Shiloh National Military Park

Shiloh was the battle that ended any illusion that the Civil War would be short or bloodless. Fought over two days in April 1862 along the Tennessee River, it produced more American casualties than every prior American war combined up to that point, stunning both the Union and Confederacy with a preview of the industrial-scale killing still to come. The peach orchard, the sunken road nicknamed the 'Hornet's Nest,' and the quiet Shiloh church that gave the battle its name are now preserved on one of the best-maintained battlefields in the country.

In early April 1862, Union forces under Major General Ulysses S. Grant camped near Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River, awaiting reinforcement before advancing on the rail junction at Corinth, Mississippi. On the morning of April 6, Confederate forces under General Albert Sidney Johnston launched a surprise attack, catching many Union troops unprepared and driving them back toward the river through the day's fierce fighting.

Union troops made a desperate stand along a sunken road that Confederate soldiers nicknamed the 'Hornet's Nest' for the intensity of gunfire there, buying time before eventually being overwhelmed. General Johnston was mortally wounded during the fighting, becoming the highest-ranking American military officer killed in action up to that time. Overnight, Union reinforcements under General Don Carlos Buell arrived, and on April 7 Grant's reinforced army counterattacked, driving the exhausted Confederates from the field.

The two days of fighting produced roughly 23,000 combined casualties, a scale of loss that shocked the nation and ended any lingering assumption of a quick war. Grant faced sharp public criticism for being caught unprepared but retained President Lincoln's confidence. Congress established Shiloh National Military Park in 1894, and its battlefield, preserved with unusual completeness, remains one of the best places in the country to walk a Civil War battle largely as it unfolded.