PRESERVING TENNESSEE TREASURES
It probably went little noticed by most Tennesseans last week, but Congress moved a bit closer to helping preserve or enlarge two of the state’s historic treasures.
When the United States Senate passed the bipartisan Natural Resources Management Act 92-8, President James K. Polk’s home in Columbia drew nearer to being designated a unit of the National Park System (NPS), and the Shiloh National Military Park in Shiloh, Tennessee, moved closer to expansion.
The legislation now moves to the House of Representatives, and if it passes there, to President Donald Trump for his signature.
The Polk home and the Shiloh battlefield are two of scores of public land, water and park areas on which action would be taken with the bill, and the action is significant for both Volunteer State entities.
With the Polk home, the legislation directs the Department of the Interior to conduct a study to evaluate its suitability as a part of the NPS. Once the study is completed, the conclusions would be submitted to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Natural Resources and the U.S Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. If they recommend it for inclusion in the NPS, Congress would need to pass legislation so designating it.
Currently, the home is owned by the state of Tennessee and partially funded under an agreement with the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation/Tennessee Historical Commission. It is operated by the nonprofit James K. Polk Memorial Association.
Polk, of course, was the country’s 11th president (18451849), is one of three from Tennessee and is one of only 45 the country has had.
Since he lived in the house between 1816 and 1823, since the house is the only Polk home other than the White House still standing and since the home contains more than 1,400 artifacts (including items from his law office, from his post-presidential home and from the White House), it seems only fit and proper that the home come under federal auspices for preservation.
A house on Vine Street in Nashville was slated to be his post-presidential home, but he died of cholera only three months after leaving office. His widow, Sarah, lived in the home until her death in 1891, but it was demolished in 1900. A Best Western Hotel currently occupies the space.
With modern presidents, such preservation action is almost a given. For instance, the same Natural Resources Act directing the Polk study also includes authorization for a similar study on the Midland, Texas, boyhood home of the 43rd president, George W. Bush.
As for Shiloh, the legislation designates battlefields at Davis Bridge (in Hardeman and McNairy counties) and Fallen Timbers (in McNairy County) in Tennessee, and Russell House in Tennessee and Mississippi, as part of Shiloh National Military Park. It also adds Parker’s Crossroads, 48 miles north of Shiloh, as an affiliated area of the NPS.
All three of the aforementioned skirmishes followed the bloody April 6-7, 1862, battle of Shiloh, which produced 23,000 casualties and was the bloodiest battle in American history up to that point. The Confederate defeat there also ended any hope of keeping Union forces out of northern Mississippi.
Fallen Timbers was the next day, April 8. Russell House occurred May 17 of the same year, and Davis Bridge was Oct. 4.
Parker’s Crossroads, the battlefield of which in Henderson County is now split by Interstate 40, is presently not a part of the NPS. But the Civil War Trust and local partners have been able to preserve 368 acres of the expanse and want to keep a last, desired 52-acre parcel out of commercial hands. If the battlefield comes under NPS auspices, the chances to protect the land should increase.
“Learning from the past helps us become better Americans in the future, and preserving and protecting these sites will allow future generations to learn their history by walking these fields,” Tennessee U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, a co-sponsor of the Natural Resources Management Act, said in a news release. “Expanding the Park will also provide an opportunity to attract more visitors to Tennessee and boost local economies.”
Alexander and U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tennessee, introduced both the James K. Polk Presidential Home Study Act and the Shiloh National Military Park Boundary Adjustment and Parker’s Crossroads Battlefield Designation Act last month, and both pieces of legislation eventually were attached to the Natural Resources Management Act.
Both pieces also were introduced in the last Congress, but they did not pass.
We appreciate that Alexander and Blackburn believe in preserving the past, regardless of political party — Polk was a Democrat — or battle victor. In contrast, although the venues are different, several Georgia state legislators filed bills recently that would attempt to sweep away monuments marking one side of the Civil War — the Confederates — as if the war were fought only by the Union.
As the Tennessee lawmakers grasp, it is only in seeing and understanding all our history — the good and the bad, the right and the wrong — that we are able to learn from it.