he movements of the
lines of battle, must, in the nature of things, be the ones to
furnish the facts that go to make history. The extent of a
battlefield seen by the common soldier is that only which comes
within the range of the raised sights of his musket. And what
little he does see is as "through a glass, darkly." The dense banks
of powder smoke obstruct his gaze; he catches but fitful glimpses
of his adversaries as the smoke veers or rises.

Then, too, my own experience makes me think that where the common
soldier does his duty, all his faculties of mind and body are
employed in attending to the details of his own personal part of
the work of destruction, and there is but little time left him for
taking mental notes to form the bases of historical articles a
quarter of a century afterward. The handling, tearing, and charging
of his cartridge, ramming it home (we used muzzle loaders during
the Civil War), the capping of his gun, the aiming and firing, with
furious haste and desperate energy,--for every shot may be his
last,--these things require the soldier's close personal attention
and make him oblivious to matters transpiring beyond his immediate
neighborhood. Moreover, his sense of hearing is well-nigh overcome
by the deafening uproar going on around him. The incessant and
terrible crash of musketry, the roar of the cannon, the continual
zip, zip, of the bullets as they hiss by him, interspersed with the
agonizing screams of the wounded, or the death shrieks of comrades
falling in dying convulsions right in the face of the
living,--these things are not conducive to that serene and judicial
mental equipoise which the historian enjoys in his closet.

Let the generals and historians, therefore, write of the movements
of corps, divisions, and brigades. I have naught to tell but the
simple story of what one private soldier saw of one of the
bloodiest battles of the war.

The regiment to which I belonged was the 61st Illinois Infantry. It
left its camp of instruction (a country town in southern Illinois)
about the last of February, 1862. We were sent to Benton Barracks,
near St. Louis, and remained there drilling (when the weather would
permit) until March 25th. We left on that day for the front. It was
a cloudy, drizzly, and most gloomy day, as we marched through the
s