Bill Arp (Charles H. Smith)
(Humorous “Letter to Lincoln”)
September Seventeenth
The moon, rising above the mountains, revealed the long lines of men and guns, stretching far across hill and valley, waiting for the dawn to shoot each other down, and between the armies their dead lay in such numbers as civilised war has seldom seen. So fearful had been the carnage, and comprised within such narrow limits, that a Federal patrol, it is related, passing into the corn-field, where the fighting had been fiercest, believed that they had surprised a whole Confederate brigade. There, in the shadow of the woods, lay the skirmishers, their muskets beside them; and there, in regular ranks, lay the line of battle, sleeping, as it seemed, the profound sleep of utter exhaustion. But the first man that was touched was cold and lifeless, and the next, and the next; it was the bivouac of the dead.
Lieut.-Col. G. F. R. Henderson, C.B.
Battle of Antietam, 1862
September Eighteenth
He’s in the saddle now. Fall in,
Steady the whole brigade!
Hill’s at the ford, cut off; we’ll win
His way out, ball and blade.
What matter if our shoes are worn?
What matter if our feet are torn?
Quick step! We’re with him before morn—
That’s Stonewall Jackson’s way.
John Williamson Palmer
[From lines written within the sound of Jackson’s guns at Antietam, 1862. Although then a correspondent of the New York Tribune, Dr. Palmer was a Southerner by birth and residence.—Editor]