Shiloh~~ A Time To Remember

Creed of the Living Historian

We are the people to whom the past is forever speaking.  We listen to it because we cannot help ourselves, for the past speaks to us in many voices.  Far out of that dark nowhere, which is the time before we were born, men who were flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone, went through fire and storm to break a path to the future.

We are part of the future they died for.  They are part of the past that brought the future.  What they did, the lives they lived, the sacrifice they made, the stories they told and songs they sung and finally, the deaths they

died,  make up a part of our own experience.  We cannot cut ourselves off from it.  It is as real to us as something that happened last week.
                                         By Bruce Catton                                               Armies of Tennessee

 
A moment of reflection,
 lest we shall never forget our ancestors
who by the highest standards paved their way into history books.

Beliefs ran deep in their soul,

courage flowed in their veins.

Determination swarmed their mind,

love of country pierced their hearts.

Farmers, ranchers, tradesmen,

brothers, fathers, sons and foreigners.

Such were the men bent on a cause

the cause - Freedom For All
                                      
Shiloh, 
in Hebrew means, place of peace,
not so on this spring date of April 6 & 7, 1862
 violence and the slaughter of war
took place on this fateful day.

For two days the Union and the Confederate armies clashed in fields and wooded areas near a meeting house called Shiloh in southwest Tennessee, becoming the first massive casualty battle of the civil war.  100,000 soldiers fought at Shiloh, when it was over the wounded, missing and dead  numbered more than 24,000.

Monument Shiloh Military Park

Union Pacific Steam Locomotive No, 844
150th Anniversary Commemoration
Civil War Troop Train

Just as it did 150 years ago, transporting Unions soldiers
from their posts in Central Missouri to Counce Tennessee,
today this massive steam locomotive transports over 300
civil war re-enactors in transit to the Shiloh Battlefield
to commemorate the 150th Anniversary of the infamous battle.
Watchers gathered near the historic tracks in
Jefferson City, Missouri Tuesday March 27
to pay their respect and to pay tribute
to the men and women who keep our history alive.

Last August 2011, I had the awesome experience
of attending the 150th Anniversary
of the Battle at Wilsons Creek in Republic, Missouri.
I so wanted to attend Shiloh this year but it was not meant to be.
If we can not be there in body let our Spirit fill our hearts.
On these momentous days in April
please take a brief moment to reflect on the past.
Just as Bruce Catton states,
"we are part of the future they died for!"

Let us never forget their sacrifice
                                       Connie