I have just been over that portion of the battlefield where the 20th Corps repulsed the enemy yesterday, and the sight presented is enough to make the heart of one long accustomed to war ache.
The ambulance corps, so complete in all its details, is gathering in the wounded, and the groans of the sufferers are grating to the ear. All the rebel dead are wounded and left in our hands to be cared for.
The ground is thickly strewn with the victims in about equal proportions, excepting at those places where desperate charges were made upon our line, when the enemy came out of his breastworks; there the rebels largely predominate.
There, within a few yards of me, a wounded rebel is stopping blood that endeavors to make its exit through a ghastly grape wound in the leg of a Union soldier; while over yonder, beneath an oak, a wounded Federal is in the act of giving water from his canteen to an enemy who fell beside him, and whose lifeblood discolors the garments of both. After the shock of battle has passed, the helpless inhabitants of the rifle pits and trenches are no longer enemies. A common sympathy seems to inspire them and they are once more friends and brothers -- children of one Father.
On the field yesterday, near Tilton, where our cavalry engaged the enemy, a beautiful garden, clothed in all the loveliness that rare plants and Southern flowers could give it, attracted my attention, and I was drawn to it.
The house had been deserted by its owners, and the smiling magnolias and roses seemed to stand guard over the deserted premises. I entered through an open gate, stopped to pluck a rose from the bush, when I discovered one of the enemy's pickets lying partially covered by the grass and bushes -- dead.
He was a noble-looking man, and upon his countenance there seemed to rest the remnant of a smile. The right hand clasped a rose, which he was in the act of severing from its stem when he received the messenger of death. In the afternoon, the cavalry dug a narrow grave and, with Federal soldiers for pallbearers, and the beautiful flowers for mourners, he was laid to rest, the rose still clasped in his stiffened hand. Nothing was found to identify him, and in that lonely grave his life's history lies entombed.
No sister's tears will baptize the grave among the roses where the dead picket sleeps.
A newspaper report from an unidentified Northern correspondent in "The Civil War in Song and Story," compiled by Frank Moore and published in 1865. Submitted by Jeff Bishop, Calhoun Times.
The ambulance corps, so complete in all its details, is gathering in the wounded, and the groans of the sufferers are grating to the ear. All the rebel dead are wounded and left in our hands to be cared for.
The ground is thickly strewn with the victims in about equal proportions, excepting at those places where desperate charges were made upon our line, when the enemy came out of his breastworks; there the rebels largely predominate.
There, within a few yards of me, a wounded rebel is stopping blood that endeavors to make its exit through a ghastly grape wound in the leg of a Union soldier; while over yonder, beneath an oak, a wounded Federal is in the act of giving water from his canteen to an enemy who fell beside him, and whose lifeblood discolors the garments of both. After the shock of battle has passed, the helpless inhabitants of the rifle pits and trenches are no longer enemies. A common sympathy seems to inspire them and they are once more friends and brothers -- children of one Father.
On the field yesterday, near Tilton, where our cavalry engaged the enemy, a beautiful garden, clothed in all the loveliness that rare plants and Southern flowers could give it, attracted my attention, and I was drawn to it.
The house had been deserted by its owners, and the smiling magnolias and roses seemed to stand guard over the deserted premises. I entered through an open gate, stopped to pluck a rose from the bush, when I discovered one of the enemy's pickets lying partially covered by the grass and bushes -- dead.
He was a noble-looking man, and upon his countenance there seemed to rest the remnant of a smile. The right hand clasped a rose, which he was in the act of severing from its stem when he received the messenger of death. In the afternoon, the cavalry dug a narrow grave and, with Federal soldiers for pallbearers, and the beautiful flowers for mourners, he was laid to rest, the rose still clasped in his stiffened hand. Nothing was found to identify him, and in that lonely grave his life's history lies entombed.
No sister's tears will baptize the grave among the roses where the dead picket sleeps.
A newspaper report from an unidentified Northern correspondent in "The Civil War in Song and Story," compiled by Frank Moore and published in 1865. Submitted by Jeff Bishop, Calhoun Times.