April 7 · This Day in America
On the first day, the Confederates nearly drove Grant's army into the Tennessee River. On this second morning, reinforced overnight, Grant attacks back through ground already carpeted with the dead, and by afternoon the Confederate army breaks and retreats toward Corinth. The Union holds the field. The numbers stun a country that thought the war would be short and gallant: more Americans fell at Shiloh in two days than in all the nation's previous wars combined. There is a pond on the battlefield that men remembered running red. Shiloh ended the illusion. After this, both sides understood the war would be long, total, and pitiless — and that the Union would have to be willing to bleed without end to keep the country whole.
Source: www.nps.gov
Also on this day · 1947
Henry Ford, the man who put America on wheels, dies at 83 at his Dearborn estate. A storm has flooded the River Rouge and knocked out the power; he passes by candlelight and oil lamp, the way the world looked when he was born. The man who built the assembly line and the Model T leaves it exactly as a pre-electric night closes in around the house. The century he helped create rolled on without him.
Source: www.thehenryford.org