My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field

by Charles Carleton Coffin

I went up the hill into the town. Nearly every house was filled with the dying and the dead. The shells from the gunboats had crashed through some of the buildings. The soldiers had cut down the orchards and the shade-trees, and burned the fences. All was desolation. There were sad groups around the camp-fires, with despair upon their countenances. O how many of them thought of their friends far away, and wished they could see them again!

The ground was strewed with their guns, cartridge-boxes, belts, and knapsacks. There were bags of corn, barrels of sugar, hogsheads of molasses, tierces of bacon, broken open and trodden into the mud.

I went into the fort, and saw where the great shells from the gunboats had cut through the embankments. There were piles of cartridges beside the cannon. The dead were lying there, torn, mangled, rent. Near the intrenchments, where the fight had been fiercest, there were pools of blood. The Rebel soldiers were breaking the frozen earth, digging burial-trenches, and bringing in their fallen comrades and laying them side by side, to their last, long, silent sleep. I looked down the slope where Lauman’s men swept over the fallen trees in their terrible charge; then I walked down to the meadow, and looked up the height, and wondered how men could climb over the trees, the stumps, the rocks, and ascend it through such a storm. The dead were lying where they fell, heroes every one of them! It was sad to think that so many noble men had fallen, but it was a pleasure to know that they had not faltered. They had done their duty. If you ever visit that battle-field, and stand upon that slope, you will feel your heart swell with gratitude and joy, to think how cheerfully they gave their lives to save their country, that you and all who come after you may enjoy peace and prosperity forever.

How bravely they fought! There, upon the cold ground, lay a soldier of the Ninth Illinois. Early in the action of Saturday he was shot through the arm. He went to the hospital and had it bandaged, and returned to his place in the regiment. A second shot passed through his thigh, tearing the flesh to shreds.

“We will carry you to the hospital,” said two of his comrades.

“No, you stay and fight. I can get along alone.” He took off his bayonet, used his gun for a crutch, and reached the hospital. The surgeon dressed the wound. He heard the roar of battle. His soul was on fire to be there. He hobbled once more to the field, and went into the thickest of the fight, lying down, because he could not stand. He fought as a skirmisher. When the Rebels advanced, he could not retire with the troops, but continued to fight. After the battle he was found dead upon the field, six bullets having passed through his body.

One bright-eyed little fellow, of the Second Iowa, had his foot crushed by a cannon-shot. Two of his comrades carried him to the rear. An officer saw that, unless the blood was stopped, he never would reach the hospital. He told the men to tie a handkerchief around his leg, and put snow on the wound.

“O, never mind the foot, Captain,” said the brave fellow. “We drove the Rebels out, and have got their trench; that’s the most I care for!” The soldiers did as they were directed, and his life was saved.

There in the trenches was a Rebel soldier with a rifle-shot through his head. He was an excellent marksman, and had killed or wounded several Union officers. One of Colonel Birges’s sharpshooters, an old hunter, who had killed many bears and wolves, crept up towards the breastworks to try his hand upon the Rebel. They fired at each other again and again, but both were shrewd and careful. The Rebel raised his hat above the breastwork,—whi——z! The sharpshooter out in the bushes had put a bullet through it. “Ha! ha! ha!” laughed the Rebel, sending his own bullet into the little puff of smoke down in the ravine. The Rocky Mountain hunter was as still as a mouse. He knew that the Rebel had outwitted him, and expected the return shot. It was aimed a little too high, and he was safe.

“You cheated me that time, but I will be even with you yet,” said the sharpshooter, whirling upon his back, and loading his rifle and whirling back again. He rested his rifle upon the ground, aimed it, and lay with his eye along the barrel, his finger on the trigger. Five minutes passed. “I reckon that that last shot fixed him,” said the Rebel. “He hasn’t moved this five minutes.”