FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   >>  
g a very long distance from our own men. For the next hundred years Gettysburg will be rich in legends and traditions of the battle. I rode through the Cemetery on "Cemetery Hill." How these quiet sleepers must have been astounded in their graves when the twenty pound Parrott guns thundered above them and the solid shot crushed their gravestones! The flowers, roses and creeping vines that pious hands had planted to bloom and shed their odors over the ashes of dead ones gone, were trampled upon the ground and black with the cannon's soot. A dead horse lay by the marble shaft, and over it the marble finger pointed to the sky. The marble lamb that had slept its white sleep on the grave of a child, now lies blackened upon a broken gun-carriage. Such are the incongruities and jumblings of battle. I looked away to _the group of trees_--the Rebel gunners know what ones I mean, and so do the survivors of Pickett's division--and a strange fascination led me thither. How thick are the marks of battle as I approach--the graves of the men of the 3d division of the 2d corps; the splintered oaks, the scattered horses--seventy-one dead horses were on a spot some fifty yards square near the position of Woodruff's battery, and where he fell. I stood solitary upon the crest by "_the trees_" where, less than three days ago, I had stood before; but now how changed is all the eye beholds. Do these thick mounds cover the fiery hearts that in the battle rage swept the crest and stormed the wall? I read their names--them, alas, I do not know--but I see the regiments marked on their frail monuments--"20th Mass. Vols.," "69 P. V.," "1st Minn. Vols.," and the rest--they are all represented, and as they fought commingled here. So I am not alone. These, my brethren of the fight, are with me. Sleep, noble brave! The foe shall not desecrate your sleep. Yonder thick trenches will hold them. As long as patriotism is a virtue, and treason a crime your deeds have made this crest, your resting place, hallowed ground! But I have seen and said enough of this battle. The unfortunate wounding of my General so early in the action of the 3d of July, leaving important duties which, in the unreasoning excitement of the moment I in part assumed, enabled me to do for the successful issue, something which under other circumstances would not have fallen to my rank or place. Deploring the occasion for taking away from the division in that moment of its need its
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   >>  



Top keywords:
battle
 

marble

 

division

 

ground

 

horses

 
moment
 
graves
 

Cemetery

 
circumstances
 

regiments


fallen

 

hallowed

 
marked
 

monuments

 
stormed
 

occasion

 
changed
 
taking
 

Deploring

 

hearts


beholds

 

mounds

 

successful

 

Yonder

 

trenches

 

unreasoning

 

desecrate

 

General

 

excitement

 

virtue


action

 
treason
 

leaving

 

duties

 

important

 
patriotism
 

represented

 
fought
 

commingled

 
enabled

unfortunate
 

assumed

 
brethren
 
wounding
 

resting

 

approach

 
flowers
 

creeping

 
gravestones
 

crushed