0:06 [SPEAKER_01]: I'd like to introduce one of my favorite voices among anyone I've ever interviewed. 0:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, my name is Steve McDaniel, and I grew up in seven generations in this community here at what we call Parker's Crossroads. 0:21 [SPEAKER_01]: Parker's Crossroads, Tennessee, is a small town of 284 people, but it has a big history. 0:27 [SPEAKER_01]: This place factored in the life of one of the most controversial figures in all of American history. 0:33 [SPEAKER_01]: The Confederate General, Nathan Bedford Forest, who would become the first Grand Wizard of the Klu Klux Klien. 0:40 [SPEAKER_01]: Steve has lived in Parker's Crossroads for most of his life and is heavily involved in preserving its history, as well as the history of his home state. 0:49 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm active in the American Battlefield Trust, the Tennessee Civil War Preservation Association. 0:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Tennessee State Library and Archives, I just came off the Tennessee State Museum Commission. 1:03 [SPEAKER_00]: And so I'm really interested in history. 1:06 [SPEAKER_00]: I served 30 years in the Tennessee House of Representatives. 1:09 [SPEAKER_00]: and I retired in 2018, I didn't run again, but I have an opportunity there to do some good work toward preservation in the future here in the state. 1:23 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm the city manager for the 1:24 [SPEAKER_00]: down the city of Parker's Crossroads and we managed the 370 acres of core battlefield that we've saved here at the Parker's Crossroads battlefield with a battle as far at least in the 31st, 1862. 1:44 [SPEAKER_01]: This was early in the Civil War, and the Union was just finding its footing after a surprising string of defeats, at the hand of the Confederate forces in 1861, became clear that this would not be the short, uneventful war, most of the north had expected. 1:59 [SPEAKER_01]: In 1862, Ulysses Esqurant led Union armies west, in south to major victories at Fort Donaldson, and in the Battle of Shiloh. 2:09 [SPEAKER_01]: In December of that year, Forest was sent on a sabotage mission to destroy Grand Supply Line and limit his supply to make war in the south. 2:18 [SPEAKER_01]: Forests is raids were so devastatingly successful that it took the north three full months to repair the damage. 2:29 [SPEAKER_00]: And they finally called it with the here at Parker's Crossroads and tried to cut him off from his out of Western Sea after this very successful raid. 2:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Grant had to delay his move on Vixberg by three months because forested destroyed. 2:47 [SPEAKER_00]: So well, the rail line into Mississippi, and so that's why the battle was fought here. 2:57 [SPEAKER_00]: The escape capture, he got caught between two forces roughly. 3:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Each of the sides of his own here in the Battle of Parker's Crossroads, but he successfully escaped back and across the Tennessee River and to Middle Tennessee. 3:13 [SPEAKER_01]: The battle at Parker's Crossroads lasted 5 hours, involving 46,000 federal in 2000 Confederate Calvary. 3:22 [SPEAKER_01]: I asked Steve for a quick summary of how the battle unfolded. 3:26 [SPEAKER_00]: The forest was looking for a way to get around the federal troops. 3:31 [SPEAKER_00]: He started his raid on December the 11th, out of Columbia, Tennessee, which is in the middle part of Tennessee, south of Nashville. 3:41 [SPEAKER_00]: He crosses the Tennessee River, 3:44 [SPEAKER_00]: at a little town called Clifton, he's moving west across the Tennessee River, and this is when he begins his raid. 3:53 [SPEAKER_00]: He finds a skirmish or an engagement in Lexington, which is just 10 miles south of here, but he's going to make a big loop. 4:00 [SPEAKER_00]: He's going to Jackson, Tennessee. 4:01 [SPEAKER_00]: He's going to move north of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad to destroy Grant's line of supply there. 4:10 [SPEAKER_00]: And so it takes him several days to do that and forces completed his mission on by Christmas December 25th. 4:19 [SPEAKER_00]: He started on December 11th, but he's December 25th. 4:22 [SPEAKER_00]: He's destroyed the rail line, which delays grants move into Mississippi about three months. 4:28 [SPEAKER_00]: So he's looking to escape back to 4:32 [SPEAKER_00]: He counts for two nights north-west of here about six miles. 4:37 [SPEAKER_00]: The Federals had finally been given permission to start pursuing forest, and they were waiting general, the Union General, Jeremiah Solven, was in command of the West Tennessee. 4:50 [SPEAKER_00]: troops into the sea. 4:53 [SPEAKER_00]: And he starts pursuing forest. 4:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Forest is camp six miles north west of here. 4:58 [SPEAKER_00]: The federal 2000 or camp five miles north of here. 5:03 [SPEAKER_00]: And then there's another 2000 troops. 5:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Ten miles beyond those federal troops. 5:08 [SPEAKER_00]: So in the morning of December 31st, each army is trying to get to Parker's crossroads. 5:14 [SPEAKER_00]: It's a crossroads. 5:18 [SPEAKER_00]: force hoping that he gets through the crossroads first, but he didn't, didn't make it, the petals come in under Colonel Cyrus, Livingston Dunham, who was in command of the 50th Indiana Volunteer Infantry along with the 22nd Illinois Infantry, the 39th Iowa Infantry. 5:40 [SPEAKER_00]: So, he has about a brigade, about 1,500, 2,000 men, and he's trying to cut forest off, the engagement begins about a mile north, west of here, and so his forest approaches that position. 5:56 [SPEAKER_00]: He sets his artillery up, the fettles go out to test his strength from there, and then, for us, after a two-hour battle, it pushes him back. 6:05 [SPEAKER_00]: to the crossroads here to the place called Parker's Crossroads, and then they find for a couple hours, forest is surprised. 6:15 [SPEAKER_00]: He sends out full companies of these troopers north to impede or at least warn him of Colonel John W. Fuller's, the Union, the Northern Commanders is in command of the Ohioer Brigade. 6:28 [SPEAKER_00]: And so the old highway gate comes on to the field. 6:33 [SPEAKER_00]: The forest is called the Silver Cell Dunnems Brigade and the old highway gate. 6:38 [SPEAKER_00]: And he gives command when he's asked that they come up to the general and tell him said, we've got these federal infantry in our rear and the general can't believe it. 6:49 [SPEAKER_00]: So he rides out there himself because he knew he had sent these four companies to 6:55 [SPEAKER_00]: And he had had no warning, and he was taking his time, and he was whipping Colonel Cyrus, Simon self-dunems troops with his artillery, for his head at 10 pieces of artillery, and he was just slowly surrounding the Donaldm's troops. 7:10 [SPEAKER_00]: And so these people come in behind him, and he says, 7:15 [SPEAKER_00]: He believed this, so he rides out there, and one of the federal instruments puts the rifle on him and says, General, I demand you surrender. 7:24 [SPEAKER_00]: And so General Forest says, well, I've already surrendered, and my men are forming up out here, and it's cotton field. 7:31 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to stack arms, and surrender here at Reverend John Parker's house, is where they were going to stack arms here. 7:38 [SPEAKER_00]: His men's wood pile. 7:40 [SPEAKER_00]: And they let forces run off. 7:44 [SPEAKER_00]: And so, Forest gets back to his line of men, and he gathers up a scratch forest. 7:50 [SPEAKER_00]: So, when the count has said in the five of us, it's 125, and they said, well, what are we going to do, General? 7:56 [SPEAKER_00]: And he said, we're going to charge them both ways. 7:58 [SPEAKER_00]: We're going to charge them in south of us that we almost captured. 8:02 [SPEAKER_00]: which they would have surrendered in a little bit longer, but they wouldn't surrender because they knew the old Howard brigade was still back there and might save them. 8:11 [SPEAKER_00]: So far as it makes it church, she takes the old Howard brigade off of the offensive move and puts them on a defensive mood. 8:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Long enough, remove most of his artillery and his mounting cavalry from the field. 8:25 [SPEAKER_00]: He lost 300 men that were captured by the federal saloon they surprised 8:32 [SPEAKER_00]: hundred man and a lot of casualties and so forth. 8:36 [SPEAKER_00]: So it didn't forest leaves the field and you start to re-crossing the Tennessee River the next day which is about thirty-five miles from here and that he successfully escapes and the federal set you set here all night on the night of the December the 31st 8:56 [SPEAKER_00]: thinking, well, he's moving off to the east, off the right flank of Dunno's position, and he's going to attack us the next morning with forest. 9:05 [SPEAKER_00]: His mission had been accomplished. 9:08 [SPEAKER_00]: And so he had destroyed that rail line, delaying grants moving to Mississippi, all he was interested in was get back to safety in Middleton, and he did that the next day. 9:19 [SPEAKER_00]: They tried to catch up 9:23 [SPEAKER_00]: to impede its crossing there at the Tennessee River, but they were unsuccessful. 9:28 [SPEAKER_00]: And so basically, that's what took place here on December 31st, 1862, during the American Civil War. 9:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Forest left these camps, about six miles north west of here, and nine o'clock in the morning, the Federals, 9:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Send out the hell with some regiments and two regiments in reserve, but to send a rest of them out to test for a string. 9:51 [SPEAKER_00]: And so they find for two hours, he pushes him back to the crossroads through the crossroads and south of the crossroads. 9:59 [SPEAKER_00]: And you're actually on the battlefield here at the Visitor Center. 10:04 [SPEAKER_01]: The land on which the Visitor Center sits today was an artillery position during the battle. 10:09 [SPEAKER_00]: And so the battlefield, it's on the national register for historic places and it has 1,400 acres in the national register designation. 10:21 [SPEAKER_00]: And we've saved 370 acres of what we term core battlefield and core battlefield is heavy finding took place. 10:32 [SPEAKER_00]: And we don't know if we'll be able to buy more land 10:39 [SPEAKER_00]: a conservation easement from the property owner so they don't develop the property and they just have to leave it in a formal end. 10:50 [SPEAKER_01]: A conservation easement means the private property owner retains ownership of their land, but agrees not to build anything on it that would compromise the integrity of its archaeological or historical value. 11:02 [SPEAKER_01]: Even 160 years out from the Civil War, roller contours and archaeologists are still finding artifacts and even bodies on battlefields, like the one at Parker's Crossroads. 11:14 [SPEAKER_00]: We had the state archeologist come and do an archeological survey and he chose to dig it this one particular site which turned out to be Union and did three excavations and after the first excavation I went to the National Archives and found where in June live 1867 11:38 [SPEAKER_00]: They exhumed 29 remains out of this burial site. 11:45 [SPEAKER_00]: And on that first archaeological dig, it was done to the state archaeologist, he uncovered he discovered one soldier that was still there. 11:57 [SPEAKER_00]: They didn't find him. 12:00 [SPEAKER_00]: And his head was only, his skull was only 22 inches below the ground, so the grave was very shallow. 12:07 [SPEAKER_01]: In the rush and confusion of war, graves were often dug at shallower depths, then is conventional, and also insufficiently marked and documented. 12:16 [SPEAKER_00]: And so a lot of those graves got lost and still remain unknown. 12:22 [SPEAKER_00]: I know at least two out here on this battlefield that were probably Confederate, their remains were found by Relic hunters who were using their metal detectors to discover artifacts from the battle. 12:33 [SPEAKER_00]: And so what they picked up on were the bullets, the balls, or mini balls, whatever had killed them. 12:40 [SPEAKER_00]: And they found them and then they dig into the grave and well, one fellow told me he said the bones were like crackers, he was a pressure cracker, he said that's how the bones were, we're he discovered to the remains here at Marcus Crosses. 12:56 [SPEAKER_01]: But before you grab your metal detector and head out to the nearest civil war battlefield, there's something you should know. 13:02 [SPEAKER_01]: Relic hunting on protected battlefields like this one is highly illegal. 13:07 [SPEAKER_00]: It's illegal for people to hunt on the state property, or any property owned by the city of Marcus Crossroads. 13:14 [SPEAKER_00]: People get permission from some landowners adjacent to the battlefield and the landowner gets permission, then they still find some artifacts. 13:23 [SPEAKER_00]: not a lot left here because the good metal detectors came out in the 1970s and they improved them over the years and people like to relicons but you cannot, it's illegal to hunt on state on this battlefield here at Marcus Crossroads or any national battlefields. 13:42 [SPEAKER_01]: I think when I pulled into Parker's crossroads and walked into the visitor's center, my jaw just about hit the floor, when I saw the face of Nathan Bedford Forest painted along the walls alongside different quotes and tributes. 13:56 [SPEAKER_01]: You don't have to know anything about the Civil War to recognize that face or to know that name. 14:01 [SPEAKER_01]: Forest was, of course, a driving force in the growth in the promotion of the Klu Klux Klan, so after discussing the battle and its significance. 14:09 [SPEAKER_01]: I asked you to say a word about forest in his legacy. 14:13 [SPEAKER_00]: He was the first grand wizard of the Clucleus clan that was created to 14:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Handled both black and white people who didn't live up the responsibility at home. 14:26 [SPEAKER_00]: And so they began to do things that weren't good. 14:32 [SPEAKER_00]: And so Forest Resigned his position as the Grand A Wizard and disbanded the Club Club's clan. 14:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, the Club's clan has come back many times in different ways over the years, but Forest has a black eye. 14:48 [SPEAKER_00]: That black spot on his record, where he was the first grand wizard as a good-class client in the Fort Pillow, where he allegedly massacred a lot of African-American troops at Fort Pillow is another spot on his record that people like to pick out. 15:08 [SPEAKER_00]: But there was congressional hearing in Washington DC following the war, which cleared him of any wrongdoing at Fort Pillow. 15:16 [SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, people like good stories, and they like to carry on, and still talk about force. 15:23 [SPEAKER_00]: I admire force for being such a leader. 15:26 [SPEAKER_00]: He was natural born tactician, had a third grade education, was a millionaire, when the war started, and of course, he was a broken man after the war in 1977 in Memphis, Tennessee. 15:42 [SPEAKER_01]: Now that's a very different interpretation of the Crans or Origin story that I've ever heard, and I would encourage you to research that on your own. 15:50 [SPEAKER_01]: And if you're unfamiliar with Fort Pillow, it was bad, like Warcrimes Bad. 15:54 [SPEAKER_01]: Following the Amiance of Patient Proclamation, the Union Army began enlisting Black Troops to fight the Confederacy. 16:01 [SPEAKER_01]: The South was outraged. 16:03 [SPEAKER_01]: They called the Enlistment of Black Troops in a white man's war, quote, uncivilized. 16:08 [SPEAKER_01]: Fort Pillow contained 600 troops, roughly half of which were black. 16:13 [SPEAKER_01]: When General Forrest showed up with 2500 Confederate cavalry, he demanded the surrender of the overmatched Union Army. 16:21 [SPEAKER_01]: They refused. 16:22 [SPEAKER_01]: Confederate forces soon overwhelmed the underman to Fort. 16:25 [SPEAKER_01]: and what unfolded was one of the most tragic scenes of an already horrific war. 16:30 [SPEAKER_01]: One of Force's sergeants, Achilles V. Clark, wrote to a sister's two days later. 16:36 [SPEAKER_01]: Our men were so exasperated by the Yankees threats of no quarter that they gave but let all. 16:41 [SPEAKER_01]: The slaughter was awful, words cannot describe the scene. 16:44 [SPEAKER_01]: The poor diluted new rows would run up to our men, fall on their knees, and with uplifted hands, scream from mercy. 16:51 [SPEAKER_01]: But they were ordered to their feet, and then shot down. 16:54 [SPEAKER_01]: The white men fared but little better. 16:57 [SPEAKER_01]: The fort turned out to be a great slaughter pin, blood. 17:00 [SPEAKER_01]: Human blood stood about in pools, and brains could have been gathered up in any quantity. 17:06 [SPEAKER_01]: I was several others, tried to stop the butchery, and at one time had partially succeeded, but general forest ordered them shot down like dogs, and the carnage continued. 17:16 [SPEAKER_01]: Finally, our men became sick of blood, and the firing ceased. 17:20 [SPEAKER_01]: that there was a massacre following the Fort Pillow Surrender is a matter most scholars agree on, as the historian Richard Elfuch puts it. 17:28 [SPEAKER_01]: The affair at Fort Pillow was simply an order of death, a mass lynching to satisfy the basis of conduct, intentional murder for the violence of reasons, racism and personal enmity. 17:41 [SPEAKER_01]: The real question is whether forced ordered the slaughter, or if it just happened in the heat of the moment. 17:47 [SPEAKER_01]: Either way, it happened, and forced was in charge. 17:50 [SPEAKER_01]: As another historian Andrew Ward has said, whether the massacre was premeditated or spontaneous does not address the more fundamental question of whether massacre took place, it certainly did, in every dictionary sense of the word. 18:04 [SPEAKER_01]: Force claimed and what would become the official Confederate story that all of Union casualties had occurred in the heat of battle with Black soldiers firing to the end. 18:14 [SPEAKER_01]: One Black Lieutenant Daniel V. Horn of the 6th U.S. 18:18 [SPEAKER_01]: Heavy Artillery agreed with that least part of Force's version, saying there was never a surrender of the fort, both officers and men declaring there would never be a surrender. 18:27 [SPEAKER_01]: or ask for quarter. 18:29 [SPEAKER_01]: Additionally, at the end of the battle the Union flag flew over Fort Pillow, suggesting no former surrender had taken place. 18:36 [SPEAKER_01]: But that does not mean individual soldiers, or even most of the garrison did not give up arms and surrender during the course of battle. 18:43 [SPEAKER_01]: In fact, the evidence that this occurred is overwhelming. 18:46 [SPEAKER_01]: Additional accusations were made that Confederate soldiers had tortured their black prisoners from Fort Pillow, nailing them to barrels, burning them alive, even crucifying them. 18:56 [SPEAKER_01]: I haven't been able to find definite proof of these later accusations. 18:59 [SPEAKER_01]: It's an extremely ugly scene, and as Steve mentioned, it's one that haunted forest to the end of his life. 19:05 [SPEAKER_01]: And part of the really bizarre thing about forest is legacy, is that after becoming the first Grand Wizard of the KKK, he actually became an advocate for black rights, as well as racial peace and equality. 19:17 [SPEAKER_01]: On one hand, he was reluctant to testify against former associates in the clan, and 19:25 [SPEAKER_01]: When four black men were lynched for defending themselves against white aggression, forced road to the governor and volunteered to quote, help exterminate those men responsible for the continued violence against the blacks. 19:37 [SPEAKER_01]: It's a dizzying turn of events, especially as while he was still officially with the clan. 19:42 [SPEAKER_01]: That organization spread a rain of terror in the south in an attempt to suppress black voters in states like Georgia and Louisiana. 19:51 [SPEAKER_01]: In Louisiana, it's estimated that more than 1,000 Black citizens were murdered to scare people away from the polls. 19:58 [SPEAKER_01]: From what I can tell, it really just looks like forest was a ruthless, racist, yet savvy communion with enough political genius to stay out of trouble. 20:07 [SPEAKER_01]: The last thing I'll mention about forest is legacy, and the thing that adds a whole new layer of complexity to a story is the fact that he was a bona fide military genius. 20:16 [SPEAKER_01]: One of the things historians agree on, with regard to forest, is that he was arguably the greatest battlefield tactician on either side of the war. 20:25 [SPEAKER_01]: His natural intelligence, for strategy and his ability to make split-second decisions, to swing battles in his favor, having themselves become legendary. 20:35 [SPEAKER_01]: While Steve and Myers' forces military prowess and leadership, and has a somewhat different view of 20:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I have nothing that I would want to glorify the Ku Klux clan about. 20:54 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know. 20:54 [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't live at that time, but I just know what I've read about the clan, the first one in Pulaski, Tennessee, which is in the middle part of the state from here where 21:13 [SPEAKER_00]: And but like I said earlier, he saw that it was not good some of the things that the clan started doing and that's the reason he'd disbanded the clan, but the clan is a very racist organization and it still exists today, but it's going through many versions of the clan over these decades since the Americans have wore the clan was created some while about a 21:42 [SPEAKER_00]: 60-some odd years ago in Pilasky, Tennessee, so I wouldn't glorify the clan one bit, but it did, it mirage general Nathan bit for forest, for being the man he was, that generally was during the American Civil War. 21:59 [SPEAKER_01]: One of the great things about history is the fact that it evolved so many perspectives, and while Steve's view of forest and of his legacy doesn't entirely overlap with my own, I enjoyed my time at Parker's Crossroads, and I'd encourage you to visit, and spend some time talking with Steve about the battle for Parker's Crossroads, and also its highly controversial hero. 22:19 [SPEAKER_01]: Before I left, I asked Steve about the continued use of the Confederate flag in America today. 22:25 [SPEAKER_01]: He made a couple things clear. 22:27 [SPEAKER_01]: One, the flag we know as the Confederate flag is actually the battle flag of the Confederacy, rather than the Central flag. 22:35 [SPEAKER_01]: Two, he would not endorse using that flag due to all the racist connotations that has today. 22:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Once the session took place, they created the first national flag of the Confederacy. 22:52 [SPEAKER_00]: And the first national flag is the Stars and Bars. 22:57 [SPEAKER_00]: It's what it's referred to. 22:59 [SPEAKER_00]: It had the red and blue stripes, white stripes, and teeny had a circle of stars, some of which seven, some of 11, and later on there were different versions. 23:13 [SPEAKER_00]: It's called Stainless Banner. 23:15 [SPEAKER_00]: It has so much white on it initially that it didn't have the next flag, a Stainless Banner, but it looks so much like the American flag or the U.S. flag I should say, that they created another flag in its called Stainless Banner, and it had the Stainlander's cross in one corner, team was white. 23:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, on the battlefield, I look like a surrender flag. 23:43 [SPEAKER_00]: And so they said, we've got to change it again. 23:46 [SPEAKER_00]: And they put a red bar across one end of that flag. 23:53 [SPEAKER_00]: And so those were the national flags of Confederacy. 23:58 [SPEAKER_00]: The battlefield flag is which you see that the Ku Klux 24:14 [SPEAKER_00]: And that was carried by the regiments in battle along with the regimental flags. 24:21 [SPEAKER_00]: It has the same Andrews cross on it. 24:23 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's generally, that's what people, they don't know about the other flags. 24:27 [SPEAKER_00]: All I think about is the battle flag. 24:30 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's what people who don't know any better thinks that was the Confederate flag that it was used 24:39 [SPEAKER_00]: in the first-in-the-eastern theater, Virginia, you know, in those areas, it finally made its way over here. 24:47 [SPEAKER_00]: The smoke, most regiments didn't carry that flag as a regimental flag. 24:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Now some developed flags later. 24:56 [SPEAKER_00]: It looked like that, so it's unfortunate that that's viewed as the confederate flag and I still see a lot of people flying the flag, but I think it certainly allows calls in that. 25:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Those who have now started telling the story, all they can see from that flag, they don't see, they don't recognize that people died under that flag, they suffered under that flag. 25:25 [SPEAKER_00]: And it means a lot to people. 25:28 [SPEAKER_00]: It's not meant as a racist symbol to many people. 25:32 [SPEAKER_00]: It's a heritage kind of thing to revert and on of the flag, but I couldn't advise anybody today to fly that flag because too many people recognize it for the racist symbol that they believe it should be recognized as. 25:52 [SPEAKER_01]: Steve also touched on the recent trend of removing Confederate statues throughout the South, in his mind, removing these statues. 26:00 [SPEAKER_01]: Only increases our chances of making similar mistakes in the future. 26:05 [SPEAKER_00]: they've removed anything that would have a hint of the Confederacy or any hint of the of slavery, but history is so important, and we have to learn from our mistakes in history. 26:24 [SPEAKER_00]: And if you do away with history, there's not that learning process and the younger generation 26:32 [SPEAKER_00]: isn't getting a lot of history in the classroom and so that makes these parks and these monuments so much more important is that you can see them, you can walk the howled ground or men die for whatever they believed in and then if you do a wave of those things it will be tragic 27:02 [SPEAKER_00]: The one of the TV shows, I guess, on serious radio or something. 27:10 [SPEAKER_00]: And they're talking about the Skyrim had written a book about secession that states in the future, between now and 2050, that states may want to secede from the union. 27:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, we already fought that war, and we saw the results of the succession, and it was proven as the result of that war that a state's king succeed from our union, but there's so many people who don't know and don't understand their history. 27:43 [SPEAKER_00]: that allows them to start down that track down that road of talking of succession. 27:50 [SPEAKER_00]: And it just really hurts me to see that people are so uneducated. 27:58 [SPEAKER_00]: when it comes to history, that they will start thinking, that is the thing to do, yes, this withdrawal, or even a portion of a state with draw from an portion of another state, and join another portion of another state to create another state, or another nation is ridiculous. 28:16 [SPEAKER_00]: the american civil war the war between the states of the brothers of war whatever you want to call it terrible war we're almost seven hundred thousand americans lost her life but it's just it's tragic and when you combine all the wars together up through the 28:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Persian Gulf War, more people died in American Civil War than all the revolutionary war and all the other wars combined. 28:42 [SPEAKER_00]: And it was just such a tragic event in America's history. 28:50 [SPEAKER_00]: And one that would never, never want to repeat again. 28:55 [SPEAKER_01]: I'd like to thank Steve for joining me, and I'm going to leave you with an invitation from him 29:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Unlike the inventor listeners to come to Parker's Crossroads, they listen to your podcast. 29:09 [SPEAKER_00]: The Parks Crossroads is in Western Sea. 29:14 [SPEAKER_00]: If you travel out 40 across Tennessee, if you're going toward the east, you come to Memphis first in the Nashville, while in between Memphis and Nashville. 29:24 [SPEAKER_00]: And exit one or eight on our 40s is the little town of Parker's Crossroads, which has had a lot of big history of the American Civil War. 29:35 [SPEAKER_00]: And we have nearly four miles of paved walking trails. 29:39 [SPEAKER_00]: We have a suffocated driving tour. 29:41 [SPEAKER_00]: you can take here at Parker's Crossroads, but you should really begin your tour at the Parker's Crossroads's District Center where we have a bookstore, we have other things for sale here that would be of interest to those of you who read history and we also have an 18-minute video, we have some interpretive information, until you can come here and begin your tour and spend an hour to at Parker's Crossroads, Tennessee.
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