Spring Hill, Tennessee

Never been here before?  Check out “About Landing,” above.

 

Dan –  Yesterday, I said “the misery continues.”  Today, I say, “the misery continues, sort of.”   What that means is that I landed in a PSer, and my Score increased just a tenth.  Today’s landing state . . . TN; 23/22; 2/10; 4; 167.8 (highest since 12/1/08). 

A new river!!  The Duck, which flows to the Tennessee (29^th hit); to the Ohio (100^th hit); to the MM.

Oh my!!!  It’s the 100^th hit for the Ohio.  Bells and whistles, please!!  FYI, Ohio is solidly in 5^th place amongst river basins, with 4^th place belonging to the Columbia (116 hits), and 6^th place belonging to the Arkansas (84 hits).  As you mathematically-inclined types can see, the Ohio is right smack in the middle between the Columbia and Arkansas, separated by 16 hits from both.

So, here’s some news about the Duck.  This hit marks the 8^th time that I’ve landed in a Duck Creek or Duck River watershed.  Therefore, “Duck” now makes it to my list of common stream names.  Congrats, Duck!!!

FYI, Duck joins Wood & Woody; Wolf, Town, Otter, Long, Falls & Falling, and Deer with 8 hits on the common stream name list. . .

There was yet one more remarkable then about this landing.  As often happens, I landed way out in the Atlantic Ocean somewhere for my first landing attempt, and then, for my second landing attempt, I landed a mere 5 miles from . . . Eleuthera!!!!   OK, it was off the southern tip, and currently, I’m up north, but this is amazing!!!  After 1600 landings, this is my closest landing ever to Eleuthera.  And it just so happened that I’m here. 

Here’s a map showing my Eleuthera near-miss:

 

 

Moving right along . . . I landed near the city of Spring Hill (population 7,700).  Here’s a broad view of my landing location (it’s the 35/87 lat/long in the central part of the state).

 

It turns out that a Civil War battle happened at Spring Hill.  Actually, it turns out to be a non-battle battle.  But regardless, this is the first time I remember a Civil War connection with a landing location.  Anyway:

On the night of November 28, 1864, Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood’s Army of Tennessee marched toward Spring Hill to attempt to cut Maj. Gen. John M. Schofield’s Union army’s supply line.  Minor skirmishes continued throughout the day as the Confederates advanced. On November 29, Hood’s infantry crossed Duck River and converged on Spring Hill.  

In the meantime, Schofield reinforced the troops holding the crossroads at Spring Hill. In late afternoon, the Federals repulsed a piecemeal Confederate infantry attack. During the night, the rest of Schofield’s command passed through Spring Hill, heading north to link up with additional Union troops.

Analysis:  The result of miscommunication and simply bad military management was that during the night, all of Schofield’s command, passed through Spring Hill while the Confederate commanders slept. The passage of the army did not go unnoticed, but no effort was made to block the pike.  By 6:00 a.m. on November 30, all of Schofield’s army was well north of Spring Hill and its vanguard had reached Franklin, where it began to build breastworks. In the morning Hood discovered Schofield’s escape, and after an angry conference with his subordinate commanders (during which he blamed all but himself for the failure), ordered his army to resume its pursuit, setting up the Battle of Franklin that afternoon.

This had been, perhaps, Hood’s best chance to isolate and defeat the Union army. The engagement has been described as “one of the most controversial non-fighting events of the entire war”. A Confederate lieutenant said afterwards, “The most charitable explanation is that the gods of war injected confusion into the heads of our leaders,” but historical speculation has attributed the failure to the following possibilities:

• drunkenness among some generals,
• Hood’s debilitation from ingesting laudanum after falling from his horse that day
• the influence of Mrs. Jessie Peters, a notorious resident of Spring Hill whose dalliance with Confederate Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn a year earlier had led to his murder at the hands of her husband.

Well, there you have it.  Hood screwed up because his generals were drunk, or because he was on drugs (see below), or because somebody was messin’ around with Jesse.  Phew.  That’s why wars are lost.

Anyway, what is laudanum?  From Wiki:

Laudanum, also known as opium tincture or tincture of opium, is an alcoholic herbal preparation of opium. It is made by combining ethanol with opium.

In the 19th century, laudanum was used in many patent medicines to “relieve pain… to produce sleep… to allay irritation… to check excessive secretions… to support the system… [and] as a soporific.” The limited pharmacopoeia of the day meant that opium derivatives were among the most efficacious of available treatments, so laudanum was widely prescribed for ailments from colds to meningitis to cardiac diseases, in both adults and children.

Wow – So laudanum sounds like quite the substance!  So Dan, I know that you can KS without laudanum . . .

Well, I must – simply must – have at least one picture.  So here’s some countryside near Spring Hill:

KS

Greg

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