Shiloh

April 11, 2010 on 1:06 pm | In Hayden and Laura | No Comments

Yesterday I got a chance to do something I’ve never done before.  I went with Lance Tabb, Larry Little and Chad O’Neal to Shiloh, TN.  This past week marked the anniversary of the battle of Shiloh and there were demonstrations this weekend where the actual battle took place.  It was really interesting talking to some of the guys that did the demonstrations.  Some of the cool things I learned were:

• The South won the first day, the North won the second
• There was a pond called “bloody pond” that actually took on a red color from all the blood that was in it.
• There were right at 110,000 people involved in the Battle of Shiloh…it lasted two days.
• About 3,500 soldiers died in battle.  About 16,400 were wounded.  About 3,800 were missing.
• There was a significant loss of life in the 2 days of battle considering only 4,000 lives were lost in the American Revolution.

One of the more interesting demonstrations was the artillery.  In one skirmish, there were 75 canons involved.  If you’ve ever heard a cannon fire, you know it is unbelievably loud.  It was said that the noise could be heard from 50 miles away.  We learned that during the heat of battle, one canon could fire about 3-4 times per minute.  With 75 canons involved, that means the loud booms occurred about 3-4 times per second.  Truly amazing. 

We were able to see some pretty neat action and we also saw some interesting characters.  I never knew so much Confederate flair that could be worn at one time.  We also saw a UT fan that was rocking some bright orange shoes.