[Letter to] Miss Deborah Weston
Contributors: Weston, Deborah, b.1814 recipient
Series: Deborah Weston Correspondence (1830-1879)
Published: 1863
Place of publication: Hospitall [sic], Reserve Artillery on the Baltimore Turnpike rear, five m[i]l[es] of Gettysburg, Pa
Language: eng
Format: [manuscript]
Subjects: Correspondence; Gettysburg, Battle of, Gettysburg, Pa., 1863; History; Antislavery movements; Women abolitionists
Notes: Holograph.

Augustus Hesse wants to tell Mrs. Weston and all of them about the great battle near Gettysburg. Hesse's battery was all cut up. He said: "I felt so bad that I could crye [sic] seeing our Horses all shot down we had so splendit [sic] Horses." He recounts the events: "The Reserve Artillery was called for---our Battery the 9th Mass. went in high Spirits. ...The Battle line was in a Shape of a Horse Shoe. We on the extreme left." He describes the rebel advance under Longstreet and how "they fought like Tigers." The infantry gave way, but the 9th Mass. Battery showed their brains and nerves. Just when the rebels rushed on the guns, the Battery had no more ammunition left, and they were outflanked. Hesse reports that "the Order was now giving [given] to leave---but where were our Horses?" Hesse explains what happened to him since the time he was shot: "My last two Horses got shot down as I had limbered up---they had me Prisoner---but they got to work trying to get the guns of[f] so I run to the other side [of] the house. My shirt & Pants was all over with blood and I got weak and dropped down." Hesse was carried by ambulance to the third corps hospital. He tells of lying in the woods the first two days. The doctors were busy taking off legs and arms. The hospital looked like a butcher shop.