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[70]

Chapter 4: Ringgold.

The hospitals established at Ringgold, Georgia, early in the fall of 1862, received the wounded and the not less serious cases of typhoid fever, typhoid pneumonia, dysentery, and scurvy resulting from almost unparalleled fatigue, exposure, and every kind of hardship incident to Bragg's retreat from Kentucky. These sick Linen were no shirkers, but soldiers brave and true, who, knowing their duty, had performed it faithfully, until little remained to them but the patriot hearts beating almost too feebly to keep soul and body together. The court-house, one church, warehouses, stores, and hotels were converted into hospitals. Row after row of beds filled every ward. Upon them lay wrecks of humanity. pale as the dead, with sunken eyes, hollow cheeks and temples, long, claw-like hands. Oh, those poor, weak, nerveless hands used to seem to me more pitiful than all; and when I remembered all they had achieved and how they had lost their firm, sinewy proportions, their strong grasp, my heart swelled with pity and with passionate devotion. Often I felt as if I could have held these cold hands to my heart for warmth, and given of my own warm blood to fill those flaccid veins.

Every train brought in squads of just such poor fellows as I have tried to describe. How well I remember them toiling painfully from the depot to report at the surgeon's office, then, after being relieved of their accoutrements, tottering with trembling limbs to the beds from which, perhaps, they would never more arise. This hospital-post, as nearly as I remember, comprised

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