It stole upon me again to day. I had not called it to mind volitionally. It came suddenly and from nowhere. I will always be able to call it to mind but it is when it comes without a summons that I realize it's always going to bother me. After the Battle of Fredericksburg the Army of the Potomac withdrew to make the infamous mud march. During that retreat the rebels pursued or feigned to pursue:
"The terrible distinctness of this alternate howling and cheering--as perceptible to the ear during the thunders of the fight, as the silver lining that not unfrequently fringes the heavily-charged cloud is to the eye,--is a striking illustration of the power of the human voice. We were to have another, however, and that of but a single voice, which from the agony of soul thrown into it, and its almost supernatural surroundings, must eternally echo in memory.
About three hundred yards distant from the left of our Brigade line, in an open field, on elevated ground, stood a large and comfortable looking farmhouse. In the morning it had been occupied; but as its inmates saw our skirmishers prostrating themselves on the one side in double lines that ran parallel to our breastworks, and the Rebel advance at the the same attain the edge of the wood upon the opposite side,--and the skirmishing that occasionally occurred along the lines giving promise of a fight that might center upon their premises,--they packed up a few valuables and left for a place of safety. But not all. We read of noble Romans offering their lives in defense of faithful slaves. That species of self-sacrifice is a stranger to our Southern chivalry. In the garret of the building, upon some rags, lay an old woman, who had been crippled from injuries received by being scalded some months before, and had thus closed a term of faithful service which ran over fifty years, of the life of her present master and of that of his father before him. Worn out, and useless for further toil, she had been placed in the garret with other household rubbish. Her poor body crippled,--but a casket, nevertheless, of an immortal soul,--was not one of the the valuables taken by the family upon their departure. As the thunders of the thickening fight broke in upon her loneliness, her cries upon the God of battles, alone powerful to save, could be heard with great distinctness. Isolated and under the fire of either line, there was no room for human relief. Her strength of voice appeared to grow with the increasing darkness, and above the continuous thunder of the cannon were the cries--"God Almighty, help me! "Lord, save me!" "Have mercy on me!" shrieked and groaned in all the varied tones of mortal agony. Long after the firing had ceased, in fact until we moved at early dawn, our men behind the works and in the rifle pits in front could hear with greater or less distinctness, as if a death wail coming up from the carnage of the field, the piteous plaints of that terror-stricken soul. Rumor has it, that before the building was fired by a shell in the middle of the following forenoon, her spirit had taken its flight; but whether or not, it could not mitigate the retributive justice to be measured out by that God over us all to whom vengeance belongs, upon the heads of the ingrates who had left her to her fate.
-Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals, William H. Armstrong.
"The terrible distinctness of this alternate howling and cheering--as perceptible to the ear during the thunders of the fight, as the silver lining that not unfrequently fringes the heavily-charged cloud is to the eye,--is a striking illustration of the power of the human voice. We were to have another, however, and that of but a single voice, which from the agony of soul thrown into it, and its almost supernatural surroundings, must eternally echo in memory.
About three hundred yards distant from the left of our Brigade line, in an open field, on elevated ground, stood a large and comfortable looking farmhouse. In the morning it had been occupied; but as its inmates saw our skirmishers prostrating themselves on the one side in double lines that ran parallel to our breastworks, and the Rebel advance at the the same attain the edge of the wood upon the opposite side,--and the skirmishing that occasionally occurred along the lines giving promise of a fight that might center upon their premises,--they packed up a few valuables and left for a place of safety. But not all. We read of noble Romans offering their lives in defense of faithful slaves. That species of self-sacrifice is a stranger to our Southern chivalry. In the garret of the building, upon some rags, lay an old woman, who had been crippled from injuries received by being scalded some months before, and had thus closed a term of faithful service which ran over fifty years, of the life of her present master and of that of his father before him. Worn out, and useless for further toil, she had been placed in the garret with other household rubbish. Her poor body crippled,--but a casket, nevertheless, of an immortal soul,--was not one of the the valuables taken by the family upon their departure. As the thunders of the thickening fight broke in upon her loneliness, her cries upon the God of battles, alone powerful to save, could be heard with great distinctness. Isolated and under the fire of either line, there was no room for human relief. Her strength of voice appeared to grow with the increasing darkness, and above the continuous thunder of the cannon were the cries--"God Almighty, help me! "Lord, save me!" "Have mercy on me!" shrieked and groaned in all the varied tones of mortal agony. Long after the firing had ceased, in fact until we moved at early dawn, our men behind the works and in the rifle pits in front could hear with greater or less distinctness, as if a death wail coming up from the carnage of the field, the piteous plaints of that terror-stricken soul. Rumor has it, that before the building was fired by a shell in the middle of the following forenoon, her spirit had taken its flight; but whether or not, it could not mitigate the retributive justice to be measured out by that God over us all to whom vengeance belongs, upon the heads of the ingrates who had left her to her fate.
-Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals, William H. Armstrong.
