lelliott19
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http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=76631254
September 26, 1863, less than a week after the Battle of Chickamauga.....
24 year old Benjamin Franklin Abbott, Adjutant of the 20th Georgia, Benning's Brigade, wrote to his friend, Green Haygood:
“I came upon a young officer and found he was mortally wounded and suffering very much. I saw at once he would die & asked if I could do anything for him. He replied, ‘I am dying. Wash me clean and bury me decently.’ I promised him all I could under the circumstances. . . . I had him moved in the hut and in less than an hour he died. As far as I could I complied with his request and marked his grave with a board on which I carved his name [Lt Col D J Hall] with my knife.... (The young officer was 25 year old Lt Col Duncan Jackson Hall, 89th Illinois.)
As soon as I found Hall suffering so much, I took from my pocket a small vial of morphia and gave him about half a grain, and he was relieved very soon of pain and died easily and rationally. I had carried this little vial during all my service, fearing I might be wounded and left suffering on the field. It had never served me, but it was now to relieve an enemy.
“These little incidents . . . serve to show . . . that we cannot yet be barbarians. In my own heart before the battle I felt very bitter against these men who had invaded our soil . . . and yet in the hour of victory we soldiers were touched with pity for these wounded and dying enemies. It was not the place to discuss right and wrong; it was simply a question of humanity.”
Source: Benjamin (Franklin) Abbott to (Atticus) Green Haygood, 26 September 1863, quoted in Mills Lane, ed., Dear Mother Don’t Grieve About Me. If I Get Killed, I’ll Only Be Dead. Letters From Georgia Soldiers in the Civil War, Savannah, GA, Beehive Press, 1977, pp. 275-76.
B. F. Abbott, promoted Adjutant 20th Georgia Infantry, to rank 10 Mar 1863.
Congressional Edition, Volume 4612, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1904, p. 346.
Find A Grave Memorial http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=81406998
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