The pioneer press. (Miller, Hand County, S.D.) 1893-190?, 1897-03-25
III.

ence of Seeing Men Slaughtered.
III.
The sufferings of one man are of nc
consequence to mankind in general.
Sometimes, however, the one is a type
OF millions, and he is then justified in
telling his story to point a moral. The
now seems TO me the merest trifie, but
the misery which preceded and followed
it grows greater in the retrospect. In
view of the prevailing ~jingoism, espe-
cially the feeling toward Great Britain,
l feel justified i'll these details and shall
invert the usual order by giving the
moral first. 1t Is this: The man who
really wants a war, be it with Great
Britain, Spain or any ether power, is at
heart a demon. Smooth and bloodless
he may be, dressed in fine cloth and
clean linen, and with no spiked tail Wis
ible; but at heart that man is a demon.
The second day after the surrender of
Fort Donelson I crept out of the tempo
rary hospital in Dover, and, under the
combined stimulus Of whisky and qui-
nine, started to find my regiment. Three
days and nights of almost continuous ex-
posure and very little sleep had done
their perfect work on me. But the sick
soldier, not too sick to walk, pines for
his company and regiment as a sick
child pines for home. As l moved slow
ly up the hill the sight was interesting.
Along the river bank lay thousands of
captured guns, and details Of our men
were still firing them off and piling
them into wagons. The rebel commits
sary stores had been thrown open, and
soldiers and citizens were carrying off
the provisions, especially sugar, in hav-
ersacks, buckets, canteens, washpans,
and even in caps and blankets. The re-
bells were being called into line for
transportation, and their uniform was
like that of the beggar's opera. In place
of the solid woolens issued to our men
they had for blankets everything which
could be pressed into service - bed
clothes, tablecloths, sections of wooden
carpets, and even women's dresses and
piano covers. The result was q gorgeous
particolored picture, like those I have
seen of a Mexican plaza on a fete day.
Through the open doors of many
houses l saw the CHASTITY array of
wounded men, and in one place the sur
geons were still busy with knife and
saw, bandage and tourniquet. Out be-
yond the intrenchment I found the
stretcher bearers still bringing in the
dead. The line of battle from first to
last extended neal eight miles, from the
creek below to the swamp above, and
the hollows interlocked in scores of
places, while in the uncleared lowlands
the brush was so thick that as the lines
of battle swiftly changed men fell dead
and were overlooked. The hunting par
ties were searching everywhere among
the bushes and logs, and in the most I'M
expected places came upon corpses al
ready horribly swollen, for the weather
had turned warm as suddenly as it turn
cd cold the first night of the siege. l de-
scended to the hollow we had crossed on
che day of battle. The log cabin from
which a widow and her children had
fled at the first shots had been turned
into a field hospital. The mud around it
was spotted with blood, and q small
heap of discovered limbs lay awaiting
removal and already decomposing. I
toiled on to the camp we had occupied
the night before our battle and found
there a few slightly wounded or exhaust
ed men of the First Nebraska regiment.
They told me their brigade had had a
very sharp fight there soon after we left,
and our baggage was shot all to pieces,
and that Wallace's and Cruft's brigade
had gone on to Fort Henry.
l found space in a Wagon load of sick
and wounded, with a sister of charity
in command, and we moved on. A light
rain had begun total, but all along the
road lay sick and exhausted men-on the
ground, on logs, on pilesof rails or any
thing their comrades could fix for them
before passing on. Yet a gum blanket
below and above as they lay by twos
served as some protection. AT Fort
Henry L found the camps stretching
back two miles or more from the river,
and for the next week stretcher bearers
and ambulances We're p~erpetually going,
ana every day a large steamer loaded
with the sick moved down the Tennes.
see. 1t was common talk in the camps
that one-third of Grants army had been
invalided by the Fort Donelson cam
paign, and one or two ont of every COM
pany in u regiment died. My own
case was simple, and the diagnosis by
our surgeon was: Double pneumonia
threatened. Can avert it with a big
dose" A big dose it was, of morphine,
quinine and ipecac. For two nights and
q day slept most of the time, and