‘ [185] off before morning, and we were sure of being shelled out by daylight. Dr. H. [Dr. Hayward of the Twentieth Massachusetts Volunteers] and I decided to remain and be taken, and get off what men we could.’ This calamity was fortunately averted. At Yorktown, the next summer, he put his principle of conduct into literal application, in coolly taking his seat on a log a few feet in the rear of his regiment, one day when it was supporting a battery, equally regardless of the shells of the enemy and the solicitations of his brother surgeons, who besought him to fall back with them but a few rods to a place of security. At Fair Oaks he bore himself with distinguished intrepidity, attending to his surgical duties in the very midst of the conflict, while wounded and unwounded men, with whom he was conversing, were shot dead at his feet. His personal experiences on that eventful day, did space permit the detailing of them, would be highly interesting, though in his letter to his father he says, with characteristic shyness, they ‘concern nobody but you and me.’ From Harrison's Landing, under date of July 13, 1862, he writes:—
I am surprised to hear from you, that my name has been mentioned in connection with the Thirty-fourth [a new regiment then forming]. I am obliged to my friends that may have suggested it; but I really do not wish to leave the Fifteenth. There is already evidence of too much desire on the part of officers to get leave of absence for the sake of procuring higher appointments in new regiments.He was soon after rewarded for his constancy by being promoted to the surgeonship of his own regiment, on the resignation of Dr. Bates. His personal adventures at Antietam cannot be made more interesting than in his own words, under date of September 24, 1862:—
As our brigade advanced in line of battle, under fire from the Rebel batteries, General Gorman (why I know not) ordered me to
