A free hand ink drawing colored with Coral Draw by professional artist Warren Kirbo.

"SHILOH
The mists that hang over the pond can take one's thoughts away from today's pristine and manicured park ... to the events that led to its' being ... to the days of the battle and just before ... when Ulysses Simpson Grant in his command boat, the steamer TIGRESS, came here with his army on other steamers like the UNIVERSE, to secure PITTSBURG LANDING on the Tennessee River, in Tennessee, near the railroad town of Corinth, Mississippi. They made camp near a little church named Shiloh, a name taken from the Hebrew word for PEACE. The first weekend of April, 1862, was Easter, and the peach trees were in full bloom. General Grant, flush from recent victories at forts Henry and Donelson, on the Cumberland River, and the enemy nowhere in sight, did not think of war. Instead of "digging-in" and building fortifications, he allowed his men to drink and "merry-make," and swim. But early Saturday morning, after a fifteen-mile night march from Corinth, the Confederate Army under General A. S. Johnston of Tennessee attacked from the darkness into the dawn twilight, into the Union campground, starting what was to become the first of the truly bloody battles of the Civil War: SHILOH. The two day battle saw 23,000 killed, as many as at the great battle of Waterloo. But in the U. S. Civil war, there would be twenty more battles that would demand this price in life and limb."

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David Upton