The Great Elvis Expedition:

Day 7, Thursday August 15th, 2002 

Day 7 dawned overcast and cool, as the members of the expedition assembled in the dining room of the Generals Quarters Inn. Wiley was up early looking at real estate in Corinth, as he is looking for a quiet Southern town for retirement. (Jane, do you know about this?)

After a hearty breakfast of pancakes with apples and sausage, the expedition started off at 8:30 A.M. en route to the Shiloh Battlefield (named after a tiny wooden church located just where the two armies met) where we arrived at 9:00 A.M. It was here, on April 6th, 1862, that the Confederate Army of the Mississippi under General Johnston clashed in a bloody and confusing battle with the Union Army of the Tennessee under the largely unknown and newly appointed General Ulysses S. Grant. Grant, in his usual fashion, decided to go after the Southern army encamped near Corinth, and brought his troops down the Tennessee River to Pittsburgh Landing and set up his defensive line with its back to the river to his back and two creeks anchoring the left and right flanks of his army. At the same time, he gave instructions to General Buell to make a forced marched to meet him at that location. Confederate General Johnston, the most highly regarded Southern General after Lee, was determined to attack Grant’s forces before Buell could arrive, and pin the Union Army against the river, forcing either a surrender or a humiliating evacuation across the river.

The battle began early on the morning of April 6th, and the Confederate forces caught Grant by surprise by attacking en masse at 5:30. The Union forces were pushed back towards the river in a chaotic series of encounters, and only a heroic stand by Brigadier General Prentiss held off the Confederate sources from routing the entire Union Army. For four hours at what became known as the Hornet’s Nest, Prentiss’s men fighting in the Sunken Road held off 11 charges by Confederate forces. Finally, in mid-afternoon, the Rebel forces unleashed the greatest artillery barrage in the history of the North American continent up to that time. Finally, Prentiss, surrounded on all sides, had to surrender late in the afternoon and he and his men went off into captivity, not realizing until after the war the pivotal role they played in the battle.

The Confederates were now poised to accomplish their goal the following day. Grant was despondent, and told several confidantes that he would be discharged in disgrace after the battle. But Fortune decided to intervene on his side. First, General Johnston was shot in the leg and bled to death in the afternoon, leaving the Confederate Forces bereft of his strong leadership. Next, General Buell arrived with his 17,000 men during the night and these fresh and battle tested troops added greatly to the strength and morale of Grant’s forces. On the morning of April 7th, the reinvigorated Grant counterattacked all along his line, driving the Confederate troops back towards Corinth. The Battle of Shiloh was over, and the South never regained control of the Tennessee River.

There were several important personal connections that expedition members had to this battle. First, Kathy Lieb’s great great grandfather, who was from Spencer, Indiana, fought as a member of one of that state’s brigades. He was wounded in the battle, and died years later of those wounds, but not before siring Kathy’s great grandfather, for which we are all grateful.

Next Wiley’s great great great uncle, Marburry Chisolm, fought with the 44th Mississippi Brigade at Shiloh. He was captured by Union forces near Corinth in the fall of 1862, and then paroled. (to be paroled in the Civil War by the North meant being freed after giving your word not to take up arms against the Union.) Chisolm was subsequently captured again later in the war at Vicksburg, thereby raising questions in some quarters about the value of his word.

No one knows what happened to Marburry Chisolm after his second parole, but one school of thought believes that he became a gun runner for both the South and the North, and married a widow named Amber whom he had known and loved before the War. When they were wed, Amber owed a run down plantation which she and her Irish father were vainly trying to keep up after the war. Marburry used his ill gotten gains to restore the plantation to its former glory, and sired a daughter. Then, after a fight with his wife during which he reputedly said “Frankly, Amber, I hate you”, he rode off into the sunset and into history. This version of Chisolm’s story was later told by a female author from Atlanta under the title “So Much for the South” The novel enjoyed only a limited success.

One final rumination about the Battle of Shiloh. If the Confederate forces had won this engagement, and had this victory led to the South winning the war, would there have been an Elvis? This is a question for another day, but it must be asked.…………..

After our battlefield tour, we moseyed down the road a bit to have lunch at Hag’s Catfish Hotel, which is not a hotel but is rated as one of the 10 best catfish eateries in the country. It is located all by itself in the middle of nowhere on the bank of the Tennessee River, and more than lived up to its name with lightly battered and delicately fried flaky catfish (Ron had catfish filets broiled with lemon and pepper.) We all ate our entries and thought we were finished, only to realize that, unbeknownst to us, Wiley had ordered the “All You Can Eat Catfish Special.” After his third helping, and with no sign of his stopping, the other members of the expedition had to forcibly escort Wiley away from table and back to the bus. We felt bad when he cried, but we were determined to get to Memphis-our final destination and the site of our rendezvous with history- at an early hour, which we did, arriving at 5:00.

Once in Memphis, we checked into the Peabody Hotel, the oldest and most stately hotel in the South, where a flock of ducks come down every morning by elevator from their penthouse apartment, walk across the lobby on a red carpet, jump into the fountain and cavort, duck-style, until 3:00 P.M., at which time they reverse the entire process and retire for the night. Virtually all of the guests at the hotel come down from their room to watch the ducks’ comings and goings, with hundreds of cameras clicking furiously away. One has to marvel about humanity’s limitless ability to be entertained.

After some badly needed showers, we reassembled on the roof of the Peabody to participate in a very happening party. We left the hotel at 7:00 P.M. to have dinner at the Rendezvous, which has the best dry ribs in the country (dry ribs have a spice rub, which is applied several days before cooking, rather than sauce.) We each had a large slab of ribs, which were so good that Wiley forgot about all the catfish fillets he had missed at lunch.

After dinner, Ron, Wiley, and Tom decided to catch a cab out to Graceland for the candle light vigil, despite a steady rain. The other, fair-weather fan who shall remain nameless, decided to stay at the hotel and save his energy for the next day’s climatic events.

Once at Graceland, we and perhaps 50,000 other soggy but avid fans stood in line outside the gate while soft Elvis tunes drifted down the driveway to comfort the hushed and adoring public. Wiley wisely cautioned us not to engage in any irreverent humor, as we risked being torn asunder by an angry mob. Once the front of the line got to the house, they were given candles and then walked slowly past the gravesite and back down the driveway to the road. After waiting in line for almost an hour, we and approximately 10,000 others were told that we were in the wrong line. At this point, we decided (unusually for us) that discretion was the better part of valor, and got out of the line, knowing as we did that our main event, the reason for our entire trip, would happen during our tour of Graceland the following day at precisely 3:53 P.M., which was 25 years to the minute that the King gave up the ghost and departed from this life.

Once out of line, we were able to engage in some of the best people-watching to be had on this planet. There were old people (not like us, I mean we’re not old, for God’s sake!), young people, able bodied people, disabled people, people from 100 different countries (we got entangled briefly in the Croatian delegation), poor people, rich people, truck drivers and corporate lawyers, college kids and high school dropouts, all united by the common thread that was (and is) Elvis. Many people had set up their own personal shrines along the roadside, with large portraits of the King bordered with hand picked flowers and illuminated by hundreds of small candles arranged with what appeared to be religious intent. Amidst this soggy mass of humanity walked scores of really bad Elvis impersonators who were there not for any crass commercial reasons but to express their grief in the best way they knew how. It was, in short, an amazing spectacle filled with excesses that would have made Elvis feel right at home. Yet still it hung together as an authentic form of mass grieving for the cumulative loss of whatever void he filled in the lives of the each of the spectators.

Following this pilgrimage, we took a cab to Beale Street, which is a very lively three block stretch of downtown Memphis from which the sound of good blues music emanates from scores of restaurants, night clubs, and tee-shirt stores. We chose BB King’s nightclub, where we recuperated from our experience over numerous beers and enjoyed good live blues. We got back to the Peabody around 1:00 A.M.

And so ended day 7 of the Great Elvis Expedition.