In this narrative it has been impossible to avoid frequent reference to
myself and to my regiment, but there is nothing in the Mansfield incident
of special credit to any of us. We were there and saw it; we live and can
prove it; this is the whole story in a nut shell.
I have always regretted that I left the regiment even on so important a
mission. At the time, I supposed it was only to be for a moment, and that
with three field officers on duty I could be spared. As for the regiment,
we succeeded so very much better later in the war, that we have not been
in the habit of making great claims for the part we took in Antietam.
Many other Union regiments fought longer, struggled harder, did more
effective service and lost more men than we.
The Confederates opposed to us appeared to be equal to us in numbers and
they were superior in experience and all that experience gives. On all
other fields, from the beginning to the end of our long service, we never
had to face their equals. Everybody knows that troops fighting under the
eye of Stonewall Jackson, and directed by Hood, were a terrible foe. Our
particular opponents were all good marksmen, and the constant call of
their officers, "Aim low," appeared to us entirely unnecessary.
It was an awful morning; our comrades went down one after another with a
most disheartening frequency, pierced with bullets from men who were half
concealed, or who dodged quickly back to a safe cover the moment they
fired. We think it was enough for us to "hold our own" till Greene's men
swept in with their "terrible and overwhelming attack."[21]
From all this story, I hope the reader will see why the wounding of Gen.
Mansfield, which is the all important part in this narrative, is only a
secondary matter to the men of the Tenth Maine Regiment, and why
misrepresentations and errors have gone undisputed so many years. We never
considered it our business to set history aright, until we saw that _our_
testimony was discredited and found our statement of fact treated as only
one of the many stories of the wagon-drivers of Sharpsburg.