the mode of instruction at West Point, was afforded to the
students. This institution had been in existence for years; and one can
readily appreciate the advantage that Virginia has in this war from the
graduates of this school. Alabama and several other of the Southern
States have similar colleges; while we at the North have been obliged to
educate all our volunteer officers by actual service.

The morning Stuart with his cavalry left Chambersburg, we rode forth for
the battle field of the Antietam. We noticed the disappearance of some
of the camps of the infantry brigades. We knew of the patrolling of the
cavalry along the road we were pursuing, and found the picket guards
farther out, and passes and countersigns necessary where before we went
unchallenged. We were several hours in getting to the battle field, and
stopped to get some refreshments at a large brick farmhouse, where the
battle on the left began. The hospital flag was still flying over the
building, though no patients had been there for a day or two.
Twenty-seven died in that one farmhouse from wounds received in that
bloody fight. On the night of the battle, cows, sheep, poultry, and
fences disappeared before our cold and hungry troops. But since then,
though the house was in the neighborhood of several camps, the old lady
and her daughters, who alone were at home, had been undisturbed, except
by the small pilferings of stragglers.

The great battle has been so well described by the correspondents of the
newspaper press, and by those who were over the field before we were,
that I shall only mention a few incidents to which our attention was
called. The principal contest was on the right, west of the Antietam
river. Here Hooker with his army corps began the battle, and fought so
long and splendidly. Both armies crowded their forces to this part of
the field. Sumner, whose troops had been with their belts on since three
in the morning, brought up his large corps, drawn up in three columns,
forty paces apart, to reenforce Hooker's hard-pressed soldiers, who were
retreating before the fresh and overwhelming reenforcements of the
enemy. In less than an hour, the whole of Sumner's corps was swept back,
broken and entirely routed, and never appeared in the field again; the
column in the rear not being in position to fire a gun, but losing as
many men as those in front.

The manner in which General Sumner brought his troops into action has
been severely critic