Shiloh

“ And two or three of the women folks, old maids, went off to the head temple—"Shiloh," so they call it—to be made into saints and go to the uttermost parts of the earth, though why all the lost souls should always be at the uttermost parts of the earth from us I don't know.
The only married woman that the saints lugged away to Shiloh—the only one that gave in and "left all"—was Almira Sykes. I took her down on the stage that morning she went. She, with that look as though tears were squeezing out all over her! The young ones bawling and Brackett on the doorstep, hard as a graven image. ”

“ The years intervening between the Battle of Shiloh and the present have softened the harshness of the engagement and wrapped it in a shroud of sentimental romanticism. Most twentieth-century writers are content to view the battle from that perspective. Occasionally a realist, such as Shelby Foote in his historical novel, “Shiloh,” penetrates the rosy glow and brings forth interesting and all-but-forgotten facts. ”

“ To-day the veterans who met and fiercely battled at Shiloh unite in doing honor to the memory of General Johnston and of the men who, with him, won immortality upon that bloody field.
To-day imperishable laurels bloom afresh upon the upturned brows of the men who hail with loud acclaim the image of their chieftain placed here to guard forever
"War's richest spoil,—the ashes of the dead." ”

“ Tidings are here brought to Shiloh of the fatal issue of their battle with the Philistines. Bad news flies fast. This soon spread through all Israel; every man that fled to his tent brought it, with too plain a proof of it, to his neighbours. But no place was so nearly concerned as Shiloh. Thither therefore an express posted away immediately; it was a man of Benjamin; the Jews fancy it was Saul. ”

“ But the end of Shiloh was at hand. Despite the prodigies of valor performed by their men, the Southern generals saw that they could not longer hold the field. The junction of Grant and Buell, after all, had proved too much for them. The bugles sounded the retreat, and reluctantly they gave up the ground which they had won with so much courage and daring. They retreated rather as victors than defeated men, presenting a bristling front to the enemy until their regiments were lost in the forest, and beating off every attempt of skirmishers or cavalry to molest them. ”

“ Afterwards, when the hill country had been conquered, the ark and tabernacle were brought to Shiloh, and then Shiloh became a sacred place. Shiloh is now called Seilun, and here the ruins of a modern village occupy a sort of tell or mound. The position of the place is remarkably retired, shut in between high, bare mountains. A deep valley runs behind the town on the north, and in its sides are many rock-cut sepulchres. “The site being so certainly known,” [162] says Conder, “it becomes of interest to speculate as to the exact position of the tabernacle. ”

“ To conclude:—Is not the conversion of sinners an object dear to the hearts of the saints? God alone can do the work. He can say to the north, Give up; and to the south, Keep not back. He can bring His sons from afar, and His daughters from the ends of the earth. Our Shiloh has an attractive power, and to Him shall the gathering of the people be. ”

“ They were to behold with their own eyes the fate of the sanctuary at Shiloh, that so they might understand that the sacredness of a place does not save it from overthrow, if men have desecrated it by their wickedness. ”

“ There is less in common than is often supposed between the buoyant energy that led Grant to Shiloh and the grim plodding determination that led him to Vicksburg and to Appomattox. Shiloh revealed to Grant the intensity of the struggle, and after that battle, appreciating to the full the material and moral factors with which he had to deal, he gradually trained his military character on those lines which alone could conduce to ultimate success. ”

“ I thank you for sending me the printed paper containing the observations and experiences of our friend about the battle of Shiloh, or Pittsburgh Landing, April 6th and 7th, 1862. Having leisure this New Year's Day I have read every word of it, and from his standpoint as a boy in the rear of where the hard fighting was done his account is literally true. His father (a noble gentleman) and I were fighting for time—because our enemy for the moment outnumbered us, and we had good reason to expect momentarily Lew. ”

“ Shiloh is not distinguished by outstanding generalship on either side, but it is interesting as a battle fought by raw volunteers—young men without previous experience in a major engagement and with little or no military training. ”

“ For these reasons even Delitzsch pronounces the appellative rendering, “till rest comes,” or till “he comes to a place of rest,” grammatically impossible. Shiloh or Shilo is a proper name in every other instance in which it is used in the Old Testament, and was in fact the name of a city belonging to the tribe of Ephraim, which stood in the midst of the land of Canaan, upon an eminence above the village of Turmus Aya, in an elevated valley surrounded by hills, where ruins belonging both to ancient and modern times still bear the name of Seilûn. ”

“ Dick had been at Shiloh. He had seen the men of the west in a great battle, and now he saw the men of the east in a battle yet greater. There it had been largely in the forest, here it was mostly in the open, yet he saw but little more. One of the extraordinary features of this battle was dust. Trampled up from the dry fields by fighting men in scores of thousands it rose in vast floating clouds that permeated everything. It was even more persistent than the smoke. ”

“ He announced that his mission would last forty years, and that at the expiration of this period Shiloh would come.
As soon as he was acknowledged as Prophet, he had a power in his hands which he did not fail to exercise. In 1830 he announced that he had received orders from heaven that seven virgins should be delivered to him to comfort and cherish him, and three of his believers at once gave up to him their daughters. With these poor girls and some married women Wroe wandered from place to place. ”

“ I never saw him so much touched as when he told again of the attachment of his horse, Black Hawk, for him, and the animal’s pathetic death at Shiloh. General Bate is very modest and no braver man ever lived; but I was there and saw the incident and can tell you how it was. At the battle of Shiloh General Bate was then colonel of the Second Tennessee. He had two horses which he used; one, an ordinary, everyday horse which he rode on the march and other rough service; the other was a magnificent black stallion—a thoroughbred and Hal horse—black as a crow and as beautiful as you ever saw. ”

“ FOREWORD
“The Guns of Shiloh,” a complete story in itself, is the complement of “The Guns of Bull Run.” In “The Guns of Bull Run” the Civil War and its beginnings are seen through the eyes of Harry Kenton, who is on the Southern side. In “The Guns of Shiloh” the mighty struggle takes its color from the view of Dick Mason, who fights for the North and who is with Grant in his first great campaign. ”

“ It saves a vast amount of 'reading up;' and you sometimes find a man who makes a pretence of great learning, when the fact is he has been drawing freely from the portable authority in his possession.
"Shiloh was the place where the tabernacle of the Lord was first set up permanently in Canaan," said Fred, "and the Israelites came here to receive their shares of the promised land. The infant Samuel was dedicated here to the Lord by his mother, and it was at Shiloh where Eli [Pg 362] dropped dead when he heard his sons had been killed in battle. There was a festival here in honor of the ark. ”

“ The North had not yet found a general capable of commanding the superb army it had created, or of making effective use of those enormously superior resources which from the beginning had been at its disposal. Grant had splendidly demonstrated his capacity at Shiloh, but Halleck had immediately superseded him, and completely thrown away the opportunity there presented. Grant was still denied any but volunteer rank, and for many weeks after Shiloh he was left, as he has himself recorded, with none but nominal command, and was not even consulted by his immeasurably inferior superior. ”

“ Jud Carpenter found her asleep in the greasy aisle, her head resting on her arm, a smile on her little face—a hand clasping a rounded well-threaded doll-like bobbin to her breast.
It is useless to try to speak in a room in which the Steam Beast's voice drowns all other voices. It is useless to try to awaken one by calling. One might as well stand under Niagara Falls and whistle to the little fishes. No other voice can be heard while the Steam Beast speaks.
Shiloh was awakened by a dash of cold water and a rough kick from the big boot of that other beast who called himself the overseer. ”

“ It relates, not to the person, nor even strictly to the tribe, but to the kingdom of Judah, And Judah did not cease to be a kingdom—the sceptre did not depart from Judah, until Shiloh came in the person of Jesus, who was born King of the Jews, and who came to wield the sceptre of righteousness over those who are Jews indeed. "For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly; but he is a Jew which is one inwardly; whose praise is not of men, but of God." ”

“ Hophni and Phinehas were slain - They probably attempted to defend the ark, and lost their lives in the attempt.
Verse 12
Came to Shiloh the same day - The field of battle could not have been at any great distance, for this young man reached Shiloh the same evening after the defeat.
With his clothes rent, and with earth upon his head - These were signs of sorrow and distress among all nations. The clothes rent, signified the rending, dividing, and scattering, of the people; the earth, or ashes on the head, signified their humiliation: "We are brought down to the dust of the earth ”

“ Shiloh was the severest battle fought at the West during the war, and but few in the East equalled it for hard, determined fighting. I saw an open field, in our possession on the second day, over which the Confederates had made repeated charges the day before, so covered with dead that it would have been possible to walk across the clearing, in any direction, stepping on dead bodies, without a foot touching the ground. On our side National and Confederate troops were mingled together in about equal proportions ”

“ Oh [94] now I see Shiloh coming in the redemption of Jew and Gentile.”
“Radiant proselyte, give God, not me the glory.”
“I’ll call thee, knight, Jordan—my Jordan.”
“The Jew rambles amid strange conceptions. Why am I like that mighty stream?”
“Its bed and banks, God’s cup; they nobly serve, catching the pure waters of mountain springs and heaven’s clouds, to bear them, mingled with sweet Galilee, to the black burning lips of Sodom’s plains below. I was a dead sea, alive alone to misery; nothing to me but my historic past, and that sin-stained. I’m now refreshed and purified ”

“ That all nations will be subject to this kingdom, and constitute its empire. These five points, however, do not comprehend all the things concerning the kingdom of God. Shiloh, or the Anointed One of God, was promised in the line of Judah; but the question remained open from Jacob's decease for many centuries after, as to the particular family of the tribes of Judah he was to descend from. ”

“ We have no definite information, however, as to the reason why it was not taken on to Shiloh, to be placed in the tabernacle, but was allowed to remain in the house of Abinadab at Kirjath-jearim, where a keeper was expressly appointed to take charge of it; so that we can only confine ourselves to conjectures. Ewald ’s opinion (Gesch. ii. 540) , that the Philistines had conquered Shiloh after the victory described in 1 Samuel 4, and had destroyed the ancient sanctuary there, i.e., the tabernacle, is at variance with the accounts given in 1Sa 21:6; 1Ki 3:4 ”

“ The wounded that died on the way were left by the wayside.
Some days after the battle Beauregard reported to his government at Richmond as follows: "This army is more confident of ultimate success than before its encounter with the enemy."
18 In his address to his soldiers he said: "You have done your duty. Your countrymen are proud of your deeds on the bloody field of Shiloh: Confident of the ultimate result of your valor."
The two days at Shiloh were astonishing to the American people. Bull Run was a skirmish in comparison with Shiloh. The loss on each side was more than 10,000 men. ”

“ All details of this conflict have been lost, and we merely know that it terminated in the defeat of the house of Joseph, a number of whom were enslaved. The ancient sanctuary of Shiloh still continued to be the sacred town of the Hebrews, as it had been under the Canaanites, and the people of Ephraim kept there the ark of Jahveh-Sabaoth, “the Lord of Hosts.” ”

“ The misfortunes which had befallen his people, and especially the ruin of Shiloh made an overpowering impression on Samuel, whose youthful mind was filled with the highest aspirations. In the Levitical circle, in which he had grown up, it was a fixed belief that the trials undergone by the people resulted from their denial of the God of Israel. To have no Sanctuary was considered equivalent to being without God. ”

“ In the records of the Rebellion, written amid the actual roar of the conflict or years afterward amid the calm of reestablished peace, no chapter is more noteworthy than the story of Shiloh, written for The Cincinnati Gazette by its correspondent "Agate," who has since become famous throughout the world for his work as a journalist, historian and statesman. No record of Sherman's campaigns would be complete without it, and no other pen could write a chapter worthy to replace it. ”