24th Ohio at Shiloh, Army of the Ohio

Along a narrow and lonely path stand the monuments representing Amman's brigade in their positions before they attacked the line thrown together by General Cleburne atop the hill cut by the Hamburg-Purdy road. The forest has been allowed to grow over this part of the battlefield and it gives the whole area an enclosed feeling, claustrophobic and on this day in particular, damp from a recent downpour. The 24^th Ohio, part of Buell's Army of the Ohio, stepped lively across an undulating terrain to charge into the maw of artillery and Confederate musketry to push Cleburne's line even further to the rear.

The character Philip, from my novel They Met at Shiloh, stood in a brigade line that stretched three hundred yards long, marked today by a trail cut in the trees with monument after monument marking the approximate middle of each regimental line. It is sad to see these monuments being over grown by the forest, no longer facing the enemy but now facing loneliness. I only happened upon the trail by accident while searching around the Bloody Pond area, a small marker, across the Hamburg-Savannah road, marks the extreme right of Ammen's brigade line, whose flank most regiment would have been a stones throw away from the Bloody Pond to witness the misery of its denizens. Down the trail I ran into regiment after regiment of Ammen's line until finally finding the monument I was looking for. I wanted to see where each regiment from my novel stood and what the ground looked like.

Of all of the civil war battlefields Shiloh is the one I've been to the most, having visited when I was very young with vague impressions of it still lingering after 25 years, then again at the soggy 135^th reenactment, and finally last summer to get landmark and geographic impressions for the novel. Shiloh is not like Gettysburg, where the field is much like it was 145 years ago where one can stand atop Missionary Ridge or Cemetery Ridge and look out at the same rolling countryside that the combatants did. Shiloh has been allowed to over grow parts of the battlefield forcing you to rely upon the descriptions of the combatants themselves to understand what it was like. Many areas now are thickly wooded and though some of the fields are still present, like Seay and Fraley Field are preserved, some of the other avenues are impassable. Chickamauga, another thickly wooded area is probably better preserved as far as forest management goes. One can take the descriptions of the fight at the Viniard Farm and imagine standing at the tree line along with the soldiers of Wilder's brigade and look down into the famed ditch or from Winfrey Field and see the treeline where the Confederates attacked at dusk.

The Shiloh of yesteryear was forested, but southern farming techniques and general occupation of the land meant that the tree cover was sparse and the farmers only cleared areas for planting, leaving the periphery open for trees to grow unmolested. The results were just like any forest area butting up against settlement, old and tall trees and undergrowth that was minimal due to grazing. It is a pity that the campsites and some of the interior fields of the battleground are now mere clearings in the trees, leaving little to the imagination as to how it looked then. Thankfully, we can still walk those grounds and stand where fallen patriots stood and read the markers that attempt to describe a mere fraction of what happened in each spot. There is a power to those fields yet, of ringing cheers and acrid gun powder whose voice is fading away with time and memory. You can feel you are a part of it for a moment in the stillness and lean upon a gun line marked by surplus cannon. This is what is experienced at Ruggle's gun line facing the Sunken Road. You see it from the campsite of the 25^th Missouri Vols who met the onrush of Confederates early on the morning of April 6^th. You hear it in the groans of the wounded crowded around the Bloody Pond. You feel it in the fear struck crowds of fugitives under the bluff at Pittsuburg Landing.