In our first general advance in the morning, as the regiment reached the brow of the hill, just before striking the enemy’s breastworks, my company and the other color company, being crowded together by the pressure of the flanks on either side, became for the moment a tangled, disorganized mass.  A sudden discharge of grape from the enemy’s batteries, as well as from their sharpshooters posted behind trees, threw us in greater confusion, and many men were shot down unexpectedly.  A Sergeant in my company, T.C.  Nunnamaker, received a fearful wound in the abdomen.  Catching my hand while falling, he begged to be carried off.  “Oh! for God’s sake, don’t leave me here to bleed to death or have my life trampled out!  Do have me carried off!” But the laws of war are inexorable, and none could leave the ranks to care for the wounded, and those whose duty it was to attend to such matters were unfortunately too often far in the rear, seeking places of safety for themselves, to give much thought or concern to the bleeding soldiers.  Before our lines were properly adjusted, the gallant Sergeant was beyond the aid of anyone.  He had died from internal hemorrhage.  The searchers of the battlefield, those gatherers of the wounded and dead, witness many novel and pathetic scenes.

Louis Spillers, a private in my company, a poor, quiet, and unassuming fellow, who had left a wife and little children at home when he donned the uniform of gray, had his thigh broken, just to the left of where the Sergeant fell.  Spillers was as “brave as the bravest,” and made no noise when he received the fatal wound.  As the command swept forward down the little dell, he was of course left behind.  Dragging himself along to the shade of a small tree, he sought shelter behind its trunk, protecting his person as well as he could from the bullets of the enemy posted on the ridge in front, and waited developments.  When the litter-bearers found him late at night, he was leaning against the tree, calmly puffing away at his clay pipe.  When asked why he did not call for assistance, he replied:  “Oh, no; I thought my turn would come after awhile to be cared for, so I just concluded to quietly wait and try and smoke away some of my misery.”  Before morning he was dead.  One might ask the question.  What did such men of the South have to fight for—­no negroes, no property, not even a home that they could call their own?  What was it that caused them to make such sacrifices—­to even give their lives to the cause?  It was a principle, and as dear to the poorest of the poor as to him who counted his broad acres by the thousands and his slaves by the hundreds.  Of such mettle were made the soldiers of the South—­unyielding, unconquerable, invincible!