‘
[100]
I saw our dead indiscriminately thrown.
Two days afterwards a Rebel surgeon (Dr. Dawson, of Charleston, S. C., I think) told me that Hagood had carried out his threat.’
Assistant-Surgeon Luck's statement is, however, contradicted by
General Hagood; for having requested information upon the matter, the writer, in December, 1885, received from
Gen. Samuel Jones, of
Washington, a copy of a letter written by
Gen. Johnson Hagood to
Col. T. W. Higginson, of
Cambridge, Mass., dated Sept. 21, 1881.
General Hagood quotes from
Colonel Higginson's letter of inquiry relative to
Colonel Shaw's burial, the conversation which
Assistant-Surgeon Luck alleges to have had with him at Battery Wagner about the disposition of
Colonel Shaw's body, as set forth in the extract given from
Assistant-Surgeon Luck's letter, and then gives his (
General Hagood's) account of the meeting with
Assistant-Surgeon Luck as follows, the italics being those of the general:—
On the day after the night assault and while the burial parties of both sides were at work on the field, a chain of sentinels dividing them, a person was brought to me where I was engaged within the battery in repairing damages done to the work.
The guard said he had been found wandering within our lines, engaged apparently in nothing except making observations.
The man claimed to be a naval surgeon belonging to gunboat “Pawnee;” and after asking him some questions about the damages sustained by that vessel a few days before in the Stono River from an encounter with a field battery on its banks, I informed him that he would be sent up to Charleston for such disposition as General Beauregard deemed proper.
I do not recall the name of this person, and have not heard of him since, but he must be the Dr. Leech [Luck?] of whom you speak.
I
