Corinth, Miss. – It’s almost as if the battle had just ended. Strewn on the field are a knapsack, a bayonet, a tattered letter, a pistol, a canteen – the detritus of war.
But this battle took place 143 years ago, and the soldiers’ belongings are bronzed replicas laid on the grounds of the new Civil War Interpretative Center here.
Those sad remnants of soldiers’ lives remind that war is a personal event. But they also set the stage for a visit to this historic town, whose strategic location as a railroad crossroads made it a fiercely contested target in the Civil War.
In the bloody battle that raged at Shiloh a few miles away in April 1862, 23,746 Americans were killed, wounded or missing – a toll that shocked both sides and made them realize that the war would not be easy or short.
Colorful history
Today Corinth is a quiet town, population 14,000, situated 84 miles east of Memphis. It possesses not only a rich Civil War heritage, but also a variegated history.
Jesse James once robbed a bank in Corinth. The first airplane flown by legendary aviator Roscoe Turner, a Corinth native, was built here. In the 1930s and ’40s, hundreds of young couples in a hurry to get married took day trips by train to Corinth to tie the knot because it had no waiting period.
About the same time and into the 1960s, the town became known as “Little Chicago” because so many gangsters of the State Line Mob hid out there. It was this mob that the legendary Sheriff Buford Pusser took on, as dramatized in the movie “Walking Tall.” And in 1954, Corinth achieved a milestone of sorts when Elvis Presley had to cancel a concert there because of low ticket sales.
Downtown still reflects some of that heritage. Generals from both sides in the Civil War made their headquarters in the Verandah-Curlee House, which is open to the public for tours. Borroum’s, the oldest continuously operating drugstore in the state (since 1865), is a meeting place of note in Corinth and still operates an old-fashioned soda fountain.
The Coliseum, a restored 1920s theater, is an elegant gem that stages musicals and concerts. And hundreds of Corinthians turn out every Thursday night in summertime for Pickin’ on Court Square, an evening of guitar strumming.
Civil War connection
Primarily, though, it’s the Civil War connection that fascinates most visitors to Corinth and to nearby Shiloh National Military Park.
Here in Corinth, the $9.5 million Civil War Interpretative Center, which opened last year, provides an overview of the Battle of Shiloh and later of the Battle of Corinth with films, exhibits and artifacts.
Cannons actually used in the war are on display, along with Springfield rifles, replicas of earthworks (some of the real ones, best-preserved in the nation, still exist in Corinth), and photos of the battle and of the famous generals who took part in it. Among them are the Union’s Henry W. Halleck,
Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, Lew Wallace and James A. Garfield, and the Confederacy’s Albert Sidney Johnston, P.G.T. Beauregard, Braxton Bragg and then Col. Nathan Bedford Forrest.
Other soldiers in the battle who later became famous: Henry Stanley, who searched for and found Dr. David Livingstone in Africa, and John Wesley Powell, who lost an arm in the battle but became a great explorer of the American West.
The Crossroads Museum, which also explores the history of the area, will open early next year in the historic Corinth Depot at the crossing of the two railroads that prompted the battles of Shiloh and Corinth. Just 23 miles away, over the border in Tennessee, is where the Battle of Shiloh took place. Today the battlefield is a national preserve visited by more than 400,000 people yearly.
Shiloh National Military Park’s 4,000-plus acres are dotted with 223 cannons, 156 monuments and coded markers that differentiate Confederate and Union positions and days of the battle. Triangular mounds of cannonballs are used to mark headquarters areas and where important officers were killed – all aids that make touring the battlefield easier.
Corinth is 55 miles from Elvis Presley’s birthplace in Tupelo. The William Faulkner home and University of Mississippi at Oxford are 80 miles away.
