Up and at ‘em
this morning and off to New Union Church of Christ all of two minutes out the
road from the Klines. 
Sunday School for all adults is held in the worship
center under the tutelage of a good Bible Scholar. The service followed with the weekly communion.
Churches of
Christ congregations love to sing but they brought back memories for me of the
plain Mennonites because they use no, musical instruments. It was beautiful,
and old time traditional, singing.
The pastor
uses powerpoint like a college professor so we got each step in the
understanding of God’s will versus our own in bold text.
After church
the three of us took lunch out to Dave and two of his friends who worked all
day yesterday and today on the Kline’s new barn. He left tonight for a week of training with
his new employer. He’ll be driving 18
wheeler for the first time in his life everywhere east of the Mississippi.
When we got
home the ladies spent the afternoon and evening together and I drove off in
TOAD 30 miles northwest to Murfreesboro for an afternoon, and evening, of Civil
War heaven.
The battles
of Shiloh TN and Corinth, MS had been fought, and it was now the end of
Christmas week, 1862. President Lincoln
had made it clear that General Rosecrans, now commander of the Union Army of
the Cumberland, had to win a solid victory for the north so that he could use
it to announce the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves in the still
rebelling states.
So Rosecrans
had brought his army out of their trenches around Nashville, 30 miles northwest
of Murfreesboro to attack Confederate General Bragg and his Army of the
Tennessee camped at the Murfreesboro railroad yards. But Bragg struck first.
The Union
right was driven back three miles till it was finally slowed and stopped behind
a new defensive line at the Nashville Pike and the Nashville-Chattanooga
Railroad tracks north of town. This is where the National Cemetery was placed
after the battle, and where the Park Service Visitor’s Center is now.
I met Cindy
at the desk when I went into see the museum at the center. I was surprised to learn that with all the
knowledge, and professional friendliness Cindy offered me and other visitor’s
that she was not a Ranger, but rather a volunteer docent at the park.
Cindy is
something else, too. She is an
almost-a-fulltime RV’er! Her custom
ordered Fifth Wheel is being built now, and I believe she told me her cousin
has helped her buy a powerful diesel dually to tow it. Unlike us she’ll be
soloing around the country, but she has no fear.
Something
she said really made me remember some of Mona’s and my conversations in the
year or so before we purchased our coach. She said she’d sit inside her
perfectly lovely home looking out the window thinking, “I like this view but I
don’t want it to be my only view for the rest of my life.”
I have to say, one of the great joys has been
that hoped for experience of looking out our windows every couple of days and
seeing an entirely new world. Even the occasional Walmart parking lot or back
of a Cracker Barrel van be a very interesting scene by the time we arise in the
AM.
---
Several
times the battle rose to ferocious heights and the piles of dead and maimed
covered some parts of the field like cordwood. Parts of the battlefield earned
names like ‘Slaughter Pen’, and ‘Hell’s Half Acre’ before the day was through.
At the end
of the day Bragg telegraphed Confederate President Davis that he should enjoy a
‘wonderful New Year’ because of the great Rebel victory. In fact, Rosecrans was strongly urged by some
of his generals to retreat back to Nashville that night. But his army had a reasonable defensive
position, and he’d been told by Lincoln to ‘git ‘er done!’ so he stayed. In fact, he said, “We will fight and win or
we will die here’. Pretty macho for a
man with a name like ROSEcrans, ‘eh? His men thought so too. The next day they
won.
The rebels
attacked first again, this time against the Union left at McFadden’s Ford, and
they drove back the blue coats across the ford and up a steep hill. But at the top of that hill were 58 Union
guns loaded with double canister waiting for the retreating federals to get out
of the way. When the Rebels came up and out of the hill’s trees every gun began
firing and did not stop firing till 2,000 Confederates lay dead or dying of the
most hideous wounds.
By
afternoon, running low on ammunition, and unable to break the Union supply line
back to Nashville, Bragg left the field and Central Tennessee for the last
time, heading toward Chattanooga on a long retreat that would eventually see
him surrounded at Atlanta, Georgia.
I drove into
town to see the pre-Civil War courthouse, which had been the scene, of some
fighting at another time when General Nathaniel Bedford Forrest, that famous
Confederate Tennessee horseman, led 1,400 of his regular cavalry into town and
captured the entire unprepared Union garrison and its general.
Then out to
Greenwood Cemetery where the United Confederate Veterans, and later the
Daughter’s and also the Son’s of the Confederacy, arranged space for over 2,000
Confederate dead from Stone’s River and other field burial sites around central
Tennessee. No Confederate has ever been buried in a national Cemetery. They
were Americans, but when they fought, they fought against America.
The sun was
going down in the west as I turned south for Manchester again. We depart tomorrow heading east on our way to
the southwest corner of North Carolina.
We’ll be staying at Spivey United Methodist Church for a couple of
days.
Spivey is
just south of Dayton, Tennessee. Does
that name ring any bells for you? Have
you ever heard of the book and Spencer Tracey movie, “Inherit the Wind”? Does the phrase ‘Monkey Trial’ mean anything? And in this area of Tennessee believe me, the
monkey’s lost that fight no matter what the judge, or Clarence Darrow said!
-Ken
PS: Lots of pics from today on FACEBOOK
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