"As we must beat him somewhere, or fail finally, we can do it, if at all, easier near us, than far away. If we cannot beat the enemy where he now is, we never can, he again being within the intrenchments of Richmond."[81]
The army numbered one hundred and twenty-three thousand men present and fit for duty. If General McClellan moved east of the Blue Ridge he was to receive thirty-five thousand reinforcements from Washington, making a total of about one hundred and sixty thousand.[82] Lee's army was supposed to number about eighty thousand.
General McClellan still delayed to advance. "The troops are in want of clothing," he said. But the chief quartermaster of the army cleared the government from all blame. "You have always very promptly met all my requirements. I foresee no time when an army of over one hundred thousand men will not call for clothing and other articles," was the telegram of Colonel Ingalls to General Meigs.
Among the wounded in the hospitals at Antietam was a young soldier of the Nineteenth Massachusetts. He was an only child of his parents. He had been kindly nurtured, and knew nothing of hardship till he enlisted in the army. He was very patient. He had no word of complaint. He trusted in Jesus, and had no fear of death. His mother came from her Massachusetts home to see him.
"Do you know that we think you cannot recover?" said the chaplain one day to him. It did not startle him.
"I am safe. Living or dying, I am in God's hands," he calmly replied.
"Are you not sorry, my son, that you entered the army, and left home to suffer all this?" his mother asked.
"O mother, how can you ask me such a question as that? You know I am not sorry. I loved my country, and for her cause I came," he replied.
He wanted to be baptized. It was Sabbath morning. The soldier lay upon a stretcher, and the weeping mother knelt by his side,—her only child. There was some water in his canteen. The chaplain poured it upon his marble brow, where death was soon to set his seal, and baptized him in the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit. Thus trusting in God and loving his country, he passed into a better life.[83]
There was another soldier who had been wounded in the leg. Mortification set in. The surgeons told him it must be amputated. He knew there was little chance for him to live, but calmly, as if lying down to slumber, he went to the amputating table, singing cheerfully, as if he were on the threshold of heaven: