The Portland daily press., 1899-03-02
In THE WILDERNESS.
A Soldiers Ghastly Recoilections Of
An Awful Battlefield.

10 Time to Bury the Dead, who Lay So
Thick - TO Cover Large Areas Of Ground.
Blue and Gray Sid. BY sids-Ths Letter
30 somsbody's Dear Jack"
az have no time to bury my dead and
an give you nome" was Grants famous
'eply 10 Lee, when, under a nag Of truce
) cessation of hostilities was requested
ong enough to bury the dead. Thus one
great and awful feature Of the battle Of
he Wilderness was the unburied dead,
| hat lay for days and weeks all over that
Hood stained field, one of the most horrible
md ghastly sights ever exposed to human
iaon. Probably no battlefield Of the
dvfl war afforded such an opportunity for
I Inspection as this.
Ordinarily, after fight, burying parties
sere detailed, and the long, deep trench,
, common grave, was dug, and the dead
rere at least covered; but not SO here.
7rant could not stop, and the long stretch
# country, overrun with Mosby's guerril-
as that intcrvoned between the Kappa
,annook river and tho nearest Union
ines prevented aid from that direction in
,urying the thousands that were slain In
he Wilderness and In the fight at Spottsyl-
ranis Court House.
sat on my horse looking over the por-
ion Of the field where the fierce and dead
y fighting Of May and 8, 1864, occurred.
Il was four or five days after the fight,
about the 9th or 10th of May. A small
detachment of our regiment had been sent
e an escort to a train Of ambulances to
gather in the wounded who were being
temporarily cared for IN barns and farm
houses near the battlefield, and thus had
m opportunity to view this historic scene.
During the years since 1t has been an
open question whether to be glnd or sorry
hat visited that battlefield. 1t could not
be moro wildly impressed upon me had
,een ii yesterday. 1t has been night
mare and a horrid day dream all these
FEARS Often have l prayed that visions Of
those upturned faces, blackened and dis
borted, of the staring, glazed eyeballs, of
ME stifened, outstretched hands, seeming
y still grasping for support, those rigid
lorms wrapped in blue and gray, that had
Ought their last battle and now lay side
by side in that great oharnel field, might
be blotted forever from my recollection.
Then, again, / have been glad that knew
% well how that battlefield appeared, and
how barbarous brutal and inhuman 10
made war seem; glad that knew how
10, 900 dead heroes looked, who had faced
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 tho ono 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
the Wilderness fight the rebels were lro-
tected by system of earthworks and has
lily constructed Notifications and abatises
while the Union troops were compelled to
eight largely in the open and assail the
Confederates in their strongholds. From
these 1t 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. I 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 1
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-
naming. l made careful examination
and could not see limb or twig or bush
but was marked by bullet, and some Of
them in several places. The wonder
seemed not that there were 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 ard
shattered, the fearful work of shot and
she'll being shown on every side. Mus
kets, canteens, haversacks, knapsaoks-in
fact, nearly all that makes up the accouter-
ments of the Soldier-were scattered In all
directions.
None Of Us felt like performing any act
of ghoulish vandalism; though, as l saw
letter extending from the pocket of dead
Confederate soldier, dismounted, and,
some of the boys gathering around, We
looked 1t over. 1t was torn and partly il
legible, but we made out that 1t was from
the town of Hamlet, in the state of North
Carolina. 1t was in a lady's handwriting,
and the portion that We were able to read
was rs follows:
MY DEAR JACK-We hope that you can soon
return and help US with the tobacco crop, but
If not we do hope and pray to God that our
dear JACK will not be harmed by those terrible
Yankees.
AS We looked at the letter and then at
the upturned face of poor Jack, turning
black from exposure to the sun, and then
thought of that poor wife or mother or
sister who was waiting and watching for
the return of the dead and mangled soldier
at our feet and of the other 10, 900 homes
from which dear ones had gone out who
were now among that host of dead around
US, we began to comprehend something OF
the brutal, barba<ous nature Of war.-Cy-
rus q. Shepard in New York Post.
congressman EdGy'a sn0wshOes.