Mississippi suffered greatly throughout the Civil War, but it was at Corinth where citizens and volunteers first endured the carnage of war amplified by a bloody clash deep in the Tennessee wilderness. Early on, gaining possession of Corinth—an important railroad junction in northeastern Mississippi—garnered immediate attention from both Union and Confederate commands. Tucked away in a swampy lowland and divided by jagged ravines and dried-up creek beds, Corinth presented an arduous physical challenge for the massive armies that converged on the town. So it was in the spring of 1862 that the Civil War found Corinth and brought along the reality of a long and bloody struggle.
Shiloh was Corinth’s prelude to war. As for the inexperienced civilian-soldiers, the reality of the combat experienced there was a shock. Most combatants who survived the fight left the battlefield wholly bewildered, unable to process what seemed like an entirely new way of war. Veteran’s recollections of Shiloh and Corinth—some of them written decades later—give us insight into the brutality of this devastating war.
Confederate Captain Francis A. Shoup, Mississippi Private Augustus Mecklin, Ohio Captain George Rogers, and Confederate nurse Kate Cumming experienced Shiloh and the action around Corinth through different lenses. Shiloh was Shoup’s first brush with intense combat. So traumatic was the fight that following the war the sight of budding trees immediately transported him back to the spring of 1862. The fight also scarred the young Mecklin. So much so that he did not and would not see the war through. Others like the ardent abolitionist Rogers and the passionate Cumming were inspired by their experiences and were determined to see the end—no matter the cost.
Before war touched those combatants, however, their fates were dictated by decisions of untried commanders unprepared to direct war on such a large
