AFTER THE BATTLE.
I had frequently seen pictures of battle-fields, and had often
read about them; but the most terrible scenes of carnage my boyish
imagination had ever figured fell far short of the dreadful reality
as I beheld it after the great battle of the war. It was the
evening of Sunday, July 5, 1863, when, at the suggestion of Andy,
we took our way across the breastworks, stone fences, and redoubts,
to look over the battle-field. Our shattered brigade had been
mainly on reserve during the last three days; and as we made our
way through the troops lying in our front, and over the defences of
stone and earth and ragged rocks, the scene among our troops was
one for the pencil of a great artist.
Scattered about irregularly were groups of men discussing the
battle and its results, or relating exciting incidents and
adventures of the fray: here, one fellow pointing out bullet-holes
in his coat or cap, or a great rent in the sleeve of his blouse
made by a flying piece of shell; there, a man laughing as he held
up his crushed canteen, or showed his tobacco-box with a hole in
the lid and a bullet among his "fine cut"; yonder, knots of men
frying steaks and cooking coffee about the fire, or making ready
for sleep.
Before we pass beyond our own front line, evidences of the terrible
carnage of the battle environ us on all sides. Fresh, hastily dug
graves are there, with rude head-boards telling the poor fellows'
names and regiments; yonder, a tree on whose smooth bark the names
of three Confederate generals, who fell here in the gallant charge,
have been carved by some thoughtful hand. The trees round about are
chipped by the balls and stripped almost bare by the leaden hail,
while a log-house near by in the clearing has been so riddled with
shot and shell that scarcely a whole shingle is left to its roof.
But sights still more fearful await us as we step out beyond the
front line, pick our way carefully among the great rocks, and walk
down the slope to the scene of the fearful charge. The ground has
been soaked with the recent rains, and the heavy mist which hangs
like a pall over the field, together with the growing darkness,
renders objects but indistinctly visible, and all the more ghastly.
As the eye ranges over so much of the field as the shrouding
mist allows us to see, we behold a scene of destruction terrible
indeed, if ever there was one in all this wide world! Dismounted
gun-carriages, shattered caissons, knapsacks, haversacks, muskets,
bayonets, accoutrements, scattered over the field in wildest
confusion,--horses (poor creatures!) dead and dying,--and, worst
and most awful of all, dead men by the hundreds! Most of the men in
blue have been buried already, and the pioneers yonder in the mist
are busy digging trenches for the poor fellows in gray.
As we pass along, we stop to observe how thickly they lie, here and
there, like grain before the scythe in summer-time,--how firmly
some have grasped their guns, with high, defiant looks,--and how
calm are the countenances of others in their last solemn sleep;
while more than one has clutched in his stiffened fingers a piece
of white paper, which he waved, poor soul, in his death-agony, as
a plea for quarter, when the great wave of battle had receded and
left him there, mortally wounded, on the field.
I sicken of the dreadful scene,--can endure it no longer,--and beg
Andy to "Come away! Come away! It's too awful to look at any more!"
And so we get back to our place in the breastworks with sad,
heavy hearts, and wonder how we ever could have imagined war so
grand and gallant a thing when, after all, it is so horribly
wicked and cruel. We lie down--the thirteen of us that are left
in the company--on a big flat rock, sleeping without shelter, and
shielding our faces from the drizzling rain with our caps as best
we may, thinking of the dreadful scene in front there, and of the
sad, heavy hearts there will be all over the land for weary years,
till kindly sleep comes to us, with sweet forgetfulness of all.
Our clothes were damp with the heavy mists and drizzling rain
when we awoke next morning, and hastily prepared for the march
off the field and the long pursuit of the foe through the waving
grain-fields of Maryland. Having cooked our coffee in our blackened
tin cups, and roasted our slices of fresh beef, stuck on the end of
a ramrod and thrust into the crackling fires, we were ready in a
moment for the march, for we had but little to pack up.
Straight over the field we go, through that valley of death where
the heavy charging had been done, and thousands of men had been
swept away, line after line, in the mad and furious tempest of the
battle. Heavy mists still overhang the field, even dumb Nature
seeming to be in sympathy with the scene, while all around us, as
we march along, are sights at which the most callous turn faint.
Interesting enough we find the evidences of conflict, save only
where human life is concerned.
[Illustration: ON THE MARCH TO AND FROM GETTYSBURG.]
We stop to wonder at the immense furrow yonder which some shell has
ploughed up in the ground; we call one another's attention to a
caisson shivered to atoms by an explosion, or to a tree cut clean
off by a solid shot, or bored through and through by a shell. With
pity we contemplate the poor artillery-horses hobbling, wounded
and mangled, about the field, and we think it a mercy to shoot them
as we pass. But the dead men! Hundreds of torn and distorted bodies
yet on the field, although thousands already lie buried in the
trenches. Even the roughest and rudest among us marches awed and
silent, as he is forced to think of the terrible suffering endured
in this place, and of the sorrow and tears there will be among the
mountains of the North and the rice-fields of the far-off South.
We were quiet, I remember, very quiet, as we marched off that great
field; and not only then, but for days afterwards, as we tramped
through the pleasant fields of Maryland. We had little to say, and
we all were pretty busily thinking. Where were the boys who, but
a week before, had marched with us through those same fragrant
fields, blithe as a sunshiny morn in May? And so, as I have told
you, when those young ladies and gentlemen came out to the end
of that Maryland village to meet and cheer us after the battle,
as they had met and cheered us before it, we did not know how
heavy-hearted we were until, in response to their song of "Rally
round the Flag, Boys!" some one proposed three cheers for them. But
the cheers would not come. Somehow, after the first hurrah, the
other two stuck in our throats or died away soundless on the air.
And so we only said: "God bless you, young friends; but we can't
cheer to-day, you see!"
[Illustration]