Tales from the road: I scored Lincoln bust, battlefield horsehoe

Glenn (left), a distant relative of Robert E. Lee, and Charles, the propietor of an
 antiques store in Eagleville, Tennessee.

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At 8:35 on a sun-kissed Saturday morning, I plop my heinie into the shotgun seat of battlefield tramping pal Jack's fancy SUV for our ride into the Civil War wilds of Middle Tennessee. We're rambling southeast to Shelbyville and points unknown.

Pal Jack holds my Lincoln bust.

At our first stop, an Eagleville antiques store that once served as a combo bank/dental office, we meet a retired railroad worker named Glenn, a distant relative of “Marble Man” Robert E. Lee, and the proprietor named Charles, a former Bible salesman and a friend of country star Marty Stuart who charms me into forking over 40 bucks for a circa-1940s typewriter and another 40 smackers for a plaster bust of Abraham Lincoln that is sure to cause a rupture in my solid-gold, 32-year marriage to Mrs. B. (Apologies to all English teachers for the length of the preceding sentence.)

While I suffer from buyer's remorse on our way to Shelbyville — site of a major cavalry battle on June 27, 1863 — we pass the delightfully named Morning Glory Catfish restaurant and a creamery where they serve midnight chocolate ice cream that’ll put a smile on your mug. Then, as we enter unincorporated Rover (population 357 hearty souls), master of historical trivia Jack poses a question. 

“Do you know the name of President Lincoln's dog?”

“I have no idea.”

“Fido.” (Amazingly spot-on!)

Fired bullet unearthed at Liberty Gap.

In Shelbyville — described by Union soldiers as “Little Boston” for its Unionist leanings — we don’t find the cavalry battle site. But we admire a Ms. PacMan video game ($2,200) in a collectibles shop and the dazzling inventory next door in the baseball card/sports store. (My gosh, they even have a Stan Musial glove in its original box.)

Back on the Civil War trails, we stop along the Liberty Pike, a few miles from magical Bell Buckle, where we meet my new pals Chuck and Perry next to their green pickup. With permission, they hunt for battle relics on farms at Liberty Gap, where the armies clashed in an unheralded Tullahoma Campaign battle from June 24-26, 1863. It's hallowed ground, unmarked and largely forgotten — one of those 10,000 places deep-voiced historian David McCullough told us about on Ken Burns' epic “Civil War” doc decades ago.

Under a cloudless, deep-blue sky, Perry and Chuck have had a good day. They show off their finds: bullets, a horseshoe and other detritus of war. Later, these good-hearted souls hand some of their haul to Jack and me. The horseshoe is destined for a place of honor in my office shelf; the bullets — one dropped and two fired — will go to our young friend Taylor, whose great-great-great-grandfather fought at Liberty Gap. “Maybe his grandpappy fired one of 'em,” Perry tells us.

Battlefield horseshoe

Soon, we head deeper into the Civil War wilds. In Chapel Hill, we briefly visit the site of the birth of Nathan Bedford Forrest, “The Wizard Of The Saddle” himself. Then we venture on narrow, snaky back roads — passed a drooping “God, Guns And Trump” sign, empty fields and rickety barns — before arriving at the boyhood home of “The Wizard.” A locked gate prevents our entry to the site, but does it really matter?

If we set aside the near-removal of my fingertips on Jack’s car window (long story), we’ve made excellent memories overall. At a small, off-the-beaten path farm cemetery, a final stop, daffodils poke through the sod and an American flag flaps in a gentle breeze. In the back of my ride rests a rusty typewriter and Honest Abe, comfortably under wraps. At my feet sits an old horseshoe. It’s all plenty good enough.

Monument denoting birthplace of Nathan Bedford Forrest in Chapel Hill, Tennessee.

Tales from the road: 'Is this the Liberty Gap battlefield'?

Perry Sanders stands where he unearthed a cannon ball on the Liberty Gap battlefield.

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At 10:15 Sunday morning, I streak down Liberty Pike, a couple miles from Bell Buckle, Tennessee — home of an annual MoonPie Festival and the Bell Buckle Cafe, one of the best restaurants in America for country cooking and stellar conversation. Then I spy two gents standing by a farm gate and an ancient, green pickup, metal detectors dangling from their hands.

“Is this the Liberty Gap battlefield?” I ask the pair after rolling down my window. I know the answer to my own question, of course, having explored this area roughly a half-dozen times. My question is simply an icebreaker.

New pal Perry Sanders and I at Liberty Gap.

After small talk, I introduce myself to Perry, a 71-year-old retired plumber from Shelbyville, and Chuck, a 60ish dude and Perry’s longtime pal. Based on my extensive gabbing with relic hunters over the years, I expect an earful about their latest finds and the unmarked Liberty Gap battlefield. Neither disappoints.

“See that field over there?” says Perry, pointing to an expanse as flat as the backside of a skillet. “500 bullets found over there.” From June 24-26, 1863, out here in the wilds an hour’s drive southeast of Nashville — “God’s country,” Chuck calls it — the armies clashed in a Tullahoma Campaign battle that gets stiff-armed in the history books. Few casualties resulted — perhaps no more than 75 Confederate dead and 60 prisoners. The Union Army suffered fewer casualties.

“The affair at Liberty Gap will always be considered a skirmish,” Union Brigadier General Richard Johnson wrote, “but few skirmishes ever equaled it in severity.”

With a farmer’s permission, Perry and Chuck have hunted this portion of the Liberty Gap battlefield many times.

“I found a cannon ball over there near that fence post,” Perry tells me. He gestures toward the near distance and then proudly shows me a photo of the hefty find on his phone.

Liberty Gap battlefield from the air

Beyond a herd of cows in the far distance, a steep, heavily wooded hillside looms below a deep-blue sky.

“Best view of the valley from up there,” Chuck says.

I secretly hope that’s where 49th Ohio Sergeant Jonathan Rapp — a great great great grandfather of a young friend of mine — wrote this wonderful entry in his diary after fighting at the Gap:

Bullets -- one fired, one dropped -- unearthed
 at Liberty Gap.

“In the valleys of Liberty Gap, the great mountains all covered with green trees. They lift their proud head so near to the sky. The rich valleys just ready for harvest; the wheat which is in abundance just ready to reap; the cornfields so green and so fine, just ready to shoot forth into blossom, but now are all trodden down by the soldiers of liberty.”

While Chuck waves his magic wand over hallowed ground, I swap Civil War stories with Perry, an unforgettable character.

“Where’d you get that earring?” I ask, gesturing to a small silver loop in his left ear.

“Had that since 1966,” he says.

Then Perry recounts a dizzying array of relic hunting finds and a long-ago encounter with one of the finest people our country has produced. “I met Coretta Scott King,” he says of the wife of Martin Luther King, the slain civil rights leader. “I gave her a hug. It was like meeting Jesus.”

Before going our separate ways, Perry and I also embrace. Until next time, my new friend.

Podcast: Antietam guide, artillery expert Jim Rosebrock

On Episode 32 of "The Antietam And Beyond Podcast," Antietam battlefield guide and author Jim Rosebrock — a retired U.S. Army officer and Department of Justice employee — talks with co-hosts John Banks and Tom McMillan about all things artillery at the Battle of Antietam. Plus, he dishes on two seldom-visited sites on the field and shares an unforgettable story about the horses of Antietam and ... oats! 

Tales from the road: A massacre site at Sinking Cane

The long-abandoned home of William and Cynthia Officer.

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Following a dandy visit to a train depot/museum where host Dale regaled us with tales about a ghost named “Whistling Willie,” we depart Monterey, the town where a massive mural proclaims the “hilltops touch the sky.” Our next stop out here in the chilly wilds of the Middle Tennessee is an abandoned plantation house, the site of a long-ago massacre. “Sinking Cane,” some call the sparsely populated area deep in the woods outside of Monterey.

Guide Craig Capps, a Tennessee law
 enforcement officer, at the Officers' house,
site of an 1864 massacre.

At the home of William and Cynthia Officer on March 12, 1864, United States soldiers serving under 5th Tennessee Cavalry Colonel William Stokes shot and killed six Confederates. The Union men gunned down the suspected guerrillas in the kitchen and finished one off outside, near a fence post, with a volley of lead. You can inspect that bullet-riddled relic for yourself in the museum in Livingston, 20 miles north as the crow flies.

“You ought not to do this,” that poor Rebel soldier supposedly said before his execution in the Officers’ yard. “I have never done anything but my sworn duty.” Mrs. Officer herself suffered a bullet wound during the massacre — collateral damage from Upper Cumberland warfare that still resides in the shadows of history. The Officers’ own son, John, a Rebel soldier visiting his momma and papa, somehow escaped the massacre.

Stokes, who died in 1897, didn’t go down in history as a glorious figure. It is said that decades after the war, children spat ice cream on his gravestone in Alexandria, an hour’s drive west. Of course, I’m a firm believer in this old journalism maxim: “If your mother tells you she loves you, get another source.” So let’s reserve judgment on that ice cream spitting story.

This wallpaper capivated me.

Guide Craig Capps in the room where U.S. cavalrymen are said to have shot the Confederates.

Unoccupied for years, the Officers’ house must have impressed visitors during its heyday. But, oh my, how this once-mighty place has tumbled from its pedestal. Outside, stucco clings precariously to wooden siding while ancient outbuildings barely hold on to life.

Inside, leaves lay scattered about. Steps from an open door, a rust-coated stove sparks images of bacon sizzling and eggs cooking in pans on frosty winter mornings. On display in Dale’s museum/train depot over in Monterey, you’ll find a cedar baby cradle from the Officers’ house — one of the few relics remaining from its 19th-century days.

An ancient stove

“Look up there,” says guide Craig, pointing to floral wallpaper in an upstairs room. “That’s original.” The shades of pink charm at least one visitor.

Near a fireplace, one of several original to the house, Craig tells of the Saturday morning massacre of 1864.

​ “Stokes’ soldiers burst through that door right there,” he says. We five visitors gaze toward an entryway, apparently nailed shut.

For a few moments, I imagine shots reverberating in this confined space, boots stomping, gun smoke drifting, sickening screams of anguish and blood pouring from bullet wounds onto a wooden floor.

Later, we bound along a deeply rutted, serpentine backroad — past decrepit barns, a satellite dish or three and a sign that reads “Christ Over Politics — until we reach a cemetery near the edge of a wood. Those six Confederates who Stokes’ soldiers killed rest here in a common grave under markers adorned with Rebel battle flags. 

A few steps away, near remains from a recent snowstorm, stands Cynthia Officer’s broken tombstone. In the far distance, beyond a large field of stubble, snow coats wooded hillsides.

“What a place to spend eternity,” I say to no one in particular. The 21st century (thankfully) seems so far away.

The massacre victims rest in a common grave in a cemetery near the Officers' house.

---

Like this story? Check out many more in my book, A Civil War Road Trip Of A Lifetime. Email me at jbankstx@comcast.net for details on how to get an autographed copy.

'The Antietam And Beyond Podcast' hub

 

Find all episodes here, from author/historian Scott Hartwig to battlefield guides Jim Smith and Jim Buchanan.

Podcast: Rich Condon on Emancipation Proclamation, more

On Episode 31 of "The Antietam And Beyond Podcast," historian Rich Condon — editor of the Civil War Pittsburgh web site — talks with co-hosts John Banks and Tom McMillan about Robert Gould Shaw's role at Antietam, the Emancipation Proclamation and another terrible event that occurred Sept. 17, 1862. Plus, he dishes on Robert Smalls, whose life story merits a Hollywood-produced move. (Are you listening Steven Spielberg?) | Visit Civil War Pittsburgh here.

Podcast: Grammy winner Taylor Agan on Antietam, ancestors

On Episode 30, 2025 Grammy Award winner Taylor Agan, who has, like, one billion Civil War soldier ancestors, talks with co-hosts Tom McMillan and John Banks about his deep interest in the Civil War period and researching his ancestry. 

At the Battle of Antietam on Sept. 17, 1862, John Francis Agan of the 23rd Georgia — Taylor's great great great grandfather — was captured near the Sunken Road/Bloody Lane. Plus, Taylor dishes on That's My King, the Grammy Award-winning song that he co-wrote, and two other of his remarkable Civil War ancestors. | LISTEN to "That's My King."

The new (and perhaps most remote) Civil War Trails sign

Jason Saffer of Civil War Trails levels the new sign in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

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As regular readers of this page know, I am a huge fan of the Civil War Trails program. A birdie recently revealed to me a new CWT sign — the first in Virginia Beach, Virginia. You’ll probably need to burn off calories to reach it, because it’s six miles beyond a parking lot, over a dune, past a primitive campground and within eyeshot of the breaking surf.

Per Virginia State Parks, “Visitors who hike or bike to the location will be standing in the footsteps of over 70 [Confederate] prisoners of war who managed to land right there in 1863.”

Park manager Austin Monnett and chief
ranger Rachel Harrington help install
the new sign.

Fellow blogger Phil Gast (The Civil War Picket) dived into the story of the new CWT marker at False Cape State Park.

Per Gast, "Not everyone breaks a sweat to reach the marker." A tram goes fairly close to the site of the landing and informs participants of the Civil War history. 

"The Civil War episode took place in June 1863," Gast recently wrote, "when 97 captured Rebel officers were being taken on the vessel Maple Leaf from Fort Monroe, Va., to Fort Delaware, then to a Northern prison camp. They quickly took control of the transport ship from 12 soldiers carrying unloaded muskets. They did not have enough coal to flee to the Bahamas and after sailing south for about 30 miles some 70 officers decided to land small boats on what is now the state park.

"The soldiers split up and headed toward friendly lines in nearby North Carolina," Gast continued. "Despite heavy Union cavalry pursuit and the challenges of the Great Dismal Swamp, they rendezvoused in Weldon, N.C., before taking a train to Richmond, Va. Local sympathizers gave them a hand during their odyssey."

You can also read more about this episode in Chesapeake Bay magazine.

Podcast: Author Chris Bryan on 12th Corps at Antietam

On Episode 29, Chris Bryan — author of Cedar Mountain to Antietam: A Civil War Campaign History of the Union XII Corps, July-September 1862 — dives deep into the corps' role at Antietam with co-hosts Tom McMillan and John Banks. Bryan dishes on General Joseph Mansfield, right flank-left flank aspects of the fighting on Sept. 17, 1862, and on his dog, Harlon Boone. | Purchase Bryan's book on the Savas Beatie web site. 

Tales from the road: His love for history knows no bounds

Glen Echo on the Battle Ground Academy campus.

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My history-minded pal Jack reminds (loosely) of Mikey from the old Life commercial. Showing the same enthusiasm as that little kid lapping up that cereal, he embraces almost any Civil War excursion, no matter how out of the way or bizarre.

Jack and I recently visited the Snow Hill
battlefield 45 miles east of Nashville.

On a recent weekend, we reveled in a trip to the obscure and unheralded Snow Hill battlefield in the wilds of Middle Tennessee. Several years ago, we two history nerds looked at each other, gobsmacked, while examining documents from the 1859 John Brown trial in archives in Charles Town, West Virginia. And, of course, the piece de resistance of our Civil War adventures was that time he put me under a hypnotic spell at dawn at Fort Granger in Franklin, Tennessee.

“Don’t come back clucking like a chicken,” Mrs. B told me that morning at 5 from under the comfy confines of warm blankets. Mrs. B, of course, desperately hopes some of Jack rubs off on me. He’s a neat freak like my dad, “Big Johnny.” (R.I.P.) I lean toward slovenly behavior. The technical word for this condition is “slob.”

Glen Echo historical marker

Anywho, on Saturday morning, following a hearty breakfast — Jack didn’t pay this time, so it didn’t taste as good as one when he does — we went on a whirlwind, 4 1/2-hour history tour. All of this immersion came within 10 or so square miles north of Franklin.

After examining some rando historical markers, we explored an antebellum mansion called Glen Echo in the middle of the Battle Ground Academy campus. “Look here,” Jack says, thrusting a finger toward a historical marker in front of the impressive, two-story brick structure.

“In 1862, General Don Carlos Buell’s Federal Army could be seen from the back porch as it marched to Shiloh,” reads the sixth sentence. For us, this was a moment worthy of a half-dozen goosebumps.

Prehistoric Native American mound in Primm Park in Brentwood, Tennessee.

Then we visited the 1864 Hollow Tree Gap battlefield — a “battlefield of the mind” smack-dab among apartment complexes, retail and other suburban schlock. Next, we explored log slave cabins on the old Primm farm, a circa-1832 schoolhouse, a prehistoric Native American mound and two brick slave cabins on the Ravenswood plantation.

Restored slave cabins on old Primm Farm.

During these history excursions, Jack often dispenses, scattershooting style, historical facts and figures, a small percentage of which are actually useful. When he does, I typically look at him as you may look at someone while listening to Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side Of The Moon” under the influence of THC gummies.

“Did you know that if the Spanish Armada hadn’t happened the world would be so different?” he blurted (I think).

Of course, we completed this sojourn with visits to a farmer’s market, where I briefly considered the purchase of (funny) mushroom-infused coffee; an Amish store, where the owner showed us a “slave wall” bordering a creek; ANOTHER battlefield (Knob Gap); and a tony residential neighborhood where the Union Army constructed massive earthworks.

Oh, we also stopped at ANOTHER rando historical marker, this one for “Wheeler’s Raid Around Rosecrans.”

Thank you, Mikey… err … Jack for your enthusiasm for history. Let’s keep it alive.

Podcast: Antietam guide/mapmaker/author Brad Gottfried

On Episode 28, Brad Gottfried — Antietam battlefield guide and Antietam Institute board member — talks about his Civil War map books, including The Maps Of Antietam, with co-hosts Tom McMillan and John Banks. Gottfried also dishes on what he enjoys about being a guide, his favorite out-of-the-way battlefield site, the Antietam Institute and much more.

Tales from the road: Sights, smells on Hood's retreat route

My journey started in Lynnville, Tennessee, the town that suffered a "partial burning" by
the Union Army, according to this historical sign.

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After mentally checking out of the 21st century, I park in quaint Lynnville, Tennessee (population 313) for stops at the fancy leather goods place for sniffs of the wallets and at Soda Pop Junction (home of “Big Johnny” burgers) for a delicious fried apple pie.

Great fried pies are sold here in Lynnville.

I’m flying solo on this frigid Saturday morning for visits to obscure and largely forgotten battlefields on John Bell Hood’s retreat route in the aftermath of his Army of Tennessee’s crushing defeat at Nashville on Dec. 15-16, 1864. Were if not for, like, 5,000 football games scheduled, sports fanatic Mrs. B might be with me. But as she mutters this morning at 3:23, “I don’t do well in the cold.”

My first stop after departing Lynnville — which suffered a “partial burning” by the United States Army during the war, per a historical marker in town — is the Richland Creek battlefield. Here, on Christmas Eve 1864, the outnumbered and ragtag rearguard of Hood’s army fought against United States cavalry. As I have a half-dozen times, I park near the modern bridge over Richland Creek and try to imagine the fighting.

Somewhere out here, perhaps on Milky Way Farm across the Pulaski Pike, Nathan Bedford Forrest — Rebel cavalry genius, “The Wizard Of The Saddle” and postwar Klansman — directed troops. And somewhere out here, an obsessed Union cavalryman named Harrison Collins captured the object of his longtime desire — a Rebel flag — by stooping down and picking it up. For his bravery, he earned a Medal of Honor.

Unheralded Richland Creek battlefield.

Naturally, I need to know much more about the battlefield, so I drive on a side road and across the railroad track for a stop at a gift shop. I figure someone inside might direct me to a local who can give me a tour of the unmarked hallowed ground.

“Your shop sure smells good,” I tell the three delightful women behind the counter. No battlefield tour results, but I enjoy a brief staredown with a strange-looking cat who smiles at me from covers of a half-dozen Dr. Seuss books on the gift shop shelves.

On my return to the pike, I flag down a local in a pickup truck, but the conversation goes like one you might have underwater with a friend. All the time I am thinking to myself: “DON’T YOU KNOW HARRISON COLLINS EARNED A MEDAL OF HONOR OUT HERE!”

Sigh. The life of a Civil War obsessive.

After that respectful convo, I travel south past Pulaski, where ex-Rebel soldiers founded the evil Klan on Christmas Eve 1865, and toward the Alabama border (gulp) for a visit to the Anthony’s Hill battlefield, where “The Wizard” fought off U.S. cavalry on Christmas Day 1864.

Before the battlefield stop, I visit a place my dad (“Big Johnny”) and momma (“Sweet Peggy”) — RIP to both ❤️❤️ — would have loved: a combo antiques store/AJ’s One Stop Deer Processing. An antler cap cut here will set you back 10 bucks, extra sausage is a cool 30 large.

Mom and Dad would have appreciated this place.

Inside I enjoy the smell of deer carcasses — pssst! it’s not like those wallets in Lynnville — and admire a multitude of deer heads hanging from the wall and a 1964 “Sport” magazine with Sandy Koufax, a hero of mine, on the cover.

Confederate dead from 
Battle of Anthony's Hill.

Near core Anthony’s Hill battlefield, owned by a descendant of slaves, I briefly stop at a small cemetery. Leaves and twigs crackle and groan beneath my feet. A hundred yards or so from the trace of a wartime road on this unheralded battleground rest a few dozen Confederate soldiers, some killed on Christmas Day 1864. My God.

In a flash, I’m zipping south on the pike, destination Sugar Creek — the final battle of the Nashville Campaign. I hope to put my drone in the air for a view of the battlefield, where only a few dozen fell on Dec. 26, 1864. But remember: Somewhere a momma and poppa mourned their deaths just the same.

Unfortunately, I don’t find a launch point, but I do find a general store (closed), where according to a source, Sugar Creek battlefield relics sit. Nearby, behind a barbed wire fence, a brown and white horse walks my way.

“What does he know about the Battle of Sugar Creek?” I wonder. But alas, I must go. Sadly, a return to the 21st century awaits.

Podcast: Dr. Mike Nickerson on Battle of Shepherdstown

On Episode 27 of "The Antietam And Beyond Podcast," Dr. Mike Nickerson — president of the Shepherdstown (W.Va.) Battlefield Preservation Association — dives into the fascinating final battle of the Maryland Campaign with co-hosts Tom McMillan and John Banks. Nickerson dishes on relics found on the battlefield and a musket discovered in the Potomac River. Plus, he tells the story of a controversial cannonball embedded in the wall of a Shepherdstown battlefield farmhouse.

Tales from the road: Jimmy Gentry and the horrors of Dachau

Jimmy Gentry statue near a church in Franklin, Tennessee.

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There’s no better way to explore a battlefield — or a town, for that matter — than by walking. And so on Sunday morning, after yet another visit to the Franklin (Tenn.) battlefield, I strolled into town, destination unknown.

Smiling Jimmy Gentry
caught my eye.

At the excellent Triple Crown Bakery, I bought a bunch of goodies that put a smile on my mug. Nearby, I added a jar of local honey. And while returning to “Murray” — Mrs. B’s nickname for her mighty Murano — I happened upon a bronze statue of man sitting on a bench outside a church. The smile on the work of art lights up this little corner of bustling Franklin.

Steps away, I examined a historical marker.

“This statue is in the likeness of Franklin, Tn native and U.S. Army veteran Jimmy Gentry as he reflects on the rock wall and the memories of waiting there for the bus that would take him and many others off to war to fight for our country,” it reads. “These empty seats are in honor of all the heroes who fought for our nation, many of whom never returned.”

I vaguely remember a friend talking about Jimmy, who died in 2022, age 97. So I did some digging. My God, what a life this World War II veteran led. In 1945, he helped liberate Dachau, the German concentration camp near Munich.

True story: In 1992, while on our honeymoon in Germany, Mrs. B and I stopped in Munich. After a night of beer drinking and frivolity in a pub, we asked a white-haired gentleman traveling alone on the bus with our large group if he wanted to visit Dachau with us the next day.

“No,” Bill told us, “I was there in 1945.”

He had helped liberate Dachau, too. The experience haunted him.

A historical marker near the Gentry statue.

In an interview with Nashville PBS several years ago, Jimmy Gentry told of his mind-numbing experience at that place of evil.

“Off in the distance I saw boxcars lined up with hundreds of dead bodies inside. They looked starved and tortured,” said Gentry, who survived the Battle of the Bulge in 1944. “I asked another soldier, ‘Who are these people?’ He said, ‘They are Jews.'"

“No one told us what we would find. No one explained what our mission was. We saw a wall and that was the entrance to a prison camp like I have never seen.” “I can't understand it,” Gentry added. “Not then, not now."

What an experience. What a walk. We thank you for your service, Jimmy. And you, too, Bill, wherever you may be.

Tales from the road: 'Disappearing' into Dill Branch Ravine

Dill Branch Ravine (right) on the Shiloh (Tenn.) battlefield

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Minutes after leaving Tom Petty and Bob Dylan behind, I stiff-arm the 21st century and disappear into the woods above Dill Branch Ravine on the Shiloh (Tenn.) battlefield.

“Watch for snakes,” a ranger had warned me earlier.

A stark reminder of the cost of war.

But on this glorious morning, I spy no snakes. No humans either. I’m apparently the only living soul traipsing toward the ravine, where on the evening of April 6, 1862, Confederates mounted a desperate (and failed) attack to break Ulysses Grant’s army on the ridge.

As a deep carpet of leaves and twigs crunch and snap beneath my hiking boots, I happen upon an eye-opening (and sobering) marker: “Burial place. 14th Wisconsin Infantry,” it reads. “Bodies removed to Nat’l Cemetery.” Such markers frequently spring surprises on walks in the Shiloh woods.

A few yards away, I inspect the bottom of a massive, uprooted tree. Surely a Gardner or sliver of artillery shell burrowed itself among the mosaic of pebbles and other stones.

Later, I enter the ravine from the Tennessee River side, scurrying down a steep embankment and into the muck of Dill Branch. During the battle, two Union gunboats anchored in the river — the wooden USS Lexington and USS Tyler — emptied their massive guns into the ravine. Combined with Grant’s cannons on the ridge defending Pittsburg Landing, my God what noise they must have caused.

“Terrorizing” for the Confederates, a ranger later told me. But apparently the fire did little else to the Rebels. 

“Every two minutes, the enemy threw two shells from his gunboats,” Confederate Brigadier General Patrick Cleburne wrote, “some of which burst close around my men, banishing sleep from the eyes of a few, but falling chiefly among their own wounded, who were strewn thickly between the camp and the river…”

"Sounded terribly and looked ugly and hurt but few," Confederate Colonel John D. Martin wrote of the fire from the gunboats. 

Ulysses Grant's artillery protected Pittsburg Landing during the Battle of Shiloh.

Dill Branch Ravine on the Shiloh battlefield

Using cannons like these, Union gunboats in the Tennessee River shelled the ravine.

Surely several of the 32-pound shells from the gunboats remain buried in the ravine, perhaps still prepared to unleash their deadly contents on anyone who confronts them.

A gift from nature.

Deep in the ravine, as sunlight squeezes between the trees, I marvel at its steep walls. While climbing a hill on the return to my launch point, my heart races to well over 100 beats a minute. Under fire and carrying equipment, soldiers attacked here? What bravery.

In the ravine and above it on the ridge, I discover gifts from nature. A spectacular, red leaf among drab surroundings. Brilliant, green moss on a large, gray rock. A decaying, rusty brown stump. A single, cackling bird and a bouncy squirrel.

Maybe I should disappear into Dill Branch Ravine more often.

---

SOURCES

 — War of the Rebellion: Serial 010, Page 582, Kentucky, Tennessee, Northern Mississippi, Northern Alabama and southwestern Virginia, Chapter XXII

 — Ibid, Page 622. 

Podcast: Antietam battlefield guide Jim Smith

In a freewheeling Episode 26 of "The Antietam And Beyond Podcast," Antietam guide Jim Smith visits with co-hosts Tom McMillan and John Banks about his longtime interest in the battlefield (psst — it involves ballparks and Rush, the rock band). Plus, he highlights notable human interest stories and takes us (virtually) to two out-of-the-way battlefield sites you may never have visited.

Tales from the road: Meeting a witness to Nov. 22, 1963

Ex-Secret Service agent Paul Landis and I visited at the Cherry Blossom Festival in Marshfield, Mo.

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Well before the Civil War put me in its viselike grip, the assassination of President Kennedy did the same. This obsession started when I was 7 upon my discovery of a copy of JFK’s inauguration speech — an insert from the local newspaper — in a desk drawer in our house in suburban Philadelphia.

As a teen, when we lived in suburban Pittsburgh, I bought a copy of the Dallas phone book — remember them? — and called up assassination witnesses. Later, high school junior me argued with Arlen Specter — father of “The Single-Bullet Theory” — during a call-in segment on a KDKA radio talk show.

An image of the Kennedy motorcade taken
the moment the president reacts
to a gunshot wound.

That same year, I watched, horrified, as the Zapruder film played on American TV for the first time on the late-night show Good Night America, hosted by Geraldo Rivera. Then I bought a bootleg copy of the film of Kennedy's murder to study it for myself. In our basement, I watched, aghast, when Frame 313 — the gruesome head-shot impact frame — melted from the heat from my family's ancient 8-millimeter projector.

To this day, the assassination lingers in the corners of my mind, a nightmare that never goes away. During my Civil War talks in East Tennessee last week, I briefly mentioned this strange obsession. After each talk. an attendee asked me, “So who do you think did it?” But I demurred.

"Let's save that for a beer sometime," I told them.

At the Cherry Blossom Festival in Marshfield, Mo., in the spring, I met a small, gray-haired man who witnessed the horror of the assassination up close. Paul Landis, 88, is one of two living Secret Service agents who served in JFK’s detail in Dallas. What a good egg.

A cropped enlargement of the 
first assassination image shows
Agent Paul Landis (second
from left) reacting to a gunshot.

On Nov. 22, 1963, Paul rode on the follow-up car behind Kennedy’s Lincoln limousine — he’s the second of two agents with his head turned toward the Texas School Book Depository in the (in)famous image taken the moment the president was shot. At Parkland Hospital, he saw the blood and gore.

During our visit, I told Paul of my — ahem — “longtime interest” in the Kennedy assassination and of my 21-year employment at the Dallas Morning News, just blocks from the assassination site in Dealey Plaza.

After we put the paper to bed, I’d often drink beer with pals in the West End and then go stare at the “X” on Elm Street that supposedly marked the spot. For a short time, I had an office on the second floor, where Lee Harvey Oswald killer Jack Ruby placed an ad for his Dallas strip club the morning of the assassination.

Paul told me he has returned to Dallas three times since 1963. He thought it would be cathartic.

It wasn’t.

Friday is the 61st anniversary of JFK’s death. My God.

Tales from the road: 'Andrew Johnson is the old traitor'

The house in Greenville, Tennessee, where Andrew Johnson lived before and after his presidency.

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On Tuesday, I visited Greeneville, Tennessee for a morning of almost 100 percent Andrew Johnson immersion — touring the 17th president’s homes, inspecting his tailor’s shop, paying respects at his grave on Signal Hill and even “voting” in his impeachment trial at the small but interesting visitors center.

A painting of Johnson -- saved
from destruction during the
Civil War -- hangs in the house.

At the front desk at the VC, I peppered the cheery National Park Service ranger with questions about Johnson and whether it’s allowed to launch my 250-gram mini-drone at the nearby national cemetery where the president rests. (No, but that was swell.)

“Would you like to visit Johnson’s house?” she asked. The ticket for entry was well within my ballpark — free — so I got mine for the 11 a.m. tour and strolled around a corner.

At Johnson’s house — the one where he lived before and after his presidency — I met two Englishmen from London on an epic two-week Revolutionary War/Civil War sojourn. I’d have offered to show them around the country, but Mrs. B required my return to Nashville by Wednesday.

During the tour, the excellent NPS ranger dished on slave-holding Johnson’s complicated life and legacy. Sidenote: He lived and worked in a downstairs bedroom/office, separately from his wife, Eliza.

My ears perked up when the ranger told our small group about Rebel soldiers evicting Eliza and the rest of the family from the house in 1861 while Andrew was elsewhere. During the war, Confederates trashed the place. Some even left graffiti on the wall of a second-floor bedroom.

“Andrew Johnson the old traitor,” one of them wrote. (The graffiti is protected by Plexiglas.)

Anywho, the tour was superb. So was my aptly named “Awesome Chicken” sandwich at the Tannery Downtown on East Depot Street.

Greeneville, I shall return.

Graffiti left in the Johnson house by Confederate soldiers.

At the Andrew Johnson National Historic Site visitors center, you can cast your vote
for -- or against -- President Johnson's impeachment, just as lawmakers did in 1868.

Tales from the road: Devilish terrain at Armstrong Hill

A post-war pond -- ah, let's call it a lake -- on ground where fighting occurred in 1863.

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On a gorgeous fall morning, I pull into the parking lot at High Ground Park, roughly two miles south of downtown Knoxville, Tennessee. My aim is to walk the obscure Armstrong Hill battlefield, where a sharp, two- or three-hour fight broke out Nov. 25, 1863, during the Confederates’ siege of the city.

But I’m directionally challenged, so I call on the man who turned me on to this unheralded (and unmarked) battlefield.

I navigated this path to the pond.

“Where is Armstrong Hill?” I ask my new friend Tim, a Knoxville Civil War Roundtable board member.

“Walk down the path by the two-tiered parking lot,” he says over the phone. “And go through the gate.”

While navigating a steep grade, a carpet of leaves crunches beneath my feet. To my left, I find a deep ravine — think Pickett’s Mill times two — and thick woods. The Confederates occupied ground in that direction, Tim says. To my right is Armstrong Hill, ground occupied by the United States Army.

“Can you imagine fighting here while carrying all that equipment?” Tim says as I take in the devilish terrain.

In Knoxville, where frenzied developers seem intent on carving up every square inch of ground, it’s remarkable that this Civil War oasis exists at all. 

Over the phone, Tim guides me down the path, past a modern, graffiti-covered retaining wall, to a massive, post-war body of water. "A pond," Tim calls it, but it's really a small lake. In 1863, in what was then a flat, open field, the armies clashed here, he says.

The steep terrain of the Armstrong Hill battlefield.

At the very bottom of the path, through the trees, I spy across the Tennessee River a cement plant — a brief, unwanted intrusion from 2024.

After my return to Nashville, I dig for information on this battle that resulted in probably no more than a couple hundred casualties.

"Never was a fortified position held longer against such odds," a Union soldier wrote in 1864 of the fighting at Armstrong Hill. "And never was the bravery of troops subjected to a severer test."

Now I'm hooked. So what can you tell me about the Battle of Armstrong Hill?

A modern graffiti-covered retaining wall on the battlefield.

---

SOURCE

— The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky, Jan 15, 1864

Tales from the road: A visit to boyhood home of KIA soldier

Ken Hintz at the boyhood home of 16th Connecticut Captain Newton Manross.

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The beautiful wood floors in the house where 16th Connecticut Captain Newton Manross grew up in Bristol, Conn., are original but have settled in places over time.

“Put a marble on the floor of one side of a room and it might roll to the other,” the owner of the house, Ken Hintz, told me with a chuckle during an impromptu guided tour years ago.

Captain Newton Manross of the 
16th Connecticut suffered a 
mortal wound in the 40-Acre Cornfield
at Antietam.

Hintz and his wife bought the historic property on Washington Street in 1974, adding over the years modern amenities such as a clay tennis court and a swimming pool as they raised their family. But the Greek Revival house, part of which dates to 1746, still has many of its original features, including a bee-hive oven, stone fireplaces and even a tin roof painted bright red.

Manross was one of nine children of well-known Bristol clockmaker Elisha Manross and his wife, Maria. (Two of Manross' brothers, John and Eli, also served in the Union Army.) Newton was a brilliant man, graduating from Yale with a degree in geology in 1850, and a world traveler. A 37-year-old professor at Amherst College in Massachusetts, Manross enlisted in the United States Army on July 22, 1862, excitedly telling his wife Charlotte, "You can better afford to have a country without a husband than a husband without a country." (Love that!)

A little more than a month later, Manross was commissioned captain of Company K of the 16th Connecticut, composed mostly of men from prosperous Hartford County towns. “The father of the company,” one soldier called him. Another recalled how Manross earned the respect of his men by carrying the muskets of three soldiers (and a drum) while on the march from Washington to Maryland.

That's me with window frames from the 
boyhood home of Newton Manross.

In the 40-Acre Cornfield at the Battle of Antietam on Sept. 17, 1862 — the first battle of the war for his regiment — Manross was killed by cannon fire. His death had a profound effect on his comrades.

“The loss of our Captain was keenly felt by every member of the Company, for he not only recruited the men, mostly from the town of Bristol, Conn., but he cared for his men constantly,” wrote Pvt. George Robbins of the 16th Connecticut. “They felt for him almost a filial affection.”

Manross was buried in Forestville Cemetery in Bristol, about a mile and a half from his boyhood home.

“Come out back,” Hintz said during our visit. “I have something you might be interested in.” He took me to a barn-like structure and pointed to the floor at two ancient window frames — original to the house, he said.

“Would you like to have these?”

“Of course,” I told Hintz, who died in June 2024.

One of the treasures I gave away. The other remains in the garage, near the hunks of “witness trees” from the battles of Champion Hill and Nashville. Mrs. B insists they remain there, but despite their out-of-the-way location, neither the window frame nor the other “stuff” are ever far from my mind. 

Neither is one of my heroes, Newton Manross. Nor Ken Hintz, too.