In Doctor Hazlett the regiment had lost a very fine gentleman, and a scholar. He was not so universally respected by the men of the regiment as he, perhaps, deserved. His position was one requiring peculiar abilities, which, in many respects, the Doctor was deficient in. Surgical skill will secure a full reputation at the operating table, but something more is required to secure the entire approbation of a regiment of indiscriminating soldiers. His head was covered with hair silvered o'er, not with age, but naturally, and some gave him the epithet of "Tow-head." His prescriptions consisted largely in quinine, and hence the name of "Quinine" was frequently applied.
He, one time after a hard day's march, proposed to treat the regiment to a good "snort" of whisky. This was received with a hurrah by the men, but, on taking the "snort," it was so bitter with quinine that the wry faces along the line were universal.
Captain Clayton Hale, who was now acting Major, had his horse shot from under him while in advance of the regiment, transmitting orders to the men. He soon, however, procured another, and with it made his escape.
Colonel Goodin, commanding the brigade, was captured, and, with the other prisoners, taken to General Bragg's head-quarters, where they were paroled, and sent back into the Union lines.
The 9th was principally occupied in burying the dead and providing for the wounded. The regiment, however, moved about one mile farther to the right, and lay in that position until noon of the 10th, when it again moved some four miles in the opposite direction, going into camp near the point where the battle first commenced, on the morning of the 8th. Here were many indications of the severity of the contest. Dead rebels were everywhere met with, through the woods, as yet unburied. Two of them lay within twenty steps of the regiment for twenty-four hours after its arrival there, and would have rotted above ground had not some friends of theirs scattered dirt over them. Not that the Fifty-Ninth was unfeeling or inhuman, but it was not their business to kill, and then bury traitors. Close by was a small open field, in which were three hundred muskets, apparently thrown down by some regiment that had been camped there.
CHAPTER XXIII.
On the morning of the 12th, the regiment again moved out in pursuit of the enemy. Passing through Danville on the 13th, and through Lancaster on the 14th, it arrived in the neighborhood of Crab Orchard, on the evening of the 15th, and went into camp on the bank of Dix River, Ky., two miles from Crab Orchard, on the morning of the 16th, or rather the army went into bivouac, for the tents and camp equipage were yet in Louisville. An order, however, was immediately sent back to have them brought up. The distance marched since leaving Louisville, is one hundred and thirty miles. And here and thus ends Don Carlos Buell's campaign in Kentucky. A campaign which should have resulted in the capture or annihilation of the rebel hordes, but which will hereafter be regarded as one of the most miserable failures in the military history of the country. True, the State of Kentucky is now rid of the insolent, thieving foe, but this was not the task assigned the commander of the army of the Ohio. He was expected to utterly destroy them, and he had the men and the opportunities to do so; but instead, he permitted the enemy to fall upon, in force, and almost destroy a wing of his army, when fifty thousand men were in easy supporting distance; and then, as if to complete his work of imbecility or treachery, allowed them to escape, when their retreat might still have been cut off.
It is said that the army in Flanders swore terribly, and there is no doubt of that fact. Most armies do. But if any one had been fond of profanity, and wished to hear vigorous denunciations, in unmistakable Saxon, they should have heard the army of the Ohio, on the merits of the arch traitor, Don Carlos Buell.
The third great error of the war was now most clearly demonstrated—that of continuing Don Carlos in command, after his arrival at Louisville, Ky.
Here is an extract from a soldier's letter, written to his boy at home, after losing his summer's harvest by the excessive high waters of that season, showing in what the thoughts of the soldier frequently consist while idle in camp: