Corinth, Mississippi

The past several weeks have passed rather quickly.  Most of that time we have stayed in Carbondale, Illinois, except for a couple brief visits to St.Louis and Farmington, Missouri.  It is amazing how our lives have so completely revolved around our grandson Nathaniel.  Our nights and days totally melted into one another as we tried to give our daughter some sleep time between the constant feeding demands of a newborn.  As Melissa is breast feeding, there is not much we can help her with in that department!  The picture below was taken during one of her nap times- notice the cat Zelda in the upper right-hand corner who is standing guard over her and the baby.  For the moment all is peaceful.

 

 We left Carbondale on Thursday and our stop for the night that day was in Corinth, Mississippi.  We came into the town completely ignorant of its history.  We only knew two things:  we needed to find a place for supper, and we wanted to see the downtown area.  As we drove through the town we found its historic section and stopped to look at a few interpretive signs in front of some older-looking buildings.

The house pictured above was once the headquarters of Confederate General Polk during the Civil War.  And the house pictured below was where the Confederate General Beauregard had his headquarters.

 In April of 1862 the General made the prescient statement that "If defeated here, we lose the Mississippi Valley, and probably our cause".  After supper at the "Blazing Noodles" ( a wonderful restaurant in Corinth) we walked around the Civil War Trailhead Park and learned further about the war which took place in Corinth in October of 1862.  The park was once a critical railroad junction for the town and it was one of the battle sites where the Confederates briefly rallied against the Union Army.  Hard to imagine, but in this little town 20,000 Confederate troops fought house to house against 20,000 Union Army troops in a street battle after which the Southern troops were driven from the town in disorder. There is a Civil War Interpretive Center in Corinth which explains in more detail the battle of 1862, as well as the Battle at Shiloh, unfortunately we did not have the time to visit it.