I had frequently seen pictures of battle-fields, and had often read about them; but the most terrible scenes of carnage my boyish imagination had ever figured fell far short of the dreadful reality as I beheld it after the great battle of the war. It was the evening of Sunday, July 5, 1863, when, at the suggestion of Andy, we took our way across the breastworks, stone fences, and redoubts, to look over the battle-field. Our shattered brigade had been mainly on reserve during the last three days; and as we made our way through the troops lying in our front, and over the defences of stone and earth and ragged rocks, the scene among our troops was one for the pencil of a great artist.

Scattered about irregularly were groups of men discussing the battle and its results, or relating exciting incidents and adventures of the fray: here, one fellow pointing out bullet-holes in his coat or cap, or a great rent in the sleeve of his blouse made by a flying piece of shell; there, a man laughing as he held up his crushed canteen, or showed his tobacco-box with a hole in the lid and a bullet among his "fine cut"; yonder, knots of men frying steaks and cooking coffee about the fire, or making ready for sleep.

Before we pass beyond our own front line, evidences of the terrible carnage of the battle environ us on all sides. Fresh, hastily dug graves are there, with rude head-boards telling the poor fellows' names and regiments; yonder, a tree on whose smooth bark the names of three Confederate generals, who fell here in the gallant charge, have been carved by some thoughtful hand. The trees round about are chipped by the balls and stripped almost bare by the leaden hail, while a log-house near by in the clearing has been so riddled with shot and shell that scarcely a whole shingle is left to its roof.

But sights still more fearful await us as we step out beyond the front line, pick our way carefully among the great rocks, and walk down the slope to the scene of the fearful charge. The ground has been soaked with the recent rains, and the heavy mist which hangs like a pall over the field, together with the growing darkness, renders objects but indistinctly visible, and all the more ghastly. As the eye ranges over so much of the field as the shrouding mist allows us to see, we behold a scene of destruction terrible indeed, if ever there was one in all this wide world! Dismounted gun-carriages, shattered caissons, knapsacks, haversacks, muskets, bayonets, accoutrements, scattered over the field in wildest confusion,—horses (poor creatures!) dead and dying,—and, worst and most awful of all, dead men by the hundreds! Most of the men in blue have been buried already, and the pioneers yonder in the mist are busy digging trenches for the poor fellows in gray.

As we pass along, we stop to observe how thickly they lie, here and there, like grain before the scythe in summer-time,—how firmly some have grasped their guns, with high, defiant looks,—and how calm are the countenances of others in their last solemn sleep; while more than one has clutched in his stiffened fingers a piece of white paper, which he waved, poor soul, in his death-agony, as a plea for quarter, when the great wave of battle had receded and left him there, mortally wounded, on the field.

I sicken of the dreadful scene,—can endure it no longer,—and beg Andy to "Come away! Come away! It's too awful to look at any more!"

And so we get back to our place in the breastworks with sad, heavy hearts, and wonder how we ever could have imagined war so grand and gallant a thing when, after all, it is so horribly wicked and cruel. We lie down—the thirteen of us that are left in the company—on a big flat rock, sleeping without shelter, and shielding our faces from the drizzling rain with our caps as best we may, thinking of the dreadful scene in front there, and of the sad, heavy hearts there will be all over the land for weary years, till kindly sleep comes to us, with sweet forgetfulness of all.

Our clothes were damp with the heavy mists and drizzling rain when we awoke next morning, and hastily prepared for the march off the field and the long pursuit of the foe through the waving grain-fields of Maryland. Having cooked our coffee in our blackened tin cups, and roasted our slices of fresh beef, stuck on the end of a ramrod and thrust into the crackling fires, we were ready in a moment for the march, for we had but little to pack up.

Straight over the field we go, through that valley of death where the heavy charging had been done, and thousands of men had been swept away, line after line, in the mad and furious tempest of the battle. Heavy mists still overhang the field, even dumb Nature seeming to be in sympathy with the scene, while all around us, as we march along, are sights at which the most callous turn faint. Interesting enough we find the evidences of conflict, save only where human life is concerned.

We stop to wonder at the immense furrow yonder which some shell has ploughed up in the ground; we call one another's attention to a caisson shivered to atoms by an explosion, or to a tree cut clean off by a solid shot, or bored through and through by a shell. With pity we contemplate the poor artillery-horses hobbling, wounded and mangled, about the field, and we think it a mercy to shoot them as we pass. But the dead men! Hundreds of torn and distorted bodies yet on the field, although thousands already lie buried in the trenches. Even the roughest and rudest among us marches awed and silent, as he is forced to think of the terrible suffering endured in this place, and of the sorrow and tears there will be among the mountains of the North and the rice-fields of the far-off South.

We were quiet, I remember, very quiet, as we marched off that great field; and not only then, but for days afterwards, as we tramped through the pleasant fields of Maryland. We had little to say, and we all were pretty busily thinking. Where were the boys who, but a week before, had marched with us through those same fragrant fields, blithe as a sunshiny morn in May? And so, as I have told you, when those young ladies and gentlemen came out to the end of that Maryland village to meet and cheer us after the battle, as they had met and cheered us before it, we did not know how heavy-hearted we were until, in response to their song of "Rally round the Flag, Boys!" some one proposed three cheers for them. But the cheers would not come. Somehow, after the first hurrah, the other two stuck in our throats or died away soundless on the air. And so we only said: "God bless you, young friends; but we can't cheer to-day, you see!"