Battle of Nashville & Beyond

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Shy’s Hill Pano

Shy’s Hill 360° Panorama Virtual Tour

4615 Benton Smith Road, Nashville, TN

Revised: 12 Feb 2019

painting
Painting by Howard Pyle | Oil on Canvas, 1906, Minnesota Historical Society Collections

Battle of Nashville: Day 2

“At about 3:30 p.m. he sent a message to Thomas and XVI Corps commander Gen. Andrew Smith that unless he were given orders to the contrary in the next five minutes, his division was going to attack Compton’s Hill and the Confederate line immediately to its east”… read more

Minnesota lost more men in this action than any other in its participation of the war. Shy’s Hill Park is open all year long from sun-up to sundown. It requires a steep 10 minute hike to the top from Benton Smith Road off Harding Place. The tour has links to other expanded tours of the Battle of Nashville and the Nashville National Cemetery as noted by the small white floating globe icons in the panorama.

There are links in the virtual reality tour to others, including:

  • the grave site of Colonel William M. Shy.
  • the Minnesota State Capitol
  • expanded tour of The Battle of Nashville

Note: get the full screen experience by clicking the icon in the lower left of the video frame. A zoom option is available also for reading the historical signage. Some markers are embedded in the floating icons.

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#battleofnashville #shyshill #360

© Bob Henderson | Athens-South

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Minnesota State Capitol

Civil War Paintings

shy's hill

Minnesota has one of the most magnificent governmental headquarters in the country. It is also home to the most iconic image of the Battle of Nashville, along with 3 other key American Civil War battles:

  • The Battle of Gettysburg
  • The Second Minnesota Regiment at Missionary Ridge
  • Fourth Minnesota Regiment Entering Vicksburg
  • The Battle of Nashville at Shy’s Hill (5th, 7th, 9th and 10th MN)

The Battle of Nashville cost Minnesota when 87 died in Tennessee. The day is remembered in Howard Pyle’s painting “Battle of Nashville” at the Minnesota Capitol.  Shy’s Hill was the site of the deadliest day for Minnesotans fighting in the Civil War, and the heaviest losses in the Battle of Nashville.

The four paintings were almost permanently relocated after a massive renovation in 2016. “The Capitol Area Architectural and Planning Board voted 5-3 to recommend that the four historic paintings not be returned to the building’s most ornate room when the $310 million Capitol renovation is completed in January.” …read more

Take a virtual reality tour of the Capitol building and the Governor’s Reception Room:

 

Click here: Take a virtual reality tour of Shy’s Hill in Nashville, Tennessee

Click here: Battle of Nashville painting by Howard Pyle

Click here: Minnesota Statue at the Nashville National Cemetery

Imagery and tour by Bob Henderson

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Col. Shy’s Grave Robing

Colonel William Mabry Shy robed 114 later

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Save the 20th TN Flag

I was attended a wedding party last weekend near Franklin, TN and was surprised to find a most unexpected historical site in the back yard: the previously 1977 vandalized grave of Colonel William Shy, 20th Tennessee Infantry CSA.

I discovered the grave robbery had been finally traced back to a young man from Franklin.  According to the current property owner, the culprit had been on a construction team renovating the home. He was never prosecuted, and died years ago in a motor cycle accident.

The publication referenced below is dated from 1985. Sometime later, the artifacts stollen were unanimously turned over to the Carter House Museum, where the coffin had been donated by the family after the incident.

‘THE PILLAGED GRAVE OF A CIVIL WAR HERO’

“Occasionally unusual circumstances arise that call for the excavation of a historic burial. In 1977 the grave of Civil War hero Colonel W.M. Shy was disturbed. Upon examination a body was discovered that was thought to have been a recent murder victim. After a thorough examination, the body was identified as that of Colonel Shy.”

skull
114 years later

Colonel William M. Shy (1838-1864)

“After the battle, Compton’s (Shy’s) Hill was covered with the dead and wounded from both sides. Among them was Colonel Shy; handsome in life, heroic in death. Dead at the age of 26, a minnie ball in his brain. He had been shot at close range, [his head being powder-burned around the hole made by the shot] (Marshall 1912:522).”

“Vandalism of the Grave The grave of Colonel Shy lay peacefully behind the beautiful antebellum home on Del Rio Pike with little notoriety for over a hundred years. Then, on Christmas Eve of 1977, local police officers were called to investigate a report that the grave had been disturbed.

Upon arriving, the deputies discovered a head­less body on top of the casket and thought someone had placed a murdered man in Colonel Shy’s burial plot. Local authorities could not match the headless corpse with any of their missing persons reports. Wild theories abounded, some even specu­lated that the head might have been removed to hamper identi­fication of the body.

Dr. William M. Bass, Forensic Anthro­pologist and Head of the Anthropology Department, Univer­sity of Tennessee, Knoxville, was called in to aid with the removal and identification of this unknown body. If one had followed the story in the newspapers it would have read much like a condensed version of a Damon Runyon murder mystery.”

– excerpts from ‘THE PILLAGED GRAVE OF A CIVIL WAR HERO’ Col.-Shy-Grave-Robing.pdf

See a 360 degree panorama of Col. Shy’s grave. The tour has a link to Shy’s Hill in Nashville.

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NOTE: this grave is on private property

Suggested Reading:

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Fort Negley Park Saved

St. Cloud Hill development backs off the Fort Negley Park Plan

 

Updated: 08 Feb 2018

Act Four:

Saint Cloud Hill abandons controversial proposal for Nashville’s Greer Stadium – The Tennessean

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CGI 3D Model

Fort Negley (Harker) in Nashville, Tennessee by belmontguy on Sketchfab

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Lindsley Hall

University of Nashville, Western Military Institute and Montgomery Bell Academy:

Hospital No. 2, housing 300 beds during the Civil War Federal Occupation of Nashville

“In 1853, a new building was constructed at 724 Second Avenue in Nashville, and in 1854, the literary college re-opened. In 1855, Lindsley’s son and successor John Berrien Lindsley merged the Western Military Institute and the University of Nashville. It moved its entire operation from Georgetown, Kentucky, where it had operated since its founding in 1847, to Nashville. Bushrod Johnson was a professor at the Western Military Institute from 1851 to 1855. He served as its headmaster when it moved to Nashville in the merger, and continued in that capacity until the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861. He served the Confederate States Army during the war as a general  It was during this period that Sam Davis attended the Western Military Institute; he was later called the “boy hero of the Confederacy”, and hanged by Union forces as a spy in 1863. The Western Military Institute did not offer instruction from 1862 to 1865. During 1862, the campus building served as a Union hospital for Federal officers.

Industrialist Montgomery Bell left the University of Nashville $20,000 in his will in 1867, and Lindsley used the proceeds to open up the Montgomery Bell Academy (MBA) that year as a new preparatory school in Nashville. The new school took over the operations of the then defunct Western Military Institute and the University of Nashville preparatory school.” 

WMI Button – Courtesy of Marty Gates

Notable alumni: 

  • Hampton J. Cheney, Confederate veteran and Tennessee State Senator.
  • Thomas J. Latham, bankruptcy judge and businessman in Memphis, Tennessee.
  • John W. Morton, Tennessee Secretary of State from 1901 to 1909.
  • Joseph Toole – first and fourth Governor of Montana
  • José Andrés Coronado Alvarado (1895–1975), Costa Rican diplomat who served as head of Latin American relations while at the university.
  • William Barksdale, U. S. congressman and Civil War General, killed at Gettysburg (July 3, 1863).
  • John Bell (1797–1869), Tennessee senator and presidential candidate (graduate of Cumberland College)
  • Rufus Columbus Burleson, second president of Baylor University, Baptist preacher.
  • Sam Davis, boy hero of the Confederacy.
  • George Maney, Confederate general and U.S. diplomat to several South American countries.
  • Van. H. Manning (1839–1892), U.S. representative from Mississippi and Confederate States Army officer during the American Civil War.
  • Albert A. Murphree, (1870–1927), president of Florida State College for Women (1897–1909) and the University of Florida (1909–1927).
  • Gideon Johnson Pillow, (1806–78), U.S. and Confederate States Army general and lawyer.
  • Peter Pitchlynn, 1806–1881), chief of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma (1864–1866), liaison to the U.S. government.
  • Samuel Hollingsworth Stout (1822–1903), American farmer, slaveholder, and Confederate surgeon
  • William Walker, (1824–1860), U.S. filibuster. Executed in Honduras in 1860.
  • Gen. George Gordon – Confederate General

– Wikipedia

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