Civil War road trip - Andrew Jackson's Hermitage

We had a "down day" on Friday March 30, between the Civil War sites at Franklin and Shiloh. We made this trip with our friends, Elder & Sister Smith (Bill & Ann) of Middleton, ID. We took this day and drove into Nashville. With all the things to see and do there, we chose to visit The Hermitage, the home of Andrew Jackson. The plantation home has been nicely preserved and restored, along with several outbuildings. For some reason, I didn't take many pictures, but you can see the home through the flowering dogwood trees, and the burial monument for Jackson and his wife.

Jackson was a Southerner, war hero (1815), plantation owner, and slaveholder. The concept of slavery is repulsive to us today, but then, in the South, it was just the way things were. Slaves were a valuable commodity. Curiously, the value of the approximately 40 slaves owned by Jackson as personal property in 1828 when he was elected President exceeded the value of his real property. Of course, the value went to zero after the war, so that was one more of the devastating losses, for the slaveholders anyway.

Here in the South, the Civil War is still "the Cause", and they didn't really lose, they were just overwhelmed by the Yankees and their superior numbers and equipment. The Confederate generalship and the spirit of the fighting rebs was never bested.