From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign / A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw

by William Meade Dame

Our part of the line was comparatively quiet, after the fight of the early morning. Several times infantry was seen moving about, down in the woods, in our front, and we would send a few shells into the woods just to let them know that we were watchful, and ready. Harry Sublett was wounded by a stray ball on this day. But no real attack was made, only the sound of the sharp-shooter’s rifle, and the sound of their bullets enlivened the time.

This went on for several days. The idea of breaking our line, here, had been given up as a hopeless job, and no other attempt was made on it. Assaults were made on other points, and we could hear fighting, here and there, but we were left alone.

At last, we got orders to move, about the 18th or 19th. Our pickets had advanced through the woods, and reported that the enemy had left our front.

While waiting for the horses to be brought up to take off the guns, an infantryman told me that a cow had been killed, between the lines, and was lying down there in the woods, in front.

We had had an awful time about food, for the last week, and were hungry as wolves. This news about the cow was news indeed. I told several of the boys, and off we started to get some of that cow! We found it lying just in the edge of the woods. It was a hideous place to go for a beefsteak! All around, the ground was covered with dead Federal soldiers, many in an advanced stage of decay. The woods had been on fire, and many of these bodies were burned; some with the clothing, and nearly all the flesh consumed! The carcass of that cow was touching five dead bodies,—which will give an idea of how thick the dead were lying. Many of their wounded had perished in the flames, which had swept over the ground.

Grant’s Neglect of Federal Wounded

We had witnessed all these horrors, with our own eyes, days before, from our lines, and had been helpless to do anything for them. Hundreds of wounded Federal soldiers lay between the lines, day after day, and perished for want of help. Several of us, unable to bear the sight of their suffering, went out one day to carry them food and water, and the Federals fired upon us, and wounded one of our men, then we had to leave them alone. They could not or would not care for their wounded, and would not let us do it. It was stated among us that General Lee had sent an offer to General Grant to permit him to send, and care for his wounded, near our lines; and he refused. And then General Lee offered, if Grant would suspend hostilities for some hours, that we would care for his wounded rather than see them suffer, and die, before our eyes; Grant refused that proposal too!

Certain it is, these poor fellows were left to their fate and perished, miserably, by wounds and famine, and fire. Their many dead, in our front, lay unburied until the odor from them was so dreadful that we could hardly stay in our works. It may be that General Grant had this in mind, and was determined that, if his live soldiers couldn’t drive us out of the works, his dead ones should. Well! he had his way of making war! And on account of his inhumanity to his wounded, his own men thought as ours did, that his way was very brutal! I heard his own men curse him bitterly. They called him “The Butcher” in those days. The feeling of his army to him was widely different from our feeling for our General.

All those dead soldiers along a line of five miles lay rotting on the ground, until we had gone away, and the people of the country neighborhood had to collect them from the fields, and thickets, and bury them, for fear of pestilence. And when one remembers that from Thursday, the 5th of May, to Thursday, the 12th of May, General Grant had lost 40,000 in killed and wounded, the dread sight of death and suffering we looked upon, can be imagined! The thronging lines of unburied dead,—it was a shocking and appalling spectacle!

But we could not just then, mind the sights we saw! We got our beef, all the same! We were the first to get to that cow, and we had to take our knives and cut through the skin, on the rump, and flay it up, and then cut out hunks of the flesh, as best we could, and get back to the guns.