arrived, the small stock of dressings was
exhausted, and the surgeons were trying to make bandages of corn-husks.
Miss Barton opened to them her stock of dressings, and proceeded with
her companions to distribute bread steeped in wine to the wounded and
fainting. In the course of the day she picked up twenty-five men who had
come to the rear with the wounded, and set them to work administering
restoratives, bringing and applying water, lifting men to easier
positions, stopping hemorrhages, etc., etc. At length her bread was all
spent; but luckily a part of the liquors she had brought were found to
have been packed in meal, which suggested the idea of making gruel. A
farm-house was found connected with the barn, and on searching the
cellar, she discovered three barrels of flour, and a bag of salt, which
the rebels had hidden the day before. Kettles were found about the
house, and she prepared to make gruel on a large scale, which was
carried in buckets and distributed along the line for miles. On the
ample piazza of the house were ranged the operating tables, where the
surgeons performed their operations; and on that piazza she kept her
place from the forenoon till nightfall, mixing gruel and directing her
assistants, under the fire of one of the greatest and fiercest battles
of modern times. Before night her face was as black as a negro's, and
her lips and throat parched with the sulphurous smoke of battle. But
night came at last, and the wearied armies lay down on the ground to
rest; and the dead and wounded lay everywhere. Darkness too had its
terrors, and as the night closed in, the surgeon in charge at the old
farm-house, looked despairingly at a bit of candle and said it was the
only one on the place; and no one could stir till morning. A thousand
men dangerously wounded and suffering terribly from thirst lay around,
and many must die before the light of another day. It was a fearful
thing to die alone and in the dark, and no one could move among the
wounded, for fear of stumbling over them. Miss Barton replied, that,
profiting by her experience at Chantilly, she had brought with her
thirty lanterns, and an abundance of candles. It was worth a journey to
Antietam, to light the gloom of that night. On the morrow, the fighting
had ceased, but the work of caring for the wounded was resumed and
continued all day. On the third day the regular supplies arrived, and
Miss Barton having exhausted her small stores, and finding