Shiloh National Military Park

The battle of Shiloh was fought on April 6 and 7, 1862, in the woods around a log Methodist church called Shiloh Meeting House. Union troops, landed at Pittsburg Landing in March, were camped on the ridge when the Confederate army came up from Corinth, Mississippi, and attacked early on a Sunday morning. About 65,000 Union and 44,000 Confederate soldiers took part, and 23,746 were killed, wounded or missing. It was the bloodiest battle of the war up to that time.

The Hornets' Nest was a stretch of about 600 yards along a farm road that became known as the Sunken Road, beside Joseph Duncan's cotton field. Union divisions turned back at least eight attacks there on the first day, and the Confederates named it for the sound of the bullets. The line gave way only after as many as 53 guns were massed against it, and General Benjamin Prentiss surrendered with nearly 2,200 men late that afternoon. Bloody Pond, a small pool in the heaviest fighting, changed hands on both days.

Congress created the park in 1894, and it now covers more than 5,200 acres. The national cemetery, begun in 1866, holds 3,584 Civil War dead, 2,359 of them unknown, gathered from the battlefield and from along the river. The Park Service lists slavery among the themes it interprets, and its Corinth unit, about 22 miles south, holds a contraband camp site where formerly enslaved people began their way to freedom. The Shiloh Indian Mounds, far older than the battle, lie inside the park and have their own entry.