The copper country evening news. [volume] (Calumet, Mich.) 18??-1907, 1897-11-03
IN THE WILDERNESS.
A SOLDIERS CHASTITY RECoLLEc-
TONS OF AN AWFUL BATTLEFIELD.

No Time to Bury the Dead, Who Lay 81
Thick as To Cover Large Areas of Ground
Blue and Gray Side by side-The Letter
to Somebody's Dear Jack"
II have no time TO bury my dead and
can give you none, 4" was Grants famous
reply TO Lee, when, under a flag of truce,
a cessation of hostilities was requested
long enough 20 bury the dead. Thus one
great and awful feature of the battle OF
the Wilderness was the unburied dead,
that lay for days and weeks all over that
blood stained field, one of the most horrible
and CHASTITY sights ever exposed to human
vision. Probably no battlefield of the
civil war afforded such an opportunity for
inspection as this.
Ordinarily, after fight, burying parties
were detailed, and the long, deep trench,
common grave, was dug, and the dead
were at least covered; but not so here.
Grant could not stop, and the long stretch
of country, overrun with Mosby's guerril-
las, that interviewed between the Kappa
hammock river and the nearest Union
lines prevented aid from that direction in
burying the thousands that were slain in
the Wilderness and in the fight at Spottsyl-
vania Court House.
/ sat on my horse looking over the por-
ton of the field where the fierce and dead
ly fighting of May and 3, 1864, occurred.
1t was four or five days after the fight,
about the 9th or 10th of May. A small
detachment of our regiment had been sent
as an escort to train of ambulances TO
gather in the wounded who were being
temporarily cared for in barns and farm
houses near the battlefield, and l thus had
an opportunity TO view this historic scene.
During the years since IL has been an
open question whether TO be glad or sorry
that visited that battlefield. 1t could not
be more wildly impressed upon me had L
seen it yesterday. 1t has been n night
mare and a horrid day dream all these
years. Often have prayed that visions of
those upturned faces, blackened and dis
torted, of the staring, glazed eyeballs, of
the stiffened outstretched hands, seeming
ly still grasping for support, those rigid
forms wrapped in blue and gray, that had
fought their last battle and now lay side
by side in that great charnel field might
be blotted forever from my recollection.
Then, again, l have been glad that l knew
so well how that battlefield appeared, and
how barbarous, brutal and inhuman it
made war SEEM glad that / knew how
and met death amid the wild, frenzied
scenes of one of the greatest battles in the
history of the world.
One of the most striking features to us
that day and the one most thoroughly fixed
in our memories was that all over that
battlefield, or at least that part we visited,
there lay three boys in blue to one in gray.
1t will be remembered that all through
Wil1prnnEg iOh no
tected by system of earthworks and has
tily constructed Notifications and abatises,
while the Union troops were compelled to
fight largely in the open and assail the
Confederates in their strongholds. From
these it was utterly impossible to dislodge
the enemy except by the mastery series of
flank movements so successfully planned
by General Grant.
At this point the Union dead lay thick
est / believe l could have dismounted
and walked distance as great as two or
binary city blocks and never once have
stepped upon the ground-walking on
dead bodies all the way. Indeed had /
undertaken the CHASTITY journey / would
have been compelled in some places to
climb over heaps of the dead
There was a slight growth of under
brush at this point, with a few trees re-
| made careful examination
and could not see a limb or n twig or a bush
but was marked by bullet, and some Of
them in several places The wonder
seemed not that there We're so many dead,
but that any lived. Officers and privates
all made common cause here and rank
was forever obliterated for among the
dead we noticed the shining shoulder
straps of commissioned officers mingled
with the ordinary blue uniform of the |
common soldier. The trees were torn and
shattered, the fearful work of shot and |
shell being shown on every side Mus |
kets, canteens, haversacks, knapsacks--in |
fact, nearly all that makes up the accouter-
nents of the soldier-were scattered in all |
directions.
None of MS felt like performing any act |
Of ghoulish vandalism; though, as / saw a |
etter extending from the pocket of dead |
Confederate soldier, l dismounted, and, |
some of the boys gathering around, we !
ooked it over. 1t was torn and partly il |
egiblc, but we made out that il was from |
he town of Hamlet, in the state of North |
Carolina. 1t was in lady's handwriting, |
md the portion that we were able to read !
vas as follows
MY DEAR JACK-We hope that you can soon |
eturn and help us with the tobacco CROP but |
not we do hope and pray to God that our
lear Jack will not be harmed by those terrible
Yankees
AS we looked at the letter and then at |
he upturned face of poor Jack, turning |
lack from exposure to the sun, and then
bought of that poor wife or mother or
lister who was waiting and watching for |
he return of the dead and mangled soldier
It our feet, and of the other 10, 900 homes
rom which dear ones had gone out who
we're now among that host of dead around |
Is, we began to comprehend something of !
he brutal, barbarous nature of war.-Cy- |
us G. Shepard in New York Post