July 11, 1863. |
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| A Monument.5 |
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the writer visited the battle-ground at Gettysburg a week after the conflict, and again in the autumn of 1866, each time with traveling companions already mentioned in these pages.
On the First occasion we encountered many difficulties after leaving Philadelphia, First in trying unsuccessfully to reach Gettysburg by way of Harrisburg, and then by detention in Baltimore, the Northern Central railway being in the exclusive service of the Government for some days after the battle.
Having “friends at court,” we gained, through them, permission to take passage in a Government train, which we did at ten o'clock on a pleasant morning, in company with Mr. Barclay, the philanthropist spoken of,1 members, of both sexes, of the Sanitary and Christian Commissions,2 and friends of slain and badly wounded soldiers.
on leaving Baltimore, we saw the evidences of the hasty preparations to repel the invaders;3 and on the way to Hanover junction we passed several of the block-houses constructed for the defense of the bridges on the railway.4 we dined at the junction, where lay the charred remains of a train of cars, destroyed by the invaders, and toward evening arrived at Hanover.
There we tarried an hour, and the writer visited the scene of the cavalry fight on the 29th of June, and made the sketch on page 58. we reached Gettysburg at eight o'clock in the evening, and gladly accepted the kind hospitality of the family of a leading citizen (David M. McConaughy), whose services before the battle, in imparting information, were acknowledged by General Meade.
He, like all other patriotic citizens of Gettysburg, had opened his house to the strangers who thronged the town; and on the following morning
he kindly accompanied us to the important points on the battle-field, of whose scenes he had been an eye and ear-witness.
With him, in his light carriage, the writer was privileged to spend the entire day in an inspection of the theater of the drama chiefly within the National lines.
We rode out on the Bounaughtown road, across Rock Creek, to the heights on which Ewell's guns were planted; and along a by-road we went down by the base of Wolf Hill, recrossed the Creek where the southern slopes of Culp's Hill touch it, and there began to see the evidences of the struggle of Slocum's corps with the foe on the right of the National line.
Unexploded conical shells were half-buried in the oak-trees, whose branches were cut and bruised by others; and the trunks of nearly all were scarred so thickly with bullet-marks for ten or fifteen feet from the ground, that
scarcely an inch together of the untouched bark remained.
Over the rocky slope of Culp's Hill, up which the Confederates
1 see note 3, page 49.
2 the blessed labors of the Sanitary and Christian Commissions everywhere, will be hereafter mentioned. We found the members of each in full force, when we were at Gettysburg, with supplies of every kind needful for the suffering bodies and minds of the soldiers. The Christian Commission distributed about a thousand boxes of stores and publications at Gettysburg. The Sanitary Commission was equally active there.
3 see page 55.
4 see page 55.
5 this is a sketch of one of the monuments mentioned in the text. It was a rough piece of a sapling, with a figure 3 on a smooth spot, which referred to a registry made, that would indicate the number of bodies buried there. Great care was taken by the Unionists to have every one of the four thousand dead bodies found on the field, buried, and the places of burial indicated.
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