This leg of the trip was primarily dedicated to finding and visiting NPS elements in each of the above areas. I have never read much (almost nothing) about the importance and fierceness of the civil War battles in Mississippi and Tennessee, especially for control of the traffic on the Mississippi Rive and the railroads that fed the supplies to the confederacy in the east.r. The inland war was equally fierce and resulted in heavy causalities. Battles such as Brices Cross Roads, Tupelo and Shiloh in were some of the most costly of the Civil War. Shiloh alone resulted in nearly 25,000 causalities (combined, both sides). The battle was the largest engagement in the Mississippi Valley campaign. The battle of Corinth, near Shiloh, an important railroad crossing, left an additional 7000 causalities.
The battle of Stones River, near Murfreesboro, had approximately 81,000 men engaged, of which 21,000 were causalities, nearly a third of the total troops in the battle

Happily we left Tennessee and the Civil War with its horrors and continued on to Cave City, KY and Mammoth Cave NP