The Soldiers' journal. (Rendezvous of Distribution, Va.) 1864-1865, 1864-04-20


way-worn, and how the ambulances would bring
them back parched and fainting, and-it was
hardly known how, only that, as in old times
I" the people were of one mind and one accord
and brought of such things as they had but on
that sad, yet proud day, that brought back to
them those that fell in Baltimore on the memoir
able nineteenth of April, the heroes in whom
all claim share, and the right to say, not only
Massachusetts dead and wounded but ours
there ready for them shelter in the unpre-
tending building famous since the Cooper
Shop. There the people crowded about them,
weeping, blessing consoling and from that day
| there has no regiment from New England, New
York, or any other State, been suffered to pass
through Philadelphia unrefreshed. Water was
supplied them, and tables ready spread, by the
Volunteer Corps always in attendance, within
five minutes after the firing of the gun that an
nounced their arrival. There was shortly added
also, a volunteer hospital for the more danger
ously wounded when first brought from the bat
tle-feld, and of it is told story that Americans
will like to hear,
1t is of Wisconsin soldier, who, taken pris-
oner, effected his escape from Richmond. Hi
ding by day, he forced his way at night through
morass and forest, snatched such sleep as he dar-
ed on the damp and sodden earth, went without
food whole days, reached our lines bruised, torn,
shivering, starving and his wounds, which had
never properly been cared for, opened afresh.-
Let him tell the rest straight from his heart:
"When had my rubber blanket to wrap about
me, was comfortable, and, snug and warm in
the cars, thought myself happy; and when T
heard them talk of the Cooper Shop said to
myself, A cooper Shop that will be the very
place of all the earth, for there shall have roof
over me, and the shavings will be so warm and
dry to lie uponr but when they carried me in
and opened my eyes and saw what was the
Cooper Shop, and the long tables all loaded for
the poor soldiers, and when they took me to the
hospital upstairs, and placed me in bed, and
real ladies and gentlemen, with tears in their
eyes came and waited on me, my manliness left
me- a
a want ofmanliness, o honest heart, for which
there need be no shame! Precious tribute to
our country's love for her sons For this is 30
sectional charity only one example culled from
thousands; for the land must, of a necessity, be
overshadowed by the tree that has root under
almost every Northern hearth stone and then
see how we are all bound together by the heart
strings
Forty thousand men-at-arms are looking
gravely at the height towering above the valley
in which they stand. g Impregnable " military
science pronounced it; but the men scaling it
know nothing of this word "impregnable."-
They have heard nothing of an order for retreat,
they are filled with divine wrath of battle,
and each man is as mad as his neighbor, and the
officers are powerless to hold them back and
catch the infection and are swept with them,
and climbing, jumping, slipping, toiling on
hands and knees, swinging from tree and bush
any way, any how, but always onward, never
backward, they surge up over the mountain top,