Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment

[142] impassable marsh. Never did I see such objects,--some stripped to their shirts, some fully clothed, but all having every garment literally pasted to their bodies with mud. Across the river, the Rebels were retiring, having done their work, but were still shelling, from greater and greater distances, the wood through which I rode. Arrived at the spot nearest the wreck (a point opposite to what we called the Brickyard Station), I saw the burning vessel aground beyond a long stretch of marsh, out of which the forlorn creatures were still floundering. Here and there in the mud and reeds we could see the laboring heads, slowly advancing, and could hear excruciating cries from wounded men in the more distant depths. It was the strangest mixture of war and Dante and Robinson Crusoe. Our energetic chaplain coming up, I sent him with four men, under a flag of truce, to the place whence the worst cries proceeded, while r went to another part of the marsh. During that morning we got them all out, our last achievement being the rescue of the pilot, an immense negro with a wooden leg,--an article so particularly unavailable for mud travelling, that it would have almost seemed better, as one of the men suggested, to cut the traces, and leave it behind.

A naval gunboat, too, which had originally accompanied this vessel, and should never have left it, now came back and took off the survivors, though there had been several deaths from scalding and shell. It proved that the wreck was not aground after all, but at anchor, having foolishly lingered till after daybreak, and having thus given time for the enemy to bring down their guns. The first shot had struck the boiler, and set the vessel on fire; after which the officer in command had raised a white flag, and then escaped with his men to our shore;