Three years in the Sixth Corps

by George T. Stevens

A further advance of a few miles was made on the 25th, but finding the enemy in a stronger position than he had occupied either in the Wilderness or at Spottsylvania, General Grant determined again to withdraw and try his favorite flank movement. Accordingly, on the night of the 26th, the army was withdrawn to the north bank of the river. The night was very dark, and the mud deep. Several days' rain had rendered the roads, proverbial for their mud, almost impassable; but heeding no difficulties, the army followed without hesitation wherever our great leader directed. The Sixth corps, with two divisions of cavalry under Sheridan, who had now rejoined the army from his great raid on which he had started from Spottsylvania, took the advance. On Saturday, the 28th, the corps and the cavalry divisions, after a good deal of hard fighting, crossed the Pamunkey river, at Hanovertown. The cavalry, at once advancing several miles beyond the river, encountered a large force of rebel cavalry, which was driven back. The army encamped at Hanovertown, stretching from the river several miles southward.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE HOSPITALS AT FREDERICKSBURGH.

The journey from the battle-field—Sufferings of the wounded—A surgeon's letters—Rebel hatred—Assistance from the north—A father in search of his boy—The wounded sent to Washington.

Let us turn now from the field of battle to Fredericksburgh, that great depot for wounded men.

It will be recollected that, from Piney Branch church, the trains, with the wounded from the Wilderness, were sent to Fredericksburgh. Over a rough road, nearly fifteen miles, these unfortunate men, with shattered or amputated limbs, with shots through the lungs or head or abdomen, suffering the most excruciating pain from every jar or jolt of the ambulance or wagon, crowded as closely as they could be packed, were to be transported. Already they had been carted about over many miles of hard road, most of them having been carried from the old gold mine to Chancellorsville, and now again loaded and brought to Spottsylvania. They were worn out with fatigue and suffering, and yet there was much misery in store for them. Slowly the immense train labored over the rough road, now corduroy, now the remains of a worn out plank road, and anon a series of ruts and mud holes, until, at three o'clock on the morning of the 9th of May, the head of the train arrived in Fredericksburgh.

The train had been preceded by some three hundred men who were wounded but able to walk. Mayor Slaughter and other rebel citizens surrounded these unarmed men, made them prisoners and delivered them to some rebel cavalry, who took them to Richmond.

The process of unloading the wounded at once commenced; all the churches and other public buildings were first seized and filled. Negroes who could be found in town were pressed into the work, yet, with all the help that could be obtained, it was a slow process. All night and all the next day the work went on. The churches were filled first, then warehouses and stores, and then private houses, until the town was literally one immense hospital.

The surgeons were too much engaged in transferring the men from the wagons to the houses to find time that day to dress many wounds, and many an unfortunate soldier whose stump of an arm or leg had not been dressed since the first day of the fighting, became the victim of gangrene, which set in as the result of this unavoidable want of care. No sooner were the men removed from the ambulances than surgeons and nurses addressed themselves with all the strength that remained to them to relieve the immediate wants of the sufferers. Never before had such herculean labors been thrown upon so small a body of men, yet nobly did they accomplish the task. All the buildings in town were full of wounded men, the walks were covered with them, and long trains of ambulances were filling the streets with more. Yet to relieve the wants of all these thousands of suffering men not more than forty surgeons had been sent from the field.

It was one grand funeral; men were dropping away on every side. Large numbers of nurses were detailed as burial parties, and these plied their work day after day with hardly time for their needed rest.