Rebellion Record: a Diary of American Events: Documents and Narratives, Volume 5.
Frank Moore, Ed.

[413] you instructed me to turn over to the rebels, I had the good fortune to bring home through their lines.) The public mind may congratulate itself, or not, as is its mood, that the two officers, who, like Caesar, could win battles, and with equal elegance describe them for history, no longer crowd each other in the narrow limits of a camp of prisoners, for the writer no longer rejoices in the title, or the style of Lieutenant-Colonel. The Department, strangely, left a loop open whereat an escape was made possible from about twenty-four hundred a year, and from the service wherein paroled men are treated something like common felons. Moral.--Having something else to do, and not being an adventurer, the release is, to the individual interested, a subject of felicitation. Though, had the regiment remained in the service, this withdrawal would not have happened.

There is one paragraph in your account which, although mentioned before, I cannot admire enough. It is suggestive. It is pregnant with hidden meaning that none but the men of the regiment understand. At the risk of being thought prolix, it is worthy of reproduction in this place:

Seeing that it would be reckless and useless to continue our assault upon the battery, I ordered the regiment to halt and fall back, which they did for a time in good order, losing, however, in addition to our killed and wounded, one hundred and sixty men, and a large number of officers captured at this point.

Names of men in the list immortal, which shall still live in the memory of the few brave men who rallied for the enemy's first onset; how were expletives invoked and adjurations employed by you when witnessing the flight of your commander before the regiment was under fire of musketry, or had fired a gun. Witness, ye six captains and six lieutenants, who scorned to fly with or without orders, though well knowing the penalty would be no mention of name or act other than the brief allusion above written; how it is possible for man to be so heartless as to merely say, “losing at this point, however, (however what?) in addition to our killed and wounded, one hundred and sixty men, and a large number of officers,” etc.

He rides a race, he carries weight, etc.

The Colonel forgets his vocation. The report is evidently considered from a surgical Bull Run stand-point. He has reverted, instinctively, to old professional habits. The preservation of human life was apparently uppermost in his thoughts. In witness whereof, his report says: “We continued falling back for about one and a half miles.” This is not doubted; but at the same time a few thousand Indiana and two hundred Ninety-fifth men were hidden from his view in an encircling storm of cannon-shot and musketry.

Sanitary conditions considered, the point selected for that battle-field was not very salubrious. The Colonel was right. Projectiles were numerous, and the list shows great casualties. If he is as rapid in noting premonitions of danger in the present encampment as he was in the famous retrograde movement on the battery, he will discover, by the diagnosis, that the atmosphere in that vicinage is breathed by too many of the ill-fated Ninety-fifth men to make respiration pleasant.

The Colonel's ill-starred anxiety for distinction, which caused him to importune the authorities for leave to take his regiment to the field; the same manifestation at Lexington, Kentucky, resulting in Gen. Wallace's order to move forward to meet the enemy at Richmond, when not one half the men knew their field-officers, and company-officers hardly knew each other by sight, and the regiment had never had battalion drill; the inhumanity to the sick — the brutality to the well — such as knocking men down with his fist, striking them with his sword, drawing pistols on them, and coming it à la Nelson over them generally, winding up by arresting the whole Quartermaster's Department at once; and, the morning of the battle, putting the officer of the day and other officers under arrest — for these, and other reasons, to be held in general execration, his men are utterly demoralized, and lost to the service, under his command. Then to print a report not required by the regulations, (and if he could have given correctly three words of command, consecutively, would have known it;) in which injustice is done to men and officers through petty feelings of envy: all these matters conspire to bring forth a reply which shall truly represent sentiments, nearly unanimous, prevailing in the regiment, and to do the regiment the justice which can alone be done by a court-martial or by this publication. The writer has sought to do it without fear or favor, for he has weighed the consequences and will abide by them for the sake of all those men, from whom he now parts with regret, who, whether officers or soldiers, fighting in the first battle or through them all, whether carrying swords or muskets, in all our intercourse never once forgot that they were gentlemen, ever.

The first brigade of the army of Kentucky, to which the Sixty-ninth Indiana belonged, was ordered from their camp, about two miles beyond Richmond, about two o'clock P. M., August twenty-ninth, to meet the rebels, who were reported in great force near Rogersville, four miles from camp. After forming in line of battle in sight of the enemy, after a slight skirmish they disappeared. We followed them, and lay on our arms at Rogersville until morning. Orders for a forward movement were given at five o'clock A. M. The Sixteenth Indiana in advance, then the batteries, after which came the Sixty-ninth. About