Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1894-01-06

fore 1t and met Hoods dauntless soldiers
almost at arms length. The Confederate
line facing north was bufleted back by
Williams and Meade and the batteries, and
that facing east was broken into detach-
ments By Greene's resistless masses
Though it was a hopeless fight, the men
turned first one way and then another,
wherever Union flag waving in the corn
| or shower of grape moving a swath of
stalks gave sign of the enemy's presence.
The Union artillerists, having a clear sweep
of the field, held their fire until the awful
harvest was ripe to the deadly sickle.
Slaughter so sudden and terrible was new
err known. The cornlield was 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 Wofford'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 Hooker's batteries still hammer
| ing away from the ridge. Gallant but vain
was the contest as they charged forward to
| the fence. sometimes reaching it and falling
dead on the straight line with those of Law
| ton, jackson, Jones, Meade, Williams and
Gorion-the blue and the gray intermingled
who made up the mournful phalanx, some
times dropping back few yards to gain
| force for another dash.
The second time they did not go so far
north and their dead struck out anew line on
the now redeemed soil, which receded more
and more from the direct westerly course
until it reached the pike, where it came to
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, "Thusf far and no farther,"
and sealed the decree with n shifting blast
of DEATH The fates obeyed that decreee
and the seething floods of southern pride
md northern will come to sudden halt at
the dead line.
Hooker's 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
pnd Hays, of Hood and Wofford, of D. r.
Jones and ID. III. 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. At10o'clock it
was all ended, the Dead Regiment" was pa
raded, and the armies of both sides stood
afar off. Noe 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 grassfield remained neil
trail ground. All that day and the next the
thousands of soldiers under arms within
sight of that PROSTATE column beheld it
with wonder and awe, for it was the most
startling reminder of wars awful carnage
ever found on any battlefield.
GEORGE T.. KILMER