the night. The next morning they were to be taken in the cars to a more commodious hospital. Among them there was one, a fair-haired, blueeyed, pale-faced young lieutenant, a mere boy, from South Carolina, mortally wounded.

"I could not," writes a lady of the Sanitary Commission, "think of him as a rebel; he was too near heaven for that. He wanted nothing; but I coaxed him to try a little milk gruel, made nicely with lemon and brandy; and one of the satisfactions of our three weeks is the remembrance of the empty cup I took away afterwards, and his perfect enjoyment of that supper. It was so good-the best thing he had had since he was wounded;' and he thanked me so much and talked of his good supper for hours. At midnight the change came, and from that time he only thought of the old days before he was a soldier, when he sang hymns in his father's church. His father was a Lutheran clergyman in South Carolina. All day long we watched him, sometimes fighting his battles over, oftener singing his Lutheran chants, till in at the tent door, close to which he lay, looked a rebel soldier, just arrived with other prisoners. He started when he saw the young lieutenant, and, quickly kneeling down by him, called Henry! Henry! But Henry was looking at some one a great way off, and could not hear him. 'Do you know this soldier?' we said. 'Oh, yes, maʼam; and his brother is wounded, and a prisoner too, in the cars now. Two or three men started after him, found him, and half carried him from the cars to our tent. 'Henry' did not know him, though; and he threw himself down by his side on the straw, and for the rest of the day lay in a sort of apathy, without speaking, except to assure himself that he could stay with his brother, without the risk of being separated from the rest of his fellow-prisoners. And there the brothers lay, and there we strangers sat, watching and listening to the strong clear voice praying, 'Lord, have mercy upon him!'

"The Lord had mercy; and at sunset I put my hand on the lieutenant's heart to find it still. All night the brother lay close against the coffin, and in the morning went away with his comrades, leaving us to bury Henry, having 'confidence,' but first thanking us for what we had done, and giving us all that he had to show his gratitude, the palmetto ornament from his brother's cap and a button from his coat. Dr. W. read the burial service that morning at the grave, and we wrote his name on the little head-board, 'Lieutenant Rauch, Fourteenth Regiment, South Carolina Volunteers.""

For three weeks the Sanitary Commission tents stood waving their hospitable flag near the depot where the soldiers took the cars for Washington, and where, but for the Commission, thousands of them would have been obliged to pass weary hours of exposure and suffering, waiting for trains. Sixteen thousand good meals were given, hundreds of men sheltered through the day, and twelve hundred through the night. Rebels -Union men-all nursed and cherished by the same hands, the same charity-within a few hours' ride of our devoted, precious, starving martyrs in Libby Prison!

Other Christian Commissions sent valuable and instant aid to the field

of death. Among the foremost was the noble band of workers from the Church of the Ascension, in Philadelphia. The Sabbath morning after the battle, the aisles of the church reëchoed new sounds-no less holy, and no less gospel-taught than the accustomed words of prayer and praise. The desk had given place to the sewing machine, and the kneelers were rolling bandages. The sacred hours of that Sabbath of hallowed work did not close until tons of stores, and treasures of money, were ready to be borne to the suffering soldiers by the first trains, accompanied by willing hands, strong to work in their distribution. Months afterwards, a simple but graphic record, by an eye-witness, told the story of the labors of the little band.

Slow and long, to their impatient sympathy, seemed the days of a journey, which, before the destructions of the battle, would have been one but of hours. Blackened and scourged, the valley of Gettysburg greeted their eyes on the morning of July 10th. On all sides cries for help filled their ears. General Lee, in his retreat, had left a number of surgeons to look after his wounded, and a number of men to act as their assistants; but, with one single exception, the surgeons and men seemed alike coarse and unfeeling. They had not availed themselves of the facilities at their command for bestowing their wounded comfortably, but had crowded them, literally by piled scores, into an uncleanly barn, reserving a narrow space in the centre for a large table, upon which their surgical operations were performed in the most hasty and often atrociously careless manner, in full view of each harrowed sufferer whose turn might be the next. On one occasion, the wife of a rebel officer, who had been reported wounded, rode up to this fearful slaughter-house, in search of her husband. A surgeon met her at the door, with his dripping knife in his hand, and called out brutally, regardless of her grief-stricken fear, to an attendant near by, to bring him a carving knife and a razor strop, as his instruments were all getting dull. No theory of the origin of spirits provides for the locating of such a monster!

The surprise and incredulity of the suffering rebels was unbounded at the kind attentions they found the infernal "Yankee" men and women were lavishing upon them. Every day, men said, tearfully, "We are disappointed in you Northern men; you are doing more for us than we deserve; and much as you are doing, we see that you would gladly do more, if you could." Among the seven thousand wounded rebel soldiers succored and sheltered, only one man was known to have expressed hostility and hatred to his benefactors. He avowed that he had repeatedly taken deliberate aim at a Union soldier, and that he would do it again if he had an opportunity. The more manly and chivalrous men were usually found to be Georgians, and many of their expressions showed that there is still left much of the old leaven of patriotic love for the Union, in Georgia. One poor fellow, a Georgian, who had lost his leg, and was fast sinking into the grave from exhaustion, repeatedly bemoaned his own folly in having entered the army, and, almost with his dying breath, declared that he had never been heartily on the Southern side of the contest. As it became evident that he had but a few moments to live, he implored to be raised and placed upon his knees. Unmindful of the torture to his shattered limb, he lifted both his arms, and, stretching them upward, fixed his

dim eyes on heaven, and, with an unspoken prayer, died. The amount of religious sentiment found among the rebel soldiers was greater than had been anticipated; very frequently some of their number would be occupied in prayer, or whiling away the weary night hours by singing, in a low tone, religious hymns. One man, of great muscular strength, who was laid upon the floor of the butcher's barn above mentioned, had the nerve and the grace given him to spend hours together, with his eyes closed to the appalling scenes about him, and his clear, hrave voice rising above the horrid din of saws, and shrieks and groans, in verses of faith and hope, which carried strength and spoke of peace to many a less heroic sufferer. With the exception of the vindictive rebel above referred to, the most noticeable thing in the general atmosphere of feeling on both sides, was the lack of animosity and the free mutual kindliness. One of our wounded men owed his life to the tender care of some of the Confederate soldiers, who, finding him lying helpless and exposed, on a part of the field of which they had gained temporary possession, built above and around him a rude shelter of stones, under which he laid safe for hours, while the whizzing bullets were flying over his head, and rebounding with flattened surfaces from his stone roof.

The greater part of the efforts of this noble band of workers from the Church of the Ascension were directed to the relief of the rebels who were thrown on our charities; and the most interesting feature of the account of their ministrations is the bringing to our appreciation such instances as these of devoted piety and disinterested kindness on the part of those whom we have been, perhaps, inclined to regard too sweepingly as utterly beyond the pale of common brotherhood. Nothing was more constantly apparent to these Christain philanthropists, than that by far the greater number of the rebel soldiers were absolutely and inexplicably ignorant of the true facts, both in regard to the causes which led to the opening of the war, and to the leading measures which had been instituted in the course of it. Many of them refused utterly to believe that President Lincoln had ever issued a warning proclamation before the emancipation decree, affording to all the rebels ninety days in which to lay down their arms and escape the consequences of their revolt. All of them were sincerely impressed with the conviction that they were fighting for their threatened and imperilled liberties-to resist oppression, and to repel invaders. And, still more singularly, they were all equally filled with the conviction that, by the triumph of the Southern cause, the condition of the Southern masses would be greatly lifted and bettered.

No despotism of the Old World ever more tyrannously held the minds and passions of its subjects in abject, blind, and ignorant subservience to its own vile ends, than have the leaders of this accursed rebellion. While we wait restlessly for the sound of the chariot-wheels of the avenging fate which will surely mete out to them bitter and eternal retribution, we must pity the poor, cheated, befooled, driven herds they have forced us to kill.

The sentiment of the country at large demanded some especial consecration of the ground rendered immortal by the scenes of this unequalled conflict-unequalled even by world-renowned Waterloo. A thrill of sympathetic

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and universal appreciation responded to the proposal to dedicate it to the sacred use of a National Cemetery-sepulchre of martys, from whose graves shall arise a great cloud of those who laid down their lives, a willing sacrifice for freedom and humanity.

On the 19th of April, 1863, the valley roads again swarmed with thousands whose feet were pressing to the Cemetery Hill. Four months had not obliterated from the slopes of Round Top and the banks of the creek the traces of that terrible battle to whose sacred memory these crowds came to do honor. With tears, men gazed on the trampled and levelled graves and their shattered stones, and knelt uncovered while in fervent prayer the blood-stained earth was reverently given back to God, for the free burial of His great and glorious army of martyrs. America's greatest orator laid the burning words of his eloquence on the altar of dedication; and the solemn strains of a funeral dirge were borne on the air to the east and the west, bathing with their melting sorrow every hallowed spot where blood had been spilled. Battle and heroes of Gettysburg-written immortal forever! held with Marathon and Thermopyla in golden eternity!*

* As Mr. Everett closed his eulogium, President Lincoln rose upon the platform, with intensest emotion beaming from every feature of his speaking countenance. Twelve hundred patriot graves, in tiers of crescent shape, nearly encircled him. Solemnly his eye glanced over the long outstretched crests, on which had lately raged the storm of battle, and then turned to the audience. An eye-witness writes:

"A fresh tide of feeling struggled in that great, warm heart; the figure straitened taller than before, and with strong though tremulous voice, the President uttered the first sentence of his terse and unsurpassed address. The surrounding tens of thousands caught its sentiment and rolled out their thunders of applause. In fuller tone came another great thought, and another response. Thus, at each period, until that sentence was reached whose emphasis those who listened can never forget.

"We cannot consecrate nor hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will but little note, nor long remember, what we say here; but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be re-dedicated to the unfinished work, which they have thus far nobly carried on.'

"It seemed as the actual offering of himself and that vast concourse, and, indeed, the millions over whom he presides, a sacrifice on the altar of country, of duty, of God. Every heart realized it as a solemn sincerity. But in none did it appear so personal, so sincere, as in the earnest and devoted Chief Magistrate who was addressing us."

CHAPTER XXXIV.

CHICKAMAUGA.

(August and September, 1863.)

THE REBELS DRIVEN ACROSS THE CUMBERLAND MOUNTAINS.-INTRENCHED AT CHATTANOOGA.— MILITARY MANŒUVRES. THE BATTLE OF CHICKAMAUGA.-DISASTERS.-HEROISM OF GENERAL THOMAS.-BARREN VICTORY OF THE REBELS.-RETREAT OF PATRIOTS TO CHATTANOOGA.~~~~ LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN AND MISSIONARY RIDGE.-CHATTANOOGA BESIEGED.

We must now transfer our narrative to scenes occurring in Eastern Tennessee, to which region the rebels sullenly retreated, followed by General Rosecrans, after the battle of Stone River. During the first five months of the year 1863, there was so much apparent inactivity in General Rosecrans's command as to excite uneasiness at Washington, and a general feeling of discontent throughout the country. The rebel army was; however, gradually pushed out of Middle Tennessee, across the Cumberland Mountains, and over the Tennessee River. They crossed this stream at Bridgeport, and retired to Chattanooga. Here they made an attempt to fortify themselves strongly. Chattanooga, in itself an insignificant village, nestled among the mountains, was an important strategic point. It commanded the entrance from the South into East Tennessee, and was the gateway from the North, to the vast and fertile plains of Georgia and Alabama.

The road from Murfreesboro' to Chattanooga was long, wild, and mountainous. In the pursuit of the foe the utmost precautions were necessary to protect our extended line of communication from our base at Nashville. It was not until August of 1863, that the patriot troops were able to effect the passage of the Cumberland Mountains. The defences of Chattanooga were of such a character that General Rosecrans deemed it unwise to attempt a direct attack from the north, but sought by a flank movement to approach the place from the south.

To veil this operation and distract the attention of the enemy, General Waggoner was detached from his division, then in the Sequatchie Valley, nearly west of Chattanooga, and with Wilder's Cavalry crossed Walden's Ridge to a point nearly opposite the town. General Hazen proceeded to Poe's Tavern, a few miles north. A force of cavalry, under Colonel Minty, four thousand in number, with three thousand infantry, was sent to Smithfield.

This feint was very successful. For three weeks these troops presented a menacing front on the western banks of the river. Batteries were planted to throw shells into the town, and two steamboats and a horse-ferry were captured. On the 21st, Colonel Minty opened fire upon the town from one of his batteries, and made an ostentatious show of crossing the river just above Chattanooga. The mounted men exhibited themselves at various points many miles apart along the river banks, leading the rebels to imag