The Annals of the Civil War Written by Leading Participants North and South
Alexander Kelly McClure, Ed.

[261] even an orderly. His face was toward the house and the ridge. He pointed to the stone wall. “One minute more,” he said, “and we should have been over it.” He did not reflect that that would have been but the beginning of the work given him to do. He praised and blamed, besought and even swore; to be so near the goal, and not to reach it. When he saw a party of three or four descending the hill, he ordered them to stop, in order to renew the attack. After little they did what was right, quietly proceeded to the foot of the hill and joined their regiments. All the while stretcher-bearers were passing up and down. Descending, they bore pitiable burdens. A wounded man, upheld by one or two comrades, haltingly made his slow way to the hospital, followed by another and another. The colonel was conveyed by four men to the town, in agony, on . portion of a panel of fence torn down in the progress of the charge. The stretcher-bearers, not distinguishing between persons, had taken whatsoever one they first saw that needed their assistance; moreover, there was no time for selection. The next minute all the wounded on the hillside might be in the hands of the Confederates.

There was the darkness which belongs to night. The regiments had re-formed around their respective standards. They presented a short front compared with the long lines that had gone up the steep, hurrahing. The Southerners were quiet and close behind their works. It seemed that they would not sally forth. Then from each regiment a lieutenant, with a small party, went up the ascent, and sought in the darkness what fate had befallen the missing, and brought succor to the wounded. They went from man to man, as they lay on the ground. In the obscurity it was hard to distinguish the features of the slain. They felt for the letters and numbers on the caps. The letters indicated the company, the numbers denoted the regiment. Whatsoever man of their regiment they discovered, him they bore off, if wounded; if dead, they took the valuables and mementos found on his person, for his friends, and left him to lie on the earth where he had fallen, composing his limbs, turning his face to the sky. They found such all the way up; some not far from the stone wall, a greater number near the corners of the house, where the rain of bullets had been thickest.

At nine o'clock at night, the command was withdrawn from the front, and rested on their arms in the streets of the town. Some sat on the curbstones, meditating, looking gloomily at the ground; others lay on the pavement, trying to forget the events of the day in sleep. There was little said; deep dejection burdened the spirits of all. The incidents of the battle were not rehearsed, except now