The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1902-02-26
Battle.

/ Nobody sees o battle. The common
soldier fires away amid a smoke mist,
or hurries on to the charge in q crowd
/ which hides everything from him.
The officer is too anxious about the
performance Of what ne is especially
charged with to mind what others are
doing.
| The commander cannot be present
everywhere, and sec every wood, water
course or rayine in which his orders
are carried into execution; he learns
from reports how the work goes on.
It's we'll; for battle is one Of those
jobs which men do without daring to
look upon.
Over miles Of country, at every
field fence, in every gorge Of q valley,
or entry into wood, there is murder
neutrality-suspicious., continuous,
reciprocal murder. The human form,
Gods image, is mutilated, deformed,
laceratod, in every possible way, and
by every variety of torture.
The wounded are jolted of in carts
to the rear, their hsred nerves crushed
into maddening pain at every stone or
rut; or the fight and pursuit trample
over them, leaving them to writhe and
groan without assistance; and fever
and thirst, the most enduring of pain
full sensations, possess them entirely.
Thirst, too, has seized upon the yet
able-bodied soldier, who, with blood
shot eye and tongue lolling out, plies
4 his trade; blaspheming, killing with
savage delight. Callous when the
brains Of his best-loved comrades are
scattered over. himl The battlefield
is, If possible, more painful object
of contemplation than the combatants.
They are in their vocation, earning
their bread. What will not man do
for shilling a'day?
But their work is carried on amid
the fields, gardens and homesteads Of
men unused to war. They left their
homes, with all that habit and happy
associations have made precious, to
bear it's brunt. The poor, the aged,
the sick are left in hurry, to be kill
ed by stray shots or beaten down, as
the charge or counter-charge goes over
them. The ripening grain is trampled
down; the garden is trodden into a
black mud; the fruit tree,, bending
Hbeneath their luscious loac, are shat
tered by tbe cannon sho., churches
and private dwellings are used as for
tresses and ruined in the conflict;
barns and granaries take fire, and the
conaagration spreads op all sides.
At night the steed is stabbed beside
tho altar, and the weary homicides of
the day complete the wrecking Of
houses to make their lairs for slumber.
The fires Of the bivouac complete what
the fires kindled by the battle have
| not consumed.
The surviving soldiers march on, to
act tho same scenes over again else
where; and the remnant Of the scat
tered inhabitants return, to find the
mangled bodies Of those they had
loved amid the blackened ruins Of
their homes; to mourn with more than
agonizing grief over the missing, Of
whose fate they are uncertain; to feel
themselves bankrupt in the world 8
stores, and look from their children to
the desolate fields and gamers, and
think Of famine and pestilence, engen-
dered by the rotting bodies Of the
half-buried myriads of slain.
Give me the money that has been
spent in war and Twill purchase every
foot of land upon the globe. will
oiothe every man, woman and child in
an attire of which kings and queens
would be proud. Twill build school
house on every hillside and in every
valley over the whole earth. will
build an academy and endow it, and a
college in every State, and fill it with
able. professors. I will crown every
hillside with place Of worship .conse-
Grated to the gospel of peace. will
support in every pulpit an able teacher
of righteousness, SO that on every
Sabbath morning the chime on one
hill should answer to the chime on
another around the earth's wide cir
cumference, aud the voice Of prayer
and the song Of praise should ascend
like universal holocaust to heaven.