The weekend before Christmas I had the chance to once again visit the Shiloh National Military Park in Southern Tennessee, the site of the April 1862 Battle of Shiloh during the Civil War.

The battle of Shiloh is considered a key turning-point in the Civil War, not so much for strategic or military reasons, but more for psychological reasons.

The battle was fought almost a year after the attack on Fort Sumter and both sides, the Union and the Confederacy, still thought the war might be brief.

General Ulysses S. Grant, the Union commander at Shiloh, thought that one major victory would end the war.
However, Shiloh proved the commitment of both sides and, in light of the bloodshed on that field, nearly forced both sides to continue the fight, lest those lives be lost in vain.

In those two days of fighting on the Tennessee River more Americans were killed in battle than had been killed in all previous U.S. wars up to that point combined.

The psychological impact on the soldiers who fought a Shiloh was profound.

I was made keenly aware of this because of a childhood experience of my mother.

When my mother was around 10 or 11 years old, she went to spend the summer with relatives in Grant Parish.

Living next door was an old veteran of the Civil War.

The man would occasionally fall asleep on the front porch and wake up, screaming. Momma, being a “nosy” child, just asked him one day what scared him so much.

He then told her of his nightmares of his first wartime experience at Shiloh. He was haunted by the memory of the “Bloody Pond” located behind a sunken road in one of the most hotly contested areas of the battlefield.

The small shallow spring-fed pond was the only source of water for wounded troops and by late afternoon on the first day the pond was more blood than water. Nearly 70 years later, that old soldier still saw the horrible scene in his dreams.

The same was true for many Confederate soldiers. Most soldiers from our part of the country saw their first battle action – referred to as “seeing the elephant” in Civil War parlance – at Shiloh.

It changed their outlook on the war. Reading letters home from Civil War soldiers from our area there is an apparent change in tone after Shiloh. The excitement of going to war is replaced by a poignant longing for home.
Driving through the battlefield I noticed the signs indicating areas where Louisiana troops took part in the fighting.

I realized that I have never really written about the local troops who fought in the Western and Trans-Mississippi Theaters of war.

Local attention has usually focused on the Minden Blues, the first unit to leave the Minden area within a few days after Fort Sumter. The Blues became Company G of the 8th Louisiana Infantry, one of the regiments that made up the famed Louisiana Tigers of the Army of Northern Virginia.

The Blues, who fought under Robert E. Lee and in the major battles in the East, including Antietam and Gettysburg, have the higher profile, locally. But in terms of men involved, more local troops saw action in the West and the Trans-Mississippi.

Two local units were involved to some degree at Shiloh.

These units were the Claiborne Grays, formed of men from Minden and Athens in December 1861. The Grays became Company D of the 19th Louisiana Infantry and were heavily involved at Shiloh. Another local unit, the Minden Rangers or Captain Webb’s Company of Calvary, was peripherally involved at Shiloh. That group, largely composed of wealthy local residents was held at Corinth, Mississippi, south of Shiloh and involved in messenger duty during the battle.

The Claiborne Grays assembled in Minden in early December 1861. The original commander of

John Agan is a local historian, an Instructor at Bossier Parish Community College, and a published author. His column appears Fridays in the Minden Press-Herald.

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