The Revolutionary War may have started in Concord Massachusetts, but it was won in the Carolinas and Virginia, at places like this. Rhode Island Quaker Nathaniel Greene was given the southern command by General Washington, and he fought a critical battle here with Cornwallis, with Washington’s cousin William leading the dragoons (cavalry). Technically, the British won the battle, but Greene inflicted more than 1/4 casualties upon them while keeping his own force ready to fight again. The British recognized it as a Pyrrhic victory, and Cornwallis had to regroup. The two sides would clash repeatedly before Yorktown.
This little guy walked out on the trail through the meadows in Cades Cove. There’s a beautiful loop drive around there with an old mill, horses playing and a spectacular natural environment. Nice campground too. The road closes to traffic some days, but there are miles of trails, creeks, a lake and mountains to explore by foot, horseback, boat or bicycle. This is one of the most visited parks, one of my favorites for wildlife, a World Heritage Site and a UN biosphere, but I think most people just pass through quickly. My last trip here, I drove through far too quickly, without any idea what I was missing. Just lovely.
The view from the gap includes Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia, plus the small historic town of Cumberland Gap itself, which has a surprisingly good restaurant, Nineteen19. It’s difficult to think of a more historic spot in the country than this gap, where Native Americans, trappers, traders, frontier families, soldiers and slaves passed through over centuries. While most traffic zooms through the modern tunnel below, it’s an easy drive up near the top, where the ”object lesson” trail offers a short hike to the “saddle” of the gap or to the tri-state meeting point. In order to encourage more modern road construction techniques, the government improved the road here as an object lesson or proof of concept, that transportation can be improved even in challenging terrain. This blog is an object lesson that EV travel is possible, even over long distances cross country.
While obviously fortified, the camp is best remembered as a refugee and training site for escaped and liberated slaves to join the Union. A heartless commander here burned shelters before winter to try to dissuade refugees from staying, leading to over 100 deaths from exposure, national outrage and new legislation to build more permanent refugee shelters at many Union bases, including food, clothing & education. There’s a community nearby that persists since that time. Many of the US Colored Troops that served, especially in the second half of the war, were trained here.
Where Carlsbad is like the Mines of Moria where you’re expecting goblins to stream out of the crevices into the magnificent cathedral-sized chambers, Mammoth is definitely hollow-earth lizard people. The walls are fairly smooth and plain and the ”cave” is actually an incredibly long maze of tunnels with underground rivers. I figure since the ceilings vary in height that only lizard people who are equally comfortable either upright or on all fours would feel at home roaming the endless passageways. The ranger herding us from the back concurred and told scary stories which kept us moving right along.
The cave is a World Heritage Site. Above ground is a huge forest with miles of trails, several nice campgrounds, and the Green River which runs deep enough to require a small car ferry at one point. The clean ecosystem above helps keep rare blind cave fish and other species alive below.
The ranger leading the historic tour explained that a slave named Stephen Bishop first crossed the ’bottomless pit’ and discovered the fish while guiding tourists. His tours gained widespread fame and included luminaries like Emerson. Bishop was evidently fearless, had an unusual amount of freedom as a guide and educated himself in geology and other subjects to converse with visitors. Emerson’s tour lasted all day, and they must have had interesting discussions. Emerson and his literary friends were conductors on the Underground Railway at the time, and many slaves escaped through Kentucky in the area near the cave. Bishop must have been motivated to use his unique access into the hundreds of miles of tunnels under Kentucky, since his own children were sold away into slavery. He died shortly after gaining his freedom in unknown circumstances.
Speaking of railroads, I charged my Tesla at the Casey Jones Museum in Jackson Tennessee on the way, and got a kick out of how modes of transportation change. I also ate at the Old Country Store there, which was reasonably priced and delicious, and it surprised me. Outside it celebrated the confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest of KKK infamy, but inside it had a thoughtful and beautifully done exhibit on the Woolworth lunch-counter protests. Much like Mammoth Cave, you sometimes can’t judge what’s happening beneath the surface. Similarly, this post has been too long and meandering, but I hope somehow it’s all connected.
I think this is the first park, alphabetically. The cabin is ”symbolic”, meaning a replica, and it’s inside a grand monumental building. Lincoln’s family moved up the creek due to a property dispute which they lost, and he must have grown up listening to his parents complain about it. I suspect that childhood experience helped him choose law and government as his vocation.
The other memory he had from here would have been seeing slaves in chains, marching in vocal cadence to market. His parents and minister definitely complained about that. That formative experience helped him change the course of our nation.
The photo is from the eponymous national cemetery next door to the visitor center.
Lincoln said ”I hope to have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky.” Kentucky was neutral early, perhaps since they enjoyed betting on horses, especially when they could tell who was going to win. In 1861, it wasn’t clear, at least until this battle.
The confederate troops had entered Kentucky from the East through the Cumberland Gap and soon fortified near the river. Unfortunately, Zollicoffer split his troops on both banks and a rising river made redeployment difficult. Worse, when fighting started, he approached some troops to stop “friendly fire”, not realizing that they were the enemy. With their general dead, the confederates became disorganized and lost. This led to a string of Union victories leading south.
This was one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War. Lincoln wanted a victory and ordered General Rosencrans to advance up the Nashville Pike. The confederates struck hard, the union army dug in, set up artillery and won the day. The photo shows part of the remains of Fort Rosencrans built to defend the supply route for the rest of the war.
African American labor typically built these massive earthen fortifications, and despite the Union victory, their new rights were often denied.
As today, logistics and rivers are critical in war. The fort is in what’s now ”the land between the lakes” where the bends and confluence of rivers gave the Union multiple openings to attack. This confederate battery stopped the Union ironclads, but Grant’s army came around from another side, surrounded the fort by land, and forced its unconditional surrender, earning Grant a nickname, a promotion and a key juncture for his supply-chain based campaign.
Shiloh is a beautiful park, with lovely memorials like the Iowa one above. The self-guided car tour is comprehensive yet easy to follow, since the battle only lasted two days. The site includes Native American mounds, the National Cemetery, well organized placards and a reproduction of the log church for which the battle was named. Shiloh is my favorite battlefield & military site.
The Union graves often are adorned with pennies, in honor of Lincoln, and many confederate graves have flowers. Unfortunately, many soldiers were buried unmarked in trenches, and many confederates were not re-interred. It was a mistake to leave the confederates in mass graves and not make more effort to identify them. There must have been prisoners who could have helped identify the dead, at least by unit. After the war, veterans from both sides petitioned for proper burials and a fitting memorial.
There’s a difference between respecting war dead and agreeing on the honor of the cause. No soldier wants to be forgotten, especially after serving bravely or knowing they might pay the ultimate cost. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is reproduced at the cemetery, and he was correct in saying that the ground has been consecrated by the blood of the dead. But that does not mean that the causes were equal. One side fought to end slavery, and the other side fought to keep it. Both sides deserve respectful burials, but only one cause deserves to be remembered honorably.
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