We have seen them in trench, or crouching
behind breastwork, or tramping in deep mud, or amid pouring rain or
thick-falling snow, or under forced marches in hottest summer (as on
the road to get to Gettysburg)--vast suffocating swarms, divisions,
corps, with every single man so grimed and black with sweat and dust,
his own mother would not have known him--his clothes all dirty,
stain'd and torn, with sour, accumulated sweat for perfume--many a
comrade, perhaps a brother, sun-struck, staggering out, dying, by
the roadside, of exhaustion--yet the great bulk bearing steadily
on, cheery enough, hollow-bellied from hunger, but sinewy with
unconquerable resolution.
We have seen this race proved by wholesale by drearier, yet more
fearful tests--the wound, the amputation, the shatter'd face or limb,
the slow hot fever, long impatient anchorage in bed, and all the forms
of maiming, operation and disease. Alas! America have we seen, though
only in her early youth, already to hospital brought. There have we
watch'd these soldiers, many of them only boys in years--mark'd
their decorum, their religious nature and fortitude, and their sweet
affection. Wholesale, truly. For at the front, and through the camps,
in countless tents, stood the regimental, brigade and division
hospitals; while everywhere amid the land, in or near cities, rose
clusters of huge, white-wash'd, crowded, one-story wooden barracks;
and there ruled agony with bitter scourge, yet seldom brought a cry;
and there stalk'd death by day and night along the narrow aisles
between the rows of cots, or by the blankets on the ground, and
touch'd lightly many a poor sufferer, often with blessed, welcome
touch.
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