Help! Travel to US

[RivkahChaya]

A cannon? One of the exhibits? Or do you mean Canon camera? If you actually had a cannon, why didn't you fire it? Or did you not have gunpowder?

Whenever we get lost, DH and I yell "It's the same f*cking log!" from The Blair Witch Project. If there's a river where you are, you should follow the river, but having a compass is the best thing, especially if you note where your car is.

I get lost when I'm unprepared, but if I have a map and a compass, I do OK. Of course, GPS is even better, but back-up never hurts, and is cheap.

[Ally]

Of course my Mom once came home from the mall completely forgetting that she had taken me with her, so maybe we went into Shiloh handicapped (so to speak).

*cough* *cough* the error was in the hardware.

[Hunter]

The Ranger station(visitor's center) at Shiloh is on the park, right next to the National Cemetery. The tour can be taken by motorcar and the tour trail is conveniently marked.

FM, although this might rule out Memphis, the Natchez Trace Parkway is a beautiful scenic route from Natchez Mississippi to just south of Nashville. There are lots of historic sites along the way.

I'm at Shiloh a lot and will be glad to help you if you are interested in visiting there. It is the only Civil War battlefield National park that is truly like it was at the time of the battle; no urban sprawl encroachment. If you get within 50 miles of it, there are signs. You may consider spending a night in Corinth, Mississippi. Its only a few miles from the park and has an excellent bed and breakfast there. The house was where the Confederate generals stayed and planned their order of battle for Shiloh. Corinth was also the site of a battle and Brice's Crossroads is not too far away.

Franklin Tennessee is just off the Parkway as well and has many little shops and antique stores. Even though the Franklin battlefield has been overtaken by development, the Carter House and the Carnton Mansion are outstanding places to visit pertaining to that battle. The Carter house still has the bullets in the walls and the Carnton Mansion is where five Confederate generals killed in that battle were laid out on its porch.

It all depends on how much Civil War history you want to pack into your trip.

[Colin Roberts]

Even though the Franklin battlefield has been overtaken by development, the Carter House and the Carnton Mansion are outstanding places to visit pertaining to that battle. The Carter house still has the bullets in the walls ...

My great-great grandfather, Deering John Roberts was the field surgeon that was stationed in the Carter House once it had been overrun and secured by Confederate troops. Amongst those on whom he performed surgery was Captain Tod Carter, who had been mortally wounded in what was effectively his homecoming: an assault to retake the house in which he had been born and raised, and from which he had gone some three years earlier, to fight a war.

http://www.carnton.org/carterhouse_history.htm

http://tennessee-scv.org/vet6.html

Of course every story posted to Casebook should have at least some sort of pseudo 'Ripper' connection:

Deering John Roberts's father, i.e. my great-great-great grandfather, John Roberts was christened in the Parish Church of St. Leonard Shoreditch and married in the Parish Church of St. Giles without Cripplegate.

Of course we all know that Mary Jane Kelly's remains were taken to the Shoreditch Mortuary and that Catherine Eddowes's remains were taken to the City of London Mortuary, in Golden Lane. The Shoreditch Mortuary was of course immediately behind St. Leonard's Church, and whilst the City of London Mortuary was not quite so close to St. Giles's Church, it was situated within the boundaries of Cripplegate Parish.

... and the Carnton Mansion is where five Confederate generals killed in that battle were laid out on its porch.

One of those Generals being States Rights Gist, and States Rights being his actual Christian name.

[Hunter]

Fascinating post, Colin. What happened to Todd Carter is a classic example of how close to home this war was to Southerners.

[Beowulf]

Harsh that, Robert.

Country and Western music tells a story, unlike a lot of the nonsense that passes for music over here.

Lol, yes, it tells a story, even when you play it backwards. Old joke, what happens when you play a country music record backwards? You get your car back, your house back, your girl back...

Btw, New Orleans has quite a 'magick' colony. You will hear about Marie LeVeau there, without doubt.

http://www.voodooonthebayou.net/marie_laveau.html

[Errata]

Fascinating post, Colin. What happened to Todd Carter is a classic example of how close to home this war was to Southerners.

Which is why the Confederate push into the North was so important. It's one thing to lose a son in a place you've never heard of. That's bad. But when the enemy is marching down Main Street and commandeering every horse, piece of food, wagon, cart, sleeping in your house, eating your food, wearing your clothes, THAT'S when you understand war. It was important to Lee for he North to feel what the South was feeling. And I'm not sure he was wrong. After that push the North became terribly interested in ending the war any way they could. Had he managed it for just a little while longer, I think individual states would have surrendered to him. Turnabout is fair play I suppose.

It's a shame that you won't be going to D.C. on this trip. Arlington is a somewhat indescribable experience. From the Union soldiers buried in the Kitchen Garden by the man in charge who lost his son to Lee's army, to the Tomb of the Unknown, to the sheer amount of people buried there. It's a disquieting place. A silent giant museum of death and suffering, but also heroism and uncompromising ideals. I didn't talk for about two days afterwards because I was just processing everything.

It got to me.

[Mayerling]

Hi Errata,

Ironically the site to really have gone to this fourth of July was Gettysburg, Pa. (where Lee nearly did it but blew it with Pickett's Charge), or (if Mac was headed north along the Mississippi, Vicksburg, where the day after Gettysburg Grant finally took that town and cut the Confederacy in two. This is the 150th Anniversary of the dual event which is the turning point of the war (although the Confederates under Bragg and Longstreet do win over Rosecrans at Chickamauga in August 1863 - they lose that to Bragg's ineptness (Longstreet went elsewhere) at Chattanooga to Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, and Thomas (with a better-than-average Hooker) outgeneraling him in November 1863. Your point about the war-weariness up North is true, and the South would launch a fifth column war with events like an attack in St. Albans, Vermont, and a try at burning a large portion of New York City, but these only angered most Northerners. The series of victories from Mobile Bay (Farragut) to Atlanta (Sherman) to the Shenandoah Valley (Sheridan) to Nashville (Thomas) ensured Lincoln's election and Northern determination to win the war (and enabled Lincoln and the Radical Republicans to get the thirteenth amendment ending slavery passed).

[RivkahChaya]

Lol, yes, it tells a story, even when you play it backwards. Old joke, what happens when you play a country music record backwards? You get your car back, your house back, your girl back....

Seriously, Google the lyrics to "Achy-breaky Heart." One of the dumbest songs ever, including "The Bird."

Which is why the Confederate push into the North was so important. It's one thing to lose a son in a place you've never heard of. That's bad. But when the enemy is marching down Main Street and commandeering every horse, piece of food, wagon, cart, sleeping in your house, eating your food, wearing your clothes, THAT'S when you understand war. It was important to Lee for he North to feel what the South was feeling. And I'm not sure he was wrong. After that push the North became terribly interested in ending the war any way they could. Had he managed it for just a little while longer, I think individual states would have surrendered to him. Turnabout is fair play I suppose.

I might be cryin' about it, if the South hadn't been fighting for the right to own other people. I just can't feel sorry for any of the bad things that happened to them. And I don't want to hear about states' rights. I read the declarations of secession the Southern states issued. Every single one mentions slavery specifically. It's an embarrassment, especially to a country that thought of itself as more enlightened than others. We clung to slavery long after most of the rest of the world decided it was barbaric, sort of like the way we cling to the Death Penalty now.

Oh, Mac, you might want to look into buying some short term health insurance while you are here. If you sprain an ankle, or catch something, the bill can run into several hundred dollars pretty fast. If you go to an emergency room in an ambulance, or stay in the hospital overnight, it'll be in the thousands.

[Ally]

Yeah but you can't seriously call that Achy Breaky crap country music.

There's some really decent modern country out there and of course, you cannot beat Johnny Cash or George Jones.

[Cogidubnus]

Both, alas, deceased...

Dave

[RivkahChaya]

Yeah but you can't seriously call that Achy Breaky crap country music.

There's some really decent modern country out there and of course, you cannot beat Johnny Cash or George Jones.

Apparently, "Achy-Breaky" was good to dance too, and came out right when that line-dancing crap swept the country. I know more than one person who said they must have heard it 50 times before they bothered to listen to the lyrics, at which point they couldn't stand to hear it again.

I don't like Johnny Cash, but I do recognize that he had enormous talent. I also think Dolly Parton has a really nice voice, but there are only a few of her songs that appeal to me. --FWIW, I don't actively dislike Johnny Cash, in that if other people want to listen to him, I'm cool with it. Most country singers make me cringe, including Garth Brooks, who I thought was hysterically funny when he hosted SNL. If he ever switches to stand-up, I'll watch.

[Beowulf]

Yeah but you can't seriously call that Achy Breaky crap country music.

There's some really decent modern country out there and of course, you cannot beat Johnny Cash or George Jones.

and Willie Nelson.

[curious]

The riverfront sounds ideal because really we just want to go to a few pubs, listen to some music, get a feel for the place and chat to the locals.

Hello, FM,
You likely already know about Beale Street in Memphis, Home of the Blues, but if not, it's exactly the sort of place you've described.

It's been years since I visited, but we really enjoyed our evening in that area.

It's also been years since I've visited New Orleans, and I know Katrina changed almost everything.
We stayed at a little place called The Frenchman Hotel just outside the French Quarter in the Marigny. It was a charming and strange little hotel, all painted hot pink with balconies running every-which-way and a delicious breakfast -- mostly rolls. It is on the same street with pubs and music joints not quite as touristy as those in the French Quarter.

I suggest Pat O'Brien's, in the Quarter -- my favorite place, just for the ambiance if nothing else.

My son lived in NO and he loved to go to "Coop's" ( I think the actual name might be Cooper's something) on Decatur -- a hole in the wall place the locals went, but tourists didn't know about.

City Park is wonderful to explore, with the Spanish moss dripping everywhere.

Now, Nashville:
A friend of mine has just returned from the Nashville area, because as a big Civil War buff, he was interested in all the activities in conjunction with marking the 150th anniversary of the Tullahoma Campaign, which encompassed areas around Murfreesboro down toward Chattanooga. That was just a couple of weekends ago that he went. I do understand that as small towns go Bell Buckle, between Nashville and Chattanooga, is a great one to explore. Supposedly, Bell Buckle was the layover stop for Al Capone as he traveled back and forth between Chicago and Florida. By October, though, you will have missed the town's famous RC-Moonpie festival.

But October is the perfect month to travel this region. You could not have chosen better.



curious

[Errata]

I might be cryin' about it, if the South hadn't been fighting for the right to own other people. I just can't feel sorry for any of the bad things that happened to them. And I don't want to hear about states' rights. I read the declarations of secession the Southern states issued. Every single one mentions slavery specifically. It's an embarrassment, especially to a country that thought of itself as more enlightened than others. We clung to slavery long after most of the rest of the world decided it was barbaric, sort of like the way we cling to the Death Penalty now.

It's not about defending the South. Sure they had some legitimate complaints, but while the slavery issue does not make them moot, it certainly makes them much harder to hear. 90% of the Confederacy did not own slaves. But defending the right to own them was intolerable.

But if you are going to have a Civil War, you need to be in it to understand it. It's one thing to be for a war when no one you know is dying, and the fighting never comes near you. When everyone you know is dying, and the fighting is in your front yard, everything changes. The North needed to be actually in the war in order to not only understand what war looks like, but to be able to formulate an opinion a to what is worth war, and what is not worth war. The North needed to be in the War in order to know what victory was going to look like. Many people in 1861 did not believe in accepting surrender under any circumstances. That's bad. It's short sighted and it's destructive. Many people thought that if the South just gave up then we could go back to the way things were. That's also bad. That's completely unrealistic.

But they didn't know that neither solution would work until they experienced what the South experienced. They needed to feel the anger and the helplessness of war in their town. They needed to lose something important to them to understand what that does to a person. To a soldier. They needed to know why things couldn't ever go back to the way they were, and they needed to know why they HAD to accept surrender from the South if it ever came. They needed to be more afraid of loss than they were of letting the South survive in some fashion. And they needed to understand loss to understand why the South couldn't go back, not after everything they lost. Everyone has grand ideals in the beginning of a war. They are not useful. Lee's march North crushed these grand ideals. Whether it made them more or less sympathetic to the south, it doesn't matter. That was the point where everyone decided that the war needed to end sooner rather than later. And thats important.