I will never forget the scene that met my eyes as I neared the house where the wounded had been gathered.  There the torn and mangled lay, shot in every conceivable part of the body or limbs—­some with wounds in the head, arms torn off at the shoulder or elbow, legs broken, fingers, toes, or foot shot away; some hobbling along on inverted muskets or crutches, but the great mass were stretched at full length upon the ground, uttering low, deep, and piteous moans, that told of the great sufferings, or a life passing away.  The main hall of the deserted farm house, as well as the rooms, were filled to overflowing with those most seriously wounded.  The stifling stench of blood was sickening in the extreme.  The front and back yards, the fence corners, and even the out-buildings were filled with the dead and dying.  Surgeons and their assistants were hurrying to and fro, relieving the distress as far as their limited means would allow, making such hasty examinations as time permitted.  Here they would stop to probe a wound, there to set a broken limb, bind a wound, stop the flow of blood, or tie an artery.

But among all this deluge of blood, mangled bodies, and the groans of the wounded and dying, our ears were continually greeted by the awful, everlasting rattle of the musketry, the roar of the field batteries, and the booming, shaking, and trembling of the siege guns from friend and foe.

The peculiar odor of human blood, mingling with the settling smoke of the near by battlefield, became so oppressive I could not remain in the house.  My brother helped me into the yard, but in passing out I fell, fainting for the third time; my loss of blood had been so great I could stand only with difficulty.  I thought the end was near now for a certainty, and was frightened accordingly.  But still I nerved myself with all the will power I possessed, and was placed on an oil cloth under the spreading branches of an elm.  From the front a continual stream of wounded kept coming in till late at night.  Some were carried on shoulders of friends, others leaning their weight upon them and dragging their bodies along, while the slightly wounded were left to care for themselves.  Oh, the horrors of the battlefield!  So cruel, so sickening, so heart-rending to those even of the stoutest nerves!—­once seen, is indelibly impressed upon your mind forever.

The firing ceased about 9 o’clock, and all became still as death, save the groaning of the wounded soldiers in the hospital, or the calls and cries of those left upon the battlefield.  Oh, such a night, the night after the battle!  The very remembrance of it is a vivid picture of Dante’s “Inferno.”  To lie during the long and anxious watches of the night, surrounded by such scenes of suffering and woe, to continually hear the groans of the wounded, the whispered consultations of the surgeons over the case of some poor boy who was soon to be robbed of a leg or arm, the air filled with stifled groans, or the wild shout of some poor soldier, who, now delirious with pain, his voice sounding like the wail of a lost soul—­all this, and more—­and thinking your soul, too, is about to shake off its mortal coil and take its flight with the thousands that have just gone, are going, and the many more to follow before the rising of the next sun—­all this is too much for a feeble pen like mine to portray.