with a greater appreciation of what the general faced and what he finally decided to do. This is what Matt has added to my thinking of the war.

During the symposium Matt presented the battle of Stones River, subject of his most recent battle field guide (and I've reviewed it here previously). Matt had two statements that I thought were interesting and needed more contemplation.

The first was that "successful commanders need to make judgement decisions and take acceptable risks." This goes along with things I've been taught by Matt before but I've never heard him phrase it quite that way. In some ways it seems so simple, the good generals make decisions after weighing the different options, figure out what risks they are willing to take and choose accordingly.

The Stones River statement Matt offered was that Bragg should have weighted his main attack on the left by adding Breckinridge's force behind Cleburne. Bragg would have been taking a gamble that Rosecrans would not attack his weakened right wing but it would have increased the odds of a successful attack by the left wing. We could all debate whether doing so would have been an acceptable risk. I believe that it would be an acceptable risk because if the attack had succeeded the results might have been extraordinary. Rosecrans might have been completely surrounded and forced to fight for his survival, and Bragg might have dealt the major blow that the Confederacy needed in the West to revive its sinking fortunes. As it happened Bragg did not manage the battle well enough to provide a major victory and ended up with a tactical draw and a strategic defeat.

Kenneth Noe

Kenneth Noe provided one of the better jokes of the event. In leading off his talk he said that he was from Virginia and there they “know that the war was fought in Virginia, with a few days in Maryland and one bad week in Pennsylvania.” Noe is also a Cleveland Browns fan and said his heart broke when he drove past Mile High Stadium where his Browns lost two AFC Championship games (its now Invesco Field but the new stadium sits next to where the old one was).

But on a serious note Ken talked about the Perryville campaign. I thought he did a very good job of laying it all out. He got a little into the blow-by-blow stuff but not so much that your head is swimming with details. I especially liked how he detailed the various options available to Bragg at the beginning of the campaign and how the boldest option somehow became the best option. One of his gems of insight was when he said that it impossible to understand the Civil War if you separate the military, political and social elements. That they are all connected, in fact these separate forces are what ends up pushing Bragg to select the option he does select (instead of swinging from Tupelo to Chattanooga and then north into Kentucky, he could have struck Buell between Corinth and Chattanooga or he could have assaulted Corinth directly).

Ken also talked a bit about how weather played such a huge role in this campaign, as well as the other campaigns of 1862 in the West. He said that if he was doing the book now he’d try to explain the toll of drinking very little water (and then having substandard water when it was available) had on the soldiers and animals of both armies.

I’ve read his book, and have tramped those fields. As a sign of how well his talk was received by the rest of the audience, as soon as his talk was over his book sold out from our book room. I was glad to hear about that as I knew it meant we made a good choice in selecting him as a speaker.

A theme that kept popping up during the day was memory, and Perryville is no exception to the memory debate. In Perryville’s case its a matter of how a pretty major battle somehow falls out of the public memory. Perryville started to disappear from the newspapers right away as other events quickly filled the paper, things like the battles of Iuka and Corinth, the fall Congressional elections and the debate of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. Then after the war it remained a lesser battle. But the locals have worked hard to protect it. They have done their best to prevent it from being changed, and last week they actually did so again by rejecting a request from a developer to build many homes.

Timothy Smith

The second speaker of the day was Tim Smith. Not to slight any of our other fine speakers but this was the presenter I was most anxious to see. Tim is a former Shiloh ranger who I’ve bumped into a few times before at the park, I’ve enjoyed all of his books and he was talking about my favorite battle to study. He did not disappoint.

Basically Tim talked about the “battle after the battle,” the historiography of Shiloh. This is the sort of thing I love and I was worried that others might find it not as interesting. But the few people I’ve talked to about this so far liked it, it was not the normal for them. They adapted well to a Shiloh talk that was not about the movements of regiments and batteries.

He laid out that there are four main schools of Shiloh historiography. The first is the veterans school and it started as soon as men had a chance to sit down and talk about what happened that day. This school lasted into the 1890s when the number of veterans dwindled.

The second school began with the formation of the park and the appointment of David W. Reed as the first historian. This is when the first mentions of the Hornets’ Nest emerge at all and it will soon grow to legendary status as, perhaps, the most important part of the battle. Reed’s regiment fought in the Hornets’ Nest which would explain why Reed put more emphasis on this than any previous author. This school dominates current thinking and Tim brought up the story that at the Visitor’s Center are two large maps (made by Reed) that visitors can touch and the spots that Reed emphasized have been touched so often that they have been rubbed off the map. Next time I’m there I’ll be sure to check this out. The spots are Shiloh Church, Pittsburg Landing, the Hornets’ Nest and the Sunken Road.

The third school Tim called the Johnston/Sword school. To this school the death of Johnston was the most important event of the battle. Wiley Sword’s book came out in the 1970s and he recently revised edition spends a great deal of time trying to determine conclusively where Johnston was killed. Long story short, Sword believes its much farther north than where its marked at the park. I’m not convinced and I got the impression that very few others agree with Sword.

The final school would be revisionist. This first appeared in the 1960s with Cunningham’s dissertation but it remained largely unread until recently (in an edited version by Tim and Gary Joiner). The first published book in this school would be Larry Daniel’s. This school is still developing but it is reevaluating the other schools and putting more emphasis on events in other locations, like what Sherman and McClernand accomplished on the Union right.

If I had to guess (and I should have just asked the question but didn’t think of it then) I would say that Tim is of the revisionist school. I think he’s willing to accept parts of Reed and Johnston’s school but feels that their emphasis is not the whole story.

My apologies that our roundtable's president's head sticks into the photo. I wanted to move into the aisle to take pictures, but didn't want to disrupt the presentation at all.

James Lee McDonough

James Lee McDonough started our day off with an overview of the Western Theater. He started it with all sorts of data about the two sides and I was starting to wonder where he was going with it. One thing he said which I had never heard (or don’t remember it) is that Missouri had the second highest white population in 1860 among slave states, only trailing Virginia and if you subtracted West Virginia it was first. Kentucky was third. His point being that if those two slaves states could have been firmly in the Confederacy it would have been a huge boon in manpower alone. He also talked about some of the natural resources these two states would have been able to contribute too.

Something else I had never thought about is that the Confederacy was roughly twice the size of the colonies of 1776. One of the reasons the British lost that war was because fighting on that scale is difficult, not only in space but everything that goes along with it (logistics being the major consideration). Of course since then numerous railroads had been built and the river system in the West favored the Union. But even so there was some belief that the size of the project might be enough to prevent the Union from winning.

He also went into Kentucky’s geographic importance. I’ve heard this before, but to paraphrase a Confederate Kentucky makes invasion of the West more difficult because the Ohio River forms a natural defensive line and would prevent the Union from exploiting the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers (at least until they breached the forts that would likely be built at the confluence of each of those with the Ohio.

He also made two statements I found interesting discussion fodder. One is that Shiloh was a “narrow tactical victory with major strategic importance.” I don’t have a problem with that statement at all, I think it fits, but I can see that others might not agree. The other is, “If the Kentucky line [the reality line thru Bowling Green not the imagined line on the Ohio] was intact at the time of Antietam would that battle have as much importance, would Lincoln issue the Emancipation Proclamation?” His point being that nothing about Antietam makes it vastly important than that the Emancipation Proclamation follows. I’m not so sure about this one. I can understand that the situation would then basically be a small Union foothold throughout all theaters but Antietam would still have significance as an invasion turned back. I don’t know if that would be enough of an event for Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, but since he probably still had it in a desk drawer waiting for his moment me might have seized on this event as the big moment again.

Symposium a Success

The symposium went very well, better than I expected. Everything ran very smoothly, we didn’t seem to have the hiccups one would expect from it being our first event. We learned a few things on how to run the day better next time, mostly minor things. Like we didn’t think of it until halfway through the first speaker but having a pitcher of water handy would be very useful. Also next time I think we should go with a wireless mic, one speaker wanted to wander more and all of them occasionally leaned back a bit from the mic so it likely was not as loud at the back of the hall as it should have been. We didn’t have a panel discussion and I think that is something we need to incorporate into our next event. We also did very well with book sales and could have probably ordered more. But we had very little to base our order on, we just made a guess and we were a little low, but that’s better than having too much stock.

The presenters themselves were fantastic. We had selected authors we thought would be good but we truthfully had no idea how well it would turn out. Just because a guy writes a good book does not mean he can speak in front of a crowd. But our guys were a good batch, I’ll post a bit more about each one this week as they all brought up some insights and questions I’d like to share and comment on.

They were also highly complimentary of what we had put together. I’m not sure if they were just being nice but I’d like to believe they were being honest. Down the road we’ll send out surveys to speakers and attendees to gauge reactions to our event, I think then we’ll have a complete picture.

The hall was pretty good sized, I took this first thing in the morning. Eventually we'd fill about half the place. The Community College of Aurora videotaped the first half of the day for their community cable access station, hopefully we'll get a copy of that. I'd love to share it on here or youtube but we'll see if that's possible.
Here is our book room. We had books for all of our presenters. I'd like to thank the University of Tennessee Press, Kentucky University Presss and Savas-Beatie for helping us out with this. The University of Tennessee Press did the most for us as they also sent catalogs, bags, a table cloth, and other promotional materials. We've dealt with them from the very beginning on this, back when it was just a kernel of an idea.

One of our roundtable members, Bob Moulder, set up a display showing a fraction of his impressive collection. My favorite aspect of Bob's collection is that there is a personal story behind each item. He just doesn't have a certain model of sword, he knows who carried it in the war and what happened to him, that's impressive. That's a Bob behind the table, but not Bob Moulder, its his friend and day's assistant Bob Huddleston.

Busy Week

Sorry for the lack of posts this week, its been a busy busy week, both at work and personally. The symposium is tomorrow, after nearly 18 months of preparation its finally upon us. I think the latest head count put us at 65 or so, enough to break even. Sometime after the event we'll have to sit down and figure out if its financially viable to do it every year, in any respect this one won't have cost us anything. One of our worries was that if it failed we'd have ruined the treasury for years to come. Instead we did okay. We'll have to see what last minute registrations we get, plus book sales the day of the event. That will likely determine if its something to try again. Next week I'll provide a recap of the event.

If you're interested send me an email or a comment and I'll get some info out to you. Some forms are available on this blog, look at the right side of the screen in the section called files.

Symposium Update

We're closing in the Rocky Mountain Civil War Roundtable's symposium. As I've mentioned before we've got good slate of presenters:
James Lee McDonough providing a Western Theater overview
Timothy Smith covering Shiloh
Kenneth Noe talking about Perryville
Matt Spruill discussing Stones River
Sam Davis Elliott presenting Alexander Stewart

We've been busy this past few weeks with last minute details. I've been pleasantly surprised with the increase in phone calls and emails about the event. I'll admit that a month ago I was starting to wonder if this might be a huge flop, but this past week I've fielded a ton of questions about the symposium. And its been questions like "where can I send my money?" These people will be there. And some of them are coming a great distance. I think some people are driving upwards of 12 hours to come to this. Now I hope it does well enough that we decide this will be an annual event. If the recent batch of new registrations is any indication this just might be an annual event.

If you're interested send me an email or a comment and I'll get some info out to you. Some forms are available on this blog, look at the right side of the screen in the section called files.

Hope to see you there.

Final musings from the road

After taking care of the funeral and divvying up pictures, Jess, son and I headed down to Aurora, Illinois to see her aunt and uncle (and get all sorts of food). On one day we went to a zoo (the name eludes me now) and while there I happened upon this pair of cannons. Truly big guns. I didn't see anything saying from what war they were from and the plaque nearby says it was dedicated to the local marines in 1957, so that doesn't clear up anything. I tend to lose focus in events past 1876 so someone with a better knowledge of overall history might instantly say, "that's obviously from WW2, you can tell by the banding" but I have no idea.

The zoo itself was pretty small but actually a good size for a four year old. I think this alligator was thinking of a little boy lunch.
The night before we left I told my fiance that we could be at Shiloh in one day's drive, maybe 8-10 hours, but she was having none of that.

Sheboygan monument

The week before grandpa's funeral dad had gone back to see him. While there he snapped some photos of the town monument for its Civil War soldiers. As you can see its been a long winter in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. I'm somewhat surprised at the good condition of the monument. Its over 100 years old and usually monuments show a bit more wear from the weather, but this one seems to have held up well. I especially like the details on it denoting the different branches of service; infantry, artillery, cavalry and navy. Sheboygan is on Lake Michigan so I'm sure there were some boys who signed up for naval duty because their family had been in the shipping business on the lake. That's just a guess on my part but I think its a reasonable conclusion to make.

Thanks

I'd like to thank everyone for the comments and emails expressing condolences on the loss of my grandfather. I appreciated it very much.

My Grandfather

A week ago on Saturday morning my mother called to inform me that grandpa (my dad’s father) had passed away. This was no great shock, he was 93, he hadn’t been in the best of health for years (though few people don’t have some health problems by 93).

Initially I was not sure what I would do, would I go to the funeral or not? Its a two day drive to Wisconsin and I didn’t have the money for a plane ticket. I had barely started to hem and haw when Jess basically said we’re going. I’m not sure what her exact words were anymore but she was decisive when I needed it. Quickly we started packing the Jeep so that the three of us could make the trip back. I think my parents were a little shocked to hear that the three of us were going to join them in the drive back, forming a tiny caravan. I got the call at 7:30 and by noon we were on the highway. I think that’s pretty good considering we still had to drop off the dog at her parents’ house, go to the bank and get some other supplies before hitting the road.

The drive itself went pretty good, I was shocked how well it went. We convinced the four year old we were on an adventure and that kept him interested enough that he didn’t get too bored. We also had a DVD player (a godsend), some games and plenty of snacks. On the way home later in the week this combination would start to lose its magic but initially it was a success.

The funeral was a little odd in that it did not seem that sad. I don’t remember hearing anyone getting too emotional. It was harder for everyone at the cemetery but at the funeral home it did not seem, from where I was sitting, that there was any intense crying. But that is somewhat to be expected because grandpa was 93. This was not a huge shock so everyone had previously had their time to come to grips with it happening someday in the future, that someday turned out to be now. My dad had flown out to Wisconsin the week before to see his father, not knowing if he had two more years or two more months.

We debated what to tell our son. He had never been to a funeral before, the few we’ve attended together previously we’ve left him with a babysitter. Eventually we decided on telling him grandpa was sleeping (if the casket hadn’t been open it would have been easier to discuss, I think). So far he hasn’t had any sort of adverse reaction to going to sleep. I thought he might after he watched us put my grandfather in the ground. Maybe he didn’t see enough to realize what was happening, we sat near the back and at the cemetery he was also at the rear of the crowd.

I was a pallbearer, I wished I had the time to pack some better clothes instead of dark jeans and a black sweater. I could have packed my sportcoat and some actual black dress pants. I don’t feel too bad though as very few of my relatives were exactly dressed to the nines, I didn’t stand out for my lack of wardrobe and I think most people realized that we had packed quickly and hit the road so we did not have the perfect clothes.

It was good to see all my cousins and to introduce my family to my future wife and son. They got to meet my 21 first and second cousins, plus my aunts and uncles. In all I think they met about 30 relatives of mine. After the funeral we went to a sports bar and had a family dinner.

The next two days we went through grandpa’s house. The real treasure were the boxes of very old pictures that we did not know that he had. My cousin Daniel does genealogy and we both had a strong suspicion that there was some stuff in the attic but we were amazed by the riches. Daniel set up his printer as a copier and made a ton of copies for the various relatives that wanted them.

In our searching of the house we also found some old lace doilies that my grandmother made. We all took some, I think Jess and I ended up getting 4. We also got some old china, I believe mom said that it was my great grandmother’s but I don’t remember the specifics anymore, I’ll have to ask. I also took his old nightstand and its now next to my bed. I got some old books too, basically some Wisconsin Blue Books and a biography of George Washington. I also got his old wool coat, it fit me well and no one else wanted it so I took it for practical and sentimental reasons. The main haul was the family photos, if that’s all I would have gotten I would have been quite happy. I was also glad to get these few other pieces as they have a family history behind them. Lace doilies are nice but having ones your grandmother made is even better. Hopefully they’ll stay in pretty good condition and can maybe be passed on to the next generation. If that doesn’t happen its not a big deal but it would kinda be nice if it did happen.

One of the more interesting finds in the family papers was I found (and was allowed to keep the original after the copies were made) of promotion certificates for one of my uncles making him a corporal and a sergeant. I don’t have the originals in front of me (when I do I’ll probably scan them and post them here because they are kinda neat) so my memory is a bit sketchy but the one for corporal was in the 2nd Wisconsin (for the Spanish American War) and then the one for sergeant was for the 137th US Infantry (or it might be the 127th, the memory is hazy on the number right now)

I'm glad I went. I went more to support dad than anything else. I'm glad Jess was decisive and that all three of us went. That really meant the world to me.

One of my favorite photos of my grandpa is this one from a hunting trip. I believe that the story behind the photo is that he got his deer on Saturday, was home on Sunday for church and while still in his church clothes a friend stopped by to take the picture. So my grandfather is in his Sunday best with a deer. But at first glance it might appear that my grandfather was the gentleman hunter and did his hunting in a coat and tie with shined shoes. Ironically the wool coat he’s wearing is the same one I took out of his closet. The hat was there too but did not fit me otherwise I would have probably taken that too.


Walter John Kurtz
1 December 1914 – 15 March 2008

No posts this week

My grandfather died this morning. I am heading back to Wisconsin right now. I will resume normal posting activity on March 24th.

Confederate Cemeteries in Chattanooga

This concludes my posts on Chattanooga. As has become customary I like to end a battlefield by showing the cemeteries associated with the battle. I've previously shown the National Cemetery so it is now time to show the two Confederate cemeteries in Chattanooga. The first, and the one actually associated with the battle, is located just east of downtown next to the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga campus. This is a very old cemetery. We also caught the trees in a lovely spring bloom.

The other local cemetery is east of town, pretty far east in fact. This cemetery is for the men who died in hospitals here in 1862 when the front was much closer to Nashville than Chattanooga. It seems quite large to only have 155 soldiers (all unknown) buried here.

Rossville Gap

Here is the third Iowa monument at Chattanooga, the first two were mentioned here and here. Iowa monuments seem to all have text that offers a parting salvo to the Confederates. This one is no exception. The inscription reads:
"May this shaft register alike the sacrifice of our fallen brothers and our purpose to perpetuate their memory by citizenship worthy of the heritage they left us, a re-united and glorious union."

This monument is in Rossville Gap, in a sliver of land surrounded by roads. That makes some sense as the gap naturally constricts the flow of traffic to a smaller point. Add a monument to the mix and I'm sure the city traffic planners have long wished the monument was 100 yards up the ridge so they'd have a bit more room to add lanes. Interestingly if you stay on this road it will take you directly to the Chickamauga battlefield. As such I have driven past this monument probably more often than I have any other monument as I travel between Chattanooga and my normal hotel in Fort Oglethorpe.

This is the spot Hooker's column reached before turning and making their attack along the ridge back towards the north. Hooker and Sherman were to hit each flank and roll the line towards the center where Thomas was waiting. Instead Sherman failed, and Hooker and Thomas ended up winning the day.

On one of the last pieces of high ground of Missionary Ridge before descending into Rossville Gap is this Missouri monument, wedged into a sliver of land between two roads. I do not think there are any better pictures of mine that illustrate how the ridge has grown up around the monuments, which I'm sure seemed pretty isolated when they were erected a hundred years ago.

The monument is for the 3rd, 12h, 17th, 27th, 29th, 31st and 32nd Missouri Infantry and Battery F of the 2nd Missouri artillery (all US).