The Princeton union. [volume] (Princeton, Minn.) 1876-1976, 1893-09-21

fore it and met Hoods dauntless soldiers
almost at arms length. The Confederate
line facing north was buffeted back by
Williams and Meade and tie batteries, and
that facing east was broken into detach-
ments by Greene's resistless masses
Though it was hopeless fight, the men
turned first one way and then another,
wherever a Union flag waving in the corn
or shower Of grape moving a swath of
stalks gave a 81 gn of the enemy's presence.
The Union artillerists, having clear sweep
of the field, held their fire until the awful
harvest was ripe to the deadly sickle
Slaughter so sudden and terrible was nev-
er known. The cornfeld wes trap to both
sides alike, but chiefly to the Confederates
when the Union columns once became firm
ly planted in the east and north borders, as
they were when Woford's Texans entered
the struggle. The Texans gave the first quota
to that portion Of the line of dead which
curves from the north to the southwest, as
shown on the accompanying sketch map.
AS they turned from Greene's invulnerable
wall of bayonets advancing through the
corn On the east they confronted the ranks
of Williams on the north and the biting
fire of Rockers batteries still hammer
ing away from the ridge. Gallant but vain
the fence, sometimes reaching it and falling
dead on the straight line with those of Law
ton, Jackson, Jones, Meade, Williams and
Gordon-the blue and the gray intermingled
who made up the mournful phalanx, some
times dropping back a few yards to gain
force for another DASH.
The second time they did not go so far
north and their dead struck out new line on
the now Redeemed soil, which receded more
and more from the direct westerly course
until it reached the pike where it came 20
an end. So the margin of the field of strife
| that counted it's thousands dead in their
blood and tens of thousands wounded was
outlined by the ranks of the corpses that
seemed like wrecks cast upon the shore by
! angry seas, as though the gods of battle, now
| on this side and then on that, had said to the
| onrushing hosts, ''Thus far and no fartherv'
and sealed the decree with shifting blast
| of death. The fates obeyed that decree,
and the seething floods Of southern pride
and northern will come to a sudden halt at
the dead line.
! Rockers columns under Doubleday and
Gibbon, Meade and Anderson, Williams,
Crawford and Gordon swept across it only
to be hurled back as by the arms of Titans
The men of Jackson and Lawton, of Starke
and Hays, of Hood and Wofford, of D. R.
Jones and D. II. Hill tore through the tenn
pest of canister and bullets and the ragged
wall of bayonets, strewing the line with
victims as markers of high tide, then re-
coiled in panic of dismay. At 10 o'clock it
was all ended, the Dead Regiment was pa
raded, and the armies of both sides stood
affair off. Not a regiment or battery, Union
or Confederate, had been left within hun
dreds of yards of it, front or rear, and the
cornfield and the grassfeld remained neu-
trail ground. All that day and the next the
thousands Of soldiers under arms within
sight of that prostrate column beheld it
with wonder and awe, for it was the most
startling reminder Of wars awful carnage
ever found on any battlefield.
..s.'a GEORGE L. KlLMER.