On the morning of April 6, 1862, some of the most ferocious fighting of the Civil War occurred in this area. The peach orchard was in full bloom that day, and the bodies of those who fell became covered with the petals of the peach blossoms. The Confederate general Albert Sydney Johnston was struck in the superficial femoral artery by a parting shot from a member of the Iowa infantry, just to the left of the back left enclosure here. Despite the fact that he has a tourniquet in his coat pocket, he bled to death about 100 meters from the site where I shot this photo.

The fighting in the Peach Orchard changed the course of the United States' history, in a similar manner to that at Little Round Top at Gettysburg. Had the Hornets' Nest and Peach Orchard gone differently, US Grant and his army may have been captured or killed, as the Confederate advance had them with their backs to the high waters of the Tennessee River, on a bluff at Pittsburg Landing.