Shiloh | Civil War Historian Gives Guided Tour 

I love when they do tours like this. Please do more.

Outstanding performance, Tim. A long overdue driving tour of Shiloh from a real expert. Just terrific! Thank you to American Battlefield Trust for organizing and producing the video.

As I would have paid good money for this tour, you have earned the modest donation I just made at your site. I cannot easily travel to these locations in person, so videos like this are much appreciated.

Been here 10-12 times with Boy Scouts. There are several trails through the park you can hike that were great.

Excellent tour. I visited Shiloh many years ago and came away astonished that men could fight in such heavy woods and difficult terrain. Thank you.

I've been 3 times since 2018 and I can't spend enough time there. Thank you for this video. I can watch it anytime and feel like I'm there.

Sure love these tours. I likely will never be able to visit the battlefield, so these in-depth tours of the entire battlefield are wonderful. Thank you for sharing.

Great job! So we'll done. The whole team should be proud

I really enjoyed this. Thank you for doing it.

I'm headed to Corinth/Shiloh next weekend and having this video is a HUGE help in planning my visit! Fantastic!

A quality presentation. Thank you very much.

Great work!! Very appreciated!!! This is a great way to learn history!!

Thank you, Dr. Smith. This is really interesting…perhaps the best full battlefield tour I’ve seen on YT.

I need to go back to SHiloh soon, been twice, and cant get enough of it

Thanks so much for this. My dad and I just the day at Shiloh together, and this video makes me reminisce that trip

So well done. All of the added shots make me feel like I'm there! Truly nothing else like this on RU-vid. Thanks for all your efforts.

Excellent presentation/tour. Thank you!

My great uncle is the chief ranger at Shiloh Military park, His name is Stacy Allen and hes an amazing uncle.

This was a superb tour and I can only wish I could make it out there someday, but I doubt it. Many thanks, from the UK.

Thank you for this. I would like to visit Shiloh some day. My Great-great grand dad William Toney was there with the Seventeenth Iowa Infantry Volunteers. He was 40 years old when he enlisted. Another man paid my Great-great grand dad $500 to take his place. He served the entire war until the Seventeenth was disbanded and he went home to our family.

I have only read about Shiloh but do plan to visit. Videos like this not only educate but also inspire to visit and learn and appreciate what had taken place on this battlefield. Outstanding video! I found your Garry Adelman reference hilarious.

I can’t get over how much ground these battles cover. I listen to the Addressing Gettysburg podcast and I’ve seen Matt’s morning drives, it’s huge but Shiloh is so well preserved that you get a really good idea of what happened. It’s beautiful country. Our Civil War was in the 1600’s and the battlefields were more compact (obviously it’s the UK) but just as bloody. I’ve just watched an in depth look at the battle of Towton 1461 during the War of the Roses and the violence used was unimaginable. No quarter was given and men had their skulls caved in with pikes when they were captured…. You didn’t get to become a prisoner, you were brutally murdered by the opposing force. It was truly horrific to see the devastation on the skeletons of the men that they’ve found. They believe that roughly 13,000 men died that day in a snowstorm and the river ran red with blood for several days following the battle…

So very grateful that you took the time to prepare and share this excellent tour for us. Exceptional and worth never forgetting while constantly honoring.

Wow. When Dr. Smith starts discussing the ridge at Shiloh church and the first line of defense the wind almost sounded like sustained artillery. I visited Shiloh forty-one years ago and also explored it backwards. If I ever get back I'm going to do it correctly.

Thank you very much for the outstanding tour! I love the Shiloh Battlefield. My Great, Great, Great Uncle was a Captain in the 1st Arkansas Infantry and was shot through the face during his third assault against the Hornet’s Nest. In Ruggles after action report to Bragg, he listed my Uncle as fallen. The next day, he was found alive by two other Confederate Soldiers and taken back to the surgeon.

I really enjoyed this and I learned a lot. Thank you.

Great presentation! I have marked this to watch it again. Even though it wasn’t chronological, I wasn’t completely lost 😂

Excellent....look forward to visiting in person someday!

From what I've seen on this driving tour, Shiloh Battlefield is amazing and very beautiful. Perhaps it is in slightly different ways, but, it's right up there with Antietam or Gettysburg. And the way the signs are color and shape coded is just a fantastic way to interpret what happened over two days to us modern folks. The "biggest" battlefields in the East could learn a thing or two from this. Thanks for the awesome content!

Thank you 🇺🇸

1:27:30 Two years ago, on my first trip, I was sitting right there under that big tree 🌳 playing my dulcimer, not a single car came by for probably 45 minutes. 🎶 About 20 minutes into it, all of the sudden "BAM!" 😮 I heard a tree fall, naturally ! It seemed to come from an area behind the pond in this video. No one had been chopping, or sawing, etc. Just a surreal moment. 🎉

Was there yesterday for the first day of the battle! Love watching you guys and spreading y’all’s knowledge to us that want to learn. And for that I am a big fan!

This was done very well and I sure would like to see more of the same style videos. Those inset maps you show really enhance what you are talkin about as you go. Great narration and details abt everything, best video I've seen in a while. Thanks

Traveling precariously via video...I love it!!!

Thanks for this. Can't wait to visit the battlefield one day

Superb job! I understood the battle thanks to you!

Great job. I'm not likely to ever be able to visit (I'm in England) so this was a really great overview to get a sense of the place. I have a great great great Uncle who (having arrived from England about ten years earlier) fought at Shiloh. He was a bodyguard of Col David Moore, commander of the 21st Missouri Infantry. Moore lost a leg early in the very first engagement in/near Fraley Field. It's been fascinating tracking the 21st MO in the battle - they show up in The Hornet's Nest, but I my guess is that they'd taken a lot of casualities by the end of day 1 and I can't find them on day 2. My great great great Uncle survived the battle and the war.

Enjoyed the tour. First went there as a child and never forgot it. Love Civil War history. Suggestion: please get a good mic for breezy, outdoor, filming.

Spent the whole day at Shiloh with my father in 2020. So glad to see practically the entire battlefield preserved.

Howdy from San Antonio!

Couldn’t care less if it was made in December of 2021, the visuals are magnificent and the description/discussion…priceless. Thank you for these videos. I hope complete tours of other battlefields are coming.

Shiloh was the first battlefield I ever visited (a very long time ago) and, so, will always hold a special place in my heart.

Excellent! I hope you do this again with other battlefields.

Love these!!! Thanks so much! Can’t wait for more!!!

Just got back from visiting and this tour really helped me better understand it - thank you!

I visited last year in the rain. So different from Eastern battlefields. The terrain and woods made it a really difficult place to keep battle lines together, particularly with largely green troops on both sides. I need to go back, because it is very hard to understand on your first visit. Tim Smith is the best. My great, great-grandfather was in the 6th Iowa. Last on the Union left on the first day. Where they fought most of the day is in the woods today. Union and Confederate burial trenches were separated by maybe 20 yards. My great, great-grandfather went back in the 1880s. Even though he fought through Atlanta, Shiloh was the only place he returned to, to my knowledge.

This puts everything in great perspective. I want to get out there in the future, as I have read about it for decades. Thank you for the video.

Having never visited Shiloh I now have a new perspective of what took place over those 2 bloody days ... thanks, excellent presentation

Terrific job, Tim. What a beautiful time of the year to see the battlefield.

This is an incredible tour. I’ve been to Shiloh twice. This brings so much to the experience. I’ll be honest; even having a lifelong interest in the War, I find it very difficult to understand what was actually happening on a battlefield such as Shiloh. It’s still hard to grasp with large line movements, but this is excellent.

An excellent Tour Sir! Thank You.

Love these driving tours.

Thank you so much really enjoyed your presentation and highly respect what you all do to preserve these places of honor.

Thanks, Tim. Great style and such outstanding information. Honor to all of these brave men.

WOW!!! So well done, thank you

Great job of explaining each section.

Great video, thank you!

Thank you for doing this! I recently found out one of my ancestors died at the Battle of Shiloh

The map overlays of the unit placements ON the maps during the presentation @ the locations are a HUGE help

Thank you, Dr. Smith, for once again bringing it alive for those who have not caught the mighty vision yet. I grew up in the Nixon Community about 4 miles across the river from the Landing. My Granny's baby brother, Parker Fondren, killed north of Rome in WW2, is buried there. Too many memories from all the Decoration Days and 27 field trips with TN history students to even start sharing.... But there's no place like Shiloh. It seems like someone touches you from behind and you turn around and they're not there, but not far away, it seems...

Thank you for doing this. Really great video tour!

Thank you for sharing your story of this Battle. Thank you for sharing! 💯

Wow, this guy is absolutely wonderful. What a great tour of Shiloh Battlefield. He knows this place very very well. What a beautiful place & preservation for sure ! Thank you for doing this great tour !

Simply outstanding. I had the pleasure to tour Shiloh with Dr. Smith a few years ago. The second best thing to being there during the anniversary.

I appreciate the guided Tour of the Shiloh video, it was really enjoyable. Thank you for all the effort you put into creating content.

We have a house in Sardis, so I have been there many times. I normally live in Texas but my family loves Tennessee.

Great job on this video! Shiloh is a very special place to me. I plan on coming once again this year to take my nephew. His ancestor fought with the 3rd MS in Hardee's corps. We will follow that unit through the battle. Each time I go to a battlefield, I try to research one unit or one brigade and follow their story. It will open your eyes to the trauma, the landscape and the hazards that faced each and every person who lived or died in the battle. Thanks ABT!

Interesting place to visit. I'm from Waynesboro Tn. Thank you for this video!

Thank you for doing this. I enjoy hearing Mr. Smith, including his contributions to the History Channel documentaries on Grant and Lincoln. This drive helps me understand the scope and size of the battlefield.

Thanks for the tour. I'll make it out there someday. Regardless of the intensity of the fighting or how many soldiers were there, I don't think you can overstate what the defense of the Hornets' Nest meant to that battle and the overall union effort if you consider the possible consequences of Grant and Sherman losing that battle. It was the Union's first great stand and for that alone it deserves its legend.

This is cool!!!

Fantastic video!! Thanks very much. Shiloh was the very first Civil War battlefield I ever visited. 1987. It totally matched my vision of what a CW battlefield would look like in person. I was thrilled to visit again 7-8 years ago.

Excellent presentation

I want to go there. Maybe I'll go this year.

Excellent Tour by Dr Smith.

Being from north Alabama I've visited Shiloh several times over the years. Driving a truck I've been past several battle fields and didn't get to stop and visit

I was there for the first time in 2019. I had studied the battle most of my life but there was so much I learned just from that one day. I had driven all night from Texas and got there early in the morning, right about the same time of day that the battle began. Just south of the Manse cabin I encountered a group of park employees, men and women, painting some of the gun carriages and talked to them for awhile. Until then I had assumed that the cannons on all these battlefields were relatively modern reproductions made for display, but they told me that they were actually real period pieces that had been warehoused after the war and eventually been given to the parks once the movement to preserve the battlefields took off. I was pretty surprised to learn that because bronze has always been pretty expensive and, historically, it tends to get melted down as soon as somebody decides they need it for something else. (That's why there are very few examples of bronze statues from antiquity and those that exist are usually recovered from shipwrecks or have been buried for centuries.) Once I realized that, I was able to identify at least one of the guns they were working on as being of Confederate manufacture at the foundry in Richmond, the only one in the Confederacy capable of making them. The Richmond cannons are bronze 12-pounder "Napoleons" and can be distinguished from the US made Napoleons by the fact that the back end of the gun is rounded almost in a hemispherical shape. The US made guns end abruptly in a flat breach where the round knob sticks out. The Richmond Napoleons also lack the characteristic "bell" shaped muzzle of the US guns. While most guns on the battlefield came from the left-over inventory collected at the end of the war, and therefore may have served anywhere the armies went, the employees I talked to said there were a few guns at the park that were what they called "witness cannons" that are known to have actually been at the battle on April 6-7, 1862. Several are in a display case in the visitor center and if I remember right another one is a naval gun that is outdoors at a point on the river bank a little ways south of Pittsburgh Landing.

An excellent overview and presentation. Thank you for making this available.

This was a great video!!♥️Along with Gettysburg this is one of my favorites. Totally enjoyed it. Love these battlefield tours. Great video keep doing more!👍😊

Thank you, thank you for this comprehensive look at the battlefield, esp. with the very knowledgable Tim Smith (even if I don't entirely agree on the Hornet's nest!). Hoping to get there sometime in the next year to take a closer look. Thank you and please do more of these more in-depth tours. Love the combination of maps and photos while driving around.

This is where I grew up.. our land bordered the park. . I've rode every road and every trail on that park many times.. The bloody pond is a big attraction.. that's where alot of the bodies and horses was dragged to wen they were killed.. the tree that one of the generals was found beside stood until bout 10 years ago or so

When I visited Shiloh in the early 70s with Cub Scouts, the Putnam stump was the thing I distinctly remember. Thank you for describing it! I can’t wait to visit again. I haven’t been there in 40 some years.

This was fantastic. I visited there probably 10 to 12 years ago. Beautiful place. I wish I would have done some kind of guided tour at the time. Thank You American Battlefield Trust. PS I had to laugh when you said you didn't mean to go all Adelman on us. I Love his enthusiasm.

Very very nicely done

Thank you for everything you do. Excellent channel! I wish you all a happy Easter

What really cool is that this puts my board game of the battle into much better perspective. It's different when you're just looking down at a map. You don't really get the full impact when you're just moving pieces of cardboard around, but this makes it so much more clear! Love it!

I wish I bumped into Tim Smith when we did our fall tour this year

I get the impression Dr. Smith doesn't think the Hornet's nest was as important as it has been made out to be.... :)

SAVE OUR BATTLEFIELDS AMERICA 🇺🇸

Stomped over those grounds with Tim before.

Well done. I also highly recommend his book

I had at least one ancestor who was there, he was in the 2nd Kentucky Infantry Regiment. He was the son of slaveholders in Kentucky but went north to fight for the Union. He was eventually invalided out of the Army. I joined American Battlefield Trust and Fold3 yesterday. My ancestors have defended America all the way back to the Battle of Bunker's Hill.

Thanks!

Excellent.

My GG Grandfather fought with the Mississippi 7th, Company I. Last name Kitchens. I don't know a lot about where he was at in the Shiloah battle.

Went there when I was a boy scout from Pascagoula, Ms........1975.....

My relatives in the 5th Ohio Cavalry did the original tour of the battlefield.

its sad schools don't wanna teach the civil war today. it was a big part of our history. I love hearing about it.

If you mentioned it I didn't hear it in the video. Don't forget Munch's Battery 1st MN Light Artillery that held the line at the Hornet's Nest. One of the only Minnesota units that I know of to participate in this battle.

Some people over focus on the East. “Shiloh Tim” is greatly under appreciated