Shiloh 150

Today is the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee. This is a picture of the sunrise at Shiloh National Cemetery this morning--I wish I had been the photographer! :) Some of my lucky friends are at Shiloh today participating in a two-day battle re-enactment. The Battle of Shiloh began when Confederate forces under the command of Albert Sidney Johnston attacked Ulysses S. Grant and the Union Army. The Union ended up winning the battle, but both sides suffered heavy losses--3,482 men were killed and 16,420 men were wounded.

One of the most significant losses for the Confederacy was when Albert Sidney Johnston was killed on April 6, 1862. At the time he was the top Confederate general. Here is his monument at Shiloh in the general vicinity of where he was killed. You might recognize his name from Mormon/Utah history--he is the one that President Buchanan sent out to the Utah Territory in 1857 to quell the "Mormon Rebellion." Since there was no rebellion, Johnston and his troops ended up just kind of hanging out for a couple of years at Camp Floyd in Utah, where I used to work! If Camp Floyd had hired me when I applied for a job there last year, we would have had some Johnston programs there today to commemorate the 150th anniversary of his death. But since they didn't hire me, they didn't get any of my good ideas :)

I took this picture and the one of Johnston's monument when Mom and I visited Shiloh National Military Park in August 2007 on our way from Natchez up to Charleston, Illinois when Mom was helping me move to graduate school. We spent the night at the General's Quarters Inn B&B in Corinth, MS, and then went to Shiloh the next morning. I'm so glad we stopped there! I was a little sad because I was missing my Natchez friends, but Mom and I had a nice visit to the battlefield. It is hard to comprehend everything that happened there!

Today, in commemoration of the anniversary of the battle, Curator Bill (the guy in the middle), Intern Joe, and I set up a new exhibit featuring some of our coolest Shiloh artifacts at the museum. Our boss Stew wanted to take a picture of us with the display. The hat on the left belonged to an Illinois soldier who was injured at Shiloh and then died one month later from complications with his wounds. Shiloh was a very costly battle, and I am grateful to all of the soldiers who gave their lives. I always tell the kids who come visit the museum that the United States emerged from the Civil War as a stronger, more unified country. I'm glad for days like today when we can be especially mindful of the sacrifices made by people in the past.

Abe Lincoln Chair

This was one of my favorite weekends of the year: General Conference!! Every six months, all of our Church leaders speak about various topics over a two-day period from Salt Lake City, and it is broadcast all over the world on TV and the Internet. It is always uplifting and enlightening to hear their words. I also enjoyed an outing with my friends Laura and Kris and their kids yesterday evening while our husbands were at the Priesthood session of Conference. We met up at the park and had dinner and played all evening. It made me not feel quite so homesick (I always get homesick during General Conference--especially missing the fun girls' nights out with my mom and sisters). I am grateful for the technology that allows us to listen to General Conference, no matter where we live!

Greg and I have an interesting new piece of furniture--an antique toilet! But it is not just any old antique toilet. This one was possibly used by Abraham Lincoln! It goes well with my Abraham Lincoln hair--now I have an Abraham Lincoln chair :) This antique toilet was stored in the attic of the funeral home where Greg works in Athens, and when he and his boss were working up there the other day, his boss told Greg that he could have the chair if he wanted it. Who are we to turn down an antique toilet with an Abraham Lincoln connection? As the story goes, the chair used to be in the old Athens post office/general store constructed by Colonel Matthew Rogers in 1832 (this building, now the "Long Nine" Museum, is located just down the street from the funeral home). Abraham Lincoln used to borrow books from Colonel Rogers, and he would sometimes stop at the building to pick up mail when he was the post master in New Salem. Later in the 1830s, Lincoln may have met in the post office/general store building with eight other men to decide how they could get the state capital moved from Vandalia to Springfield. This group became known as the "Long Nine" because they were all over six feet tall. Supposedly their meeting lasted for hours and hours--so you would assume that sometime during their meeting Lincoln would have had to use the bathroom!--but I can't find any documentation that this meeting ever really took place. But I do know that Lincoln was for sure at that building on August 3, 1837 for a banquet to celebrate his and the other Long Nines' efforts in getting the capital moved to Springfield. So the potty chair came from that old post office/general store building and might have been used by Abraham Lincoln. It's a good conversation piece anyway, right? It was in pretty rough shape when Greg and I brought it home, but I gave it a very thorough (although gentle) cleaning. It's pretty cool with all of the hand painted touches. It is just missing the chamber pot, which would go inside the box on the bottom of the chair. But maybe we can find one at an antique store sometime. So if you come over to our house, you can now sit where Lincoln might have sat!