ny pieces of artillery and wagons and provisions.
The Confederate and Federal dead, wounded, and dying were everywhere
scattered over the battlefield. Men were lying where they fell, shot in
every conceivable part of the body. Some with their entrails torn out
and still hanging to them and piled up on the ground beside them, and
they still alive. Some with their under jaw torn off, and hanging by a
fragment of skin to their cheeks, with their tongues lolling from their
mouth, and they trying to talk. Some with both eyes shot out, with
one eye hanging down on their cheek. In fact, you might walk over the
battlefield and find men shot from the crown of the head to the tip end
of the toe. And then to see all those dead, wounded and dying horses,
their heads and tails drooping, and they seeming to be so intelligent as
if they comprehended everything. I felt like shedding a tear for those
innocent dumb brutes.

Reader, a battlefield, after the battle, is a sad and sorrowful sight
to look at. The glory of war is but the glory of battle, the shouts,
and cheers, and victory.

A soldier's life is not a pleasant one. It is always, at best, one of
privations and hardships. The emotions of patriotism and pleasure hardly
counterbalance the toil and suffering that he has to undergo in order
to enjoy his patriotism and pleasure. Dying on the field of battle and
glory is about the easiest duty a soldier has to undergo. It is the
living, marching, fighting, shooting soldier that has the hardships of
war to carry. When a brave soldier is killed he is at rest. The living
soldier knows not at what moment he, too, may be called on to lay down
his life on the altar of his country. The dead are heroes, the living
are but men compelled to do the drudgery and suffer the privations
incident to the thing called "glorious war."

A NIGHT AMONG THE DEAD

We rested on our arms where the battle ceased. All around us everywhere
were the dead and wounded, lying scattered over the ground, and in many
places piled in heaps. Many a sad and heart-rending scene did I witness
upon this battlefield of Chickamauga. Our men died the death of heroes.
I sometimes think that surely our brave men have not died in vain.
It is true, our cause is lost, but a people who loved those brave and
noble heroes should ever cherish their memory as men who died for them.
I shed a tear over their memory. They gave their all to their country.
Abler pens th