Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 by Various

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862

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Near by Lieutenant Abbott was an unhappy gentleman, occupying a small
chamber, and filling it with his troubles. When he gets well and plump,
I know he will forgive me, if I confess that I could not help smiling
in the midst of my sympathy for him. He had been a well-favored man,
he said, sweeping his hand in a semicircle, which implied that his
acute-angled countenance had once filled the goodly curve he described.
He was now a perfect Don Quixote to look upon. Weakness had made him
querulous, as it does all of us, and he piped his grievances to me in a
thin voice with that finish of detail which chronic invalidism alone can
command. He was starving,--he could not get what he wanted to eat. He
was in need of stimulants, and he held up a pitiful two-ounce phial
containing three thimblefuls of brandy,--his whole stock of that
encouraging article. Him I consoled to the best of my ability, and
afterwards, in some slight measure, supplied his wants. Feed this poor
gentleman up, as these good people soon will, and I should not know him,
nor he himself. We are all egotists in sickness and debility. An animal
has been defined as "a stomach ministered to by organs"; and the
greatest man comes very near this simple formula after a month or two of
fever and starvation.

James Grayden and his team pleased me well enough, and so I made a
bargain with him to take us, the lady and myself, on our further journey
as far as Middletown. As we were about starting from the front of the
United States Hotel, two gentlemen presented themselves and expressed
a wish to be allowed to share our conveyance. I looked at them and
convinced myself that they were neither Rebels in disguise, nor
deserters, nor camp-followers, nor miscreants, but plain, honest men on
a proper errand. The first of them I will pass over briefly. He was
a young man, of mild and modest demeanor, chaplain to a Pennsylvania
regiment, which he was going to rejoin. He belonged to the Moravian
Church, of which I had the misfortune to know little more than what I
had learned from Southey's "Life of Wesley," and from the exquisite
hymns we have borrowed from its rhapsodists. The other stranger was a
New-Englander of respectable appearance, with a grave, hard, honest,
hay-bearded face, who had come to serve the sick and wounded on the
battle-field and in its immediate neighborhood. There is no reason why I
should not mention his name, but I shall content myself with calling him
the Philanthropist.

So we set forth, the sturdy wagon, the serviceable bays, with James
Grayden their driver, the gentle lady, whose serene patience bore up
through all delays and discomforts, the Chaplain, the Philanthropist,
and myself, the teller of this story.

And now, as we emerged from Frederick, we struck at once upon the trail
from the great battle-field. The road was filled with straggling and
wounded soldiers. All who could travel on foot--multitudes with slight
wounds of the upper limbs, the head or face--were told to take up their
beds--a light burden, or none at all--and walk. Just as the battle-field
sucks everything into its red vortex for the conflict, so does it drive
everything off in long, diverging rays after the fierce centripetal
forces have met and neutralized each other. For more than a week there
had been sharp fighting all along this road. Through the streets of
Frederick, through Crampton's Gap, over South Mountain, sweeping at last
the hills and the woods that skirt the windings of the Antietam, the
long battle had travelled, like one of those tornadoes which tear their
path through our fields and villages. The slain of higher condition,
"embalmed" and iron-cased, were sliding off on the railways to their
far homes; the dead of the rank-and-file were being gathered up and
committed hastily to the earth; the gravely wounded were cared for
hard by the scene of conflict, or pushed a little way along to the
neighboring villages; while those who could walk were meeting us, as I
have said, at every step in the road. It was a pitiable sight, truly
pitiable, yet so vast, so far beyond the possibility of relief, that
many single sorrows of small dimensions have wrought upon my feelings
more than the sight of this great caravan of maimed pilgrims. The
companionship of so many seemed to make a joint-stock of their
suffering; it was next to impossible to individualize it, and so bring
it home as one can do with a single broken limb or aching wound. Then
they were all of the male sex, and in the freshness or the prime of
their strength. Though they tramped so wearily along, yet there was rest
and kind nursing in store for them. These wounds they bore would be the
medals they would show their children and grandchildren by-and-by. Who
would not rather wear his decorations beneath his uniform than on it?

Yet among them were figures which arrested our attention and sympathy.
Delicate boys, with more spirit than strength, flushed with fever or
pale with exhaustion or haggard with suffering, dragged their weary
limbs along as if each step would exhaust their slender store of
strength. At the road-side sat or lay others, quite spent with their
journey. Here and there was a house at which the wayfarers would stop,
in the hope, I fear often vain, of getting refreshment; and in one place
was a clear, cool spring, where the little bands of the long procession
halted for a few moments, as the trains that traverse the desert rest by
its fountains. My companions had brought a few peaches along with them,
which the Philanthropist bestowed upon the tired and thirsty soldiers
with a satisfaction which we all shared. I had with me a small flask of
strong waters, to be used as a medicine in case of inward grief. From
this, also, he dispensed relief, without hesitation, to a poor fellow
who looked as if he needed it. I rather admired the simplicity with
which he applied my limited means of solace to the first-comer who
wanted it more than I; a genuine benevolent impulse does not stand on
ceremony, and had I perished of colic for want of a stimulus that night,
I should not have reproached my friend the Philanthropist any more than
I grudged my other ardent friend the two dollars and more which it cost
me to send the charitable message he left in my hands.

It was a lovely country through which we were riding. The hill-sides
rolled away into the distance, slanting up fair and broad to the sun,
as one sees them in the open parts of the Berkshire valley, at
Lanesborough, for instance, or in the many-hued mountain-chalice at the
bottom of which the Shaker houses of Lebanon have shaped themselves like
a sediment of cubical crystals. The wheat was all garnered, and the land
ploughed for a new crop. There was Indian-corn standing, but I saw no
pumpkins warming their yellow carapaces in the sunshine like so many
turtles; only in a single instance did I notice some wretched little
miniature specimens in form and hue not unlike those colossal oranges of
our cornfields. The rail-fences were somewhat disturbed, and the cinders
of extinguished fires showed the use to which they had been applied.
The houses along the road were not for the most part neatly kept; the
garden-fences were poorly built of laths or long slats, and very rarely
of trim aspect. The men of this region seemed to ride in the saddle very
generally, rather than drive. They looked sober and stern, less curious
and lively than Yankees, and I fancied that a type of features familiar
to us in the countenance of the late John Tyler, our accidental
President, was frequently met with. The women were still more
distinguishable from our New-England pattern. Soft, sallow, succulent,
delicately finished about the mouth and firmly shaped about the chin,
dark-eyed, full-throated, they looked as if they had been grown in a
land of olives. There was a little toss in their movement, full of
muliebrity. I fancied there was something more of the duck and less of
the chicken about them, as compared with the daughters of our leaner
soil; but these are mere impressions caught from stray glances, and if
there is any offence in them, my fair readers may consider them all
retracted.

At intervals, a dead horse lay by the road-side, or in the fields,
unburied, not grateful to gods or men, I saw no bird of prey, no
ill-omened fowl, on my way to the carnival of death, or at the place
where it was held. The vulture of story, the crow of Talavera, the "twa
corbies" of the ghastly ballad, are all from Nature, doubtless; but
no black wing was spread over these animal ruins, and no call to the
banquet pierced through the heavy-laden and sickening air.

Full in the middle of the road, caring little for whom or what they met,
came long strings of army-wagons, returning empty from the front after
supplies. James Grayden stated it as his conviction that they had a
little rather run into a fellow than not. I liked the looks of these
equipages and their drivers; they meant business. Drawn by mules mostly,
six, I think, to a wagon, powdered well with dust, wagon, beast, and
driver, they came jogging along the road, turning neither to right nor
left,--some driven by bearded, solemn white men, some by careless,
saucy-looking negroes, of a blackness like that of anthracite or
obsidian. There seemed to be nothing about them, dead or alive, that was
not serviceable. Sometimes a mule would give out on the road; then he
was left where he lay, until by-and-by he would think better of it, and
get up, when the first public wagon that came along would hitch him on,
and restore him to the sphere of duty.

It was evening when we got to Middletown. The gentle lady--who had
graced our homely conveyance with her company here left us. She found
her husband, the gallant Colonel, in very comfortable quarters, well
cared for, very weak from the effects of the fearful operation he had
been compelled to undergo, but showing the same calm courage to endure
as he had shown manly energy to act. It was a meeting full of heroism
and tenderness, of which I heard more than there is need to tell. Health
to the brave soldier, and peace to the household over which go fair a
spirit presides!

Dr. Thompson, the very active and intelligent surgical director of the
hospitals of the place, took me in charge. He carried me to the house of
a worthy and benevolent clergyman of the German Reformed Church, where I
was to take tea and pass the night. What became of the Moravian chaplain
I did not know; but my friend the Philanthropist had evidently made up
his mind to adhere to my fortunes. He followed me, therefore, to the
house of the "Dominic," as a newspaper-correspondent calls my kind host,
and partook of the fare there furnished me. He withdrew with me to the
apartment assigned for my slumbers, and slept sweetly on the same pillow
where I waked and tossed. Nay, I do affirm that he did, unconsciously,
I believe, encroach on that moiety of the couch which I had flattered
myself was to be my own through the watches of the night, and that I
was in serious doubt at one time whether I should not be gradually, but
irresistibly, expelled from the bed which I had supposed destined for
my sole possession. As Ruth clave unto Naomi, so my friend the
Philanthropist clave unto me. "Whither thou goest, I will go; and where
thou lodgest, I will lodge." A really kind, good man, full of zeal,
determined to help somebody, and absorbed in his one thought, he doubted
nobody's willingness to serve him, going, as he was, on a purely
benevolent errand. When he reads this, as I hope he will, let him be
assured of my esteem and respect; and if he gained any accommodation
from being in my company, let me tell him that I learned a lesson from
his active benevolence. I could, however, have wished to hear him laugh
once before we parted, perhaps forever. He did not, to the best of
my recollection, even smile during the whole period that we were in
company. I am afraid that a lightsome disposition and a relish for humor
are not so common in those whose benevolence takes an active turn as in
people of sentiment who are always ready with their tears and abounding
in passionate expressions of sympathy. Working philanthropy is a
practical specialty, requiring not a mere impulse, but a talent, with
its peculiar sagacity for finding its objects, a tact for selecting its
agencies, an organizing and arranging faculty, a steady set of nerves,
and a constitution such as Sallust describes in Catiline, patient of
cold, of hunger, and of watching. Philanthropists are commonly grave,
occasionally grim, and not very rarely morose. Their expansive social
force is imprisoned as a working power, to show itself only through
its legitimate pistons and cranks. The tighter the boiler, the less it
whistles and sings at its work. When Dr. Waterhouse, in 1780, travelled
with Howard, on his tour among the Dutch prisons and hospitals, he
found his temper and manners very different from what would have been
expected. My benevolent companion having already made a preliminary
exploration of the hospitals of the place, before sharing my bed with
him, as above mentioned, I joined him in a second tour through them. The
authorities of Middletown are evidently leagued with the surgeons of
that place, for such a break-neck succession of pitfalls and chasms I
have never seen in the streets of a civilized town. It was getting late
in the evening when we began our rounds. The principal collections of
the wounded were in the churches. Boards were laid over the tops of the
pews, on these some straw was spread, and on this the wounded lay, with
little or no covering other than such scanty clothes as they had on.
There were wounds of all degrees of severity, but I heard no groans
or murmurs. Most of the sufferers were hurt in the limbs, some had
undergone amputation, and all had, I presume, received such attention as
was required. Still, it was but a rough and dreary kind of comfort that
the extemporized hospitals suggested. I could not help thinking the
patients must be cold; but they were used to camp-life, and did not
complain. The men who watched were not of the soft-handed variety of the
race. One of them was smoking his pipe as he went from bed to bed. I saw
one poor fellow who had been shot through the breast; his breathing was
labored, and he was tossing, anxious and restless. The men were debating
about the opiate he was to take, and I was thankful that I happened
there at the right moment to see that he was well narcotized for the
night. Was it possible that my Captain could be lying on the straw in
one of these places? Certainly _possible_, but not probable; but as the
lantern was held over each bed, it was with a kind of thrill that I
looked upon the features it illuminated. Many times, as I went from
hospital to hospital in my wanderings, I started as some faint
resemblance--the shade of a young man's hair, the outline of his
half-turned face-recalled the presence I was in search of. The face
would turn towards me and the momentary illusion would pass away, but
still the fancy clung to me. There was no figure huddled up on its rude
couch, none stretched at the road-side, none toiling languidly along
the dusty pike, none passing in car or in ambulance, that I did not
scrutinize, as if it might be that for which I was making my pilgrimage
to the battle-field.

"There are two wounded Secesh," said my companion. I walked to the
bedside of the first, who was an officer, a lieutenant, if I remember
right, from North Carolina. He was of good family, son of a judge in
one of the higher courts of his State, educated, pleasant, gentle,
intelligent. One moment's intercourse with such an enemy, lying helpless
and wounded among strangers, takes away all personal bitterness towards
those with whom we or our children have been but a few hours before in
deadly strife. The basest lie which the murderous contrivers of this
Rebellion have told is that which tries to make out a difference of race
in the men of the North and South, It would be worth a year of battles
to abolish this delusion, though the great sponge of war that wiped it
out were moistened with the best blood of the land. My Rebel was of
slight, scholastic habit, and spoke as one accustomed to tread carefully
among the parts of speech. It made my heart ache to see him, a man
finished in the humanities and Christian culture, whom the sin of his
forefathers and the crime of his rulers had set in barbarous conflict
against others of like training with his own,--a man who, but for the
curse that it is laid on our generation to expiate, would have been
a fellow-worker with them in the beneficent task of shaping the
intelligence and lifting the moral standard of a peaceful and united
people.

On Sunday morning, the twenty-first, having engaged James Grayden
and his team, I set out with the Chaplain and the Philanthropist for
Keedysville. Our track lay through the South Mountain Gap and led us
first to the town of Boonsborough, where, it will be remembered, Colonel
Dwight had been brought after the battle. We saw the positions occupied
in the Battle of South Mountain, and many traces of the conflict. In one
situation a group of young trees was marked with shot, hardly one having
escaped. As we walked by the side of the wagon, the Philanthropist left
us for a while and climbed a hill, where along the line of a fence he
found traces of the most desperate fighting. A ride of some three hours
brought us to Boonsborough, where I roused the unfortunate army-surgeon
who had charge of the hospitals, and who was trying to get a little
sleep after his fatigues and watchings. He bore this cross very
creditably, and helped me to explore all places where my soldier might
be lying among the crowds of wounded. After the useless search, I
resumed my journey, fortified with a note of introduction to Dr.
Letterman, also with a bale of oakum which I was to carry to that
gentleman, this substance being employed as a substitute for lint.
We were obliged also to procure a pass to Keedysville from the
Provost-Marshal of Boonsborough. As we came near the place, we learned
that General McClellan's headquarters had been removed from this village
some miles farther to the front.

On entering the small settlement of Keedysville, a familiar face and
figure blocked the way, like one of Bunyan's giants. The tall form and
benevolent countenance, set off by long, flowing hair, belonged to the
excellent Mayor Frank B. Fay, of Chelsea, who, like my Philanthropist,
only still more promptly, had come to succor the wounded of the great
battle. It was wonderful to see how his single personality pervaded this
torpid little village; he seemed to be the centre of all its activities.
All my questions he answered clearly and decisively, as one who knew
everything that was going on in the place. But the one question I had
come five hundred miles to ask,--_Where is Captain H.?_--he could not
answer. There were some thousands of wounded in the place, he told
me, scattered about everywhere. It would be a long job to hunt up my
Captain; the only way would be to go to every house and ask for him.
Just then, a medical officer came up.

"Do you know anything of Captain H., of the Massachusetts Twentieth?"

"Oh, yes; he is staying in that house. I saw him there, doing very
well."

A chorus of hallelujahs arose in my soul, but I kept them to myself.
Now, then, for our twice-wounded volunteer, our young centurion whose
double-barred shoulder-straps we have never yet looked upon. Let us
observe the proprieties, however; no swelling upward of the mother,--no
_hysterica passio,_--we do not like scenes. A calm salutation,--then
swallow and bold hard. That is about the programme.

A cottage of squared logs, filled in with plaster, and white-washed. A
little yard before it, with a gate swinging. The door of the cottage
ajar,--no one visible as yet. I push open the door and enter. An old
woman, _Margaret Kitzmuller_ her name proves to be, is the first person
I see.

"Captain H. here?"

"Oh, no, Sir,--left yesterday morning for Hagerstown--in a milk-cart."

The Kitzmuller is a beady-eyed, cheery-looking ancient woman, answers
questions with a rising inflection, and gives a good account of the
Captain, who got into the vehicle without assistance, and was in
excellent spirits.--Of course he had struck for Hagerstown as the
terminus of the Cumberland Valley Railroad, and was on his way to
Philadelphia _via_ Chambersburg and Harrisburg, if he were not already
in the hospitable home of Walnut Street, where his friends were
expecting him.

I might follow on his track or return upon my own; the distance was die
same to Philadelphia through Harrisburg as through Baltimore. But it was
very difficult, Mr. Fay told me, to procure any kind of conveyance to
Hagerstown, and on the other hand I had James Grayden and his wagon to
carry me back to Frederick. It was not likely that I should overtake the
object of my pursuit with nearly thirty-six hours start, even if I
could procure a conveyance that day, In the mean time James was getting
impatient to be on his return, according to the direction of his
employers. So I decided to go back with him.

But there was the great battle-field only about three miles from
Keedysville, and it was impossible to go without seeing that. James
Grayden's directions were peremptory, but it was a case for the higher
law. I must make a good offer for an extra couple of hours, such as
would satisfy the owners of the wagon, and enforce it by a personal
motive. I did this handsomely, and succeeded without difficulty. To
add brilliancy to my enterprise, I invited the Chaplain and the
Philanthropist to take a free passage with me.

We followed the road through the village for a space, then turned off
to the right, and wandered somewhat vaguely, for want of precise
directions, over the hills. Inquiring as we went, we forded a wide creek
in which soldiers were washing their clothes, the name of which we did
not then know, but which must have been the Antietam. At one point we
met a party, women among them, bringing off various trophies they had
picked up on the battle-field. Still wandering along, we were at last
pointed to a hill in the distance, a part of the summit of which was
covered with Indian-corn. There, we were told, some of the fiercest
fighting of the day had been done. The fences were taken down so as to
make a passage across the fields, and the tracks worn within the last
few days looked like old roads. We passed a fresh grave under a tree
near the road. A board was nailed to the tree, bearing the name, as well
as I could make it out, of Gardiner, of a New-Hampshire regiment.

On coming near the brow of the hill, we met a party carrying picks and
spades. "How many?" "Only one." The dead were nearly all buried, then,
in this region of the field of strife. We stopped the wagon, and,
getting out, began to look around us. Hard by was a large pile of
muskets, scores, if not hundreds, which had been picked up and were
guarded for the Government. A long ridge of fresh gravel rose before us.
A board stuck up in front of it bore this inscription, the first part of
which was, I believe, not correct:--"The Rebel General Anderson and 80
Rebels are buried in this hole." Other smaller ridges were marked with
the number of dead lying under them. The whole ground was strewed
with fragments of clothing, haversacks, canteens, cap-boxes, bullets,
cartridge-boxes, cartridges, scraps of paper, portions of bread and
meat. I saw two soldiers' caps that looked as though their owners had
been shot through the head. In several places I noticed dark red patches
where a pool of blood had curdled and caked, as some poor fellow poured
his life out on the sod. I then wandered about in the cornfield. It
surprised me to notice, that, though there was every mark of hard
fighting having taken place here, the Indian-corn was not generally
trodden down. One of our cornfields is a kind of forest, and even when
fighting, men avoid the tall stalks as if they were trees. At the edge
of this cornfield lay a gray horse, said to have belonged to a Rebel
colonel, who was killed near the same place. Not far off were two dead
artillery-horses in their harness. Another had been attended to by
a burying-party, who had thrown some earth over him; but his last
bed-clothes were too short, and his legs stuck out stark and stiff
from beneath the gravel coverlet. It was a great pity that we had no
intelligent guide to explain to us the position of that portion of the
two armies which fought over this ground. There was a shallow trench
before we came to the cornfield, too narrow for a road, as I should
think, too elevated for a water-course, and which seemed to have been
used as a rifle-pit; at any rate, there had been hard fighting in and
about it. This and the cornfield may serve to identify the part of the
ground we visited, if any who fought there should ever look over this
paper. The opposing tides of battle must have blended their waves at
this point, for portions of gray uniform were mingled with the "garments
rolled in blood" torn from our own dead and wounded soldiers. I picked
up a Rebel canteen, and one of our own,--but there was something
repulsive about the trodden and stained relics of the stale
battle-field. It was like the table of some hideous orgy left uncleared,
and one turned away disgusted from its broken fragments and muddy
heel-taps. A bullet or two, a button, a brass plate from a soldier's
belt, served well enough for mementos of my visit, with a letter which
I picked up, directed to Richmond, Virginia, its seal unbroken. "N.C.
Cleaveland County. E. Wright to J. Wright." On the other side, "A few
lines from W.L. Vaughn," who has just been writing for the wife to her
husband, and continues on his own account. The postscript, "tell John
that nancy's folks are all well and has a verry good Little Crop of corn
a growing." I wonder, if, by one of those strange chances of which I
have seen so many, this number or leaf of the "Atlantic" will not sooner
or later find its way to Cleveland County, North Carolina, and E.
Wright, widow of James Wright, and Nancy's folks get from these
sentences the last glimpse of husband and friend as he threw up his arms
and fell in the bloody cornfield of Antietam? I will keep this stained
letter for them until peace comes back, if it comes in my time, and my
pleasant North-Carolina Rebel of the Middletown Hospital will, perhaps,
look these poor people up, and tell them where to send for it.

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