A Glimpse of War's Hell-Scenes

"The Harvest of Death, Gettysburg, July, 1863" - photo by Timothy H. O'Sullivan

creative non-fiction
by Walt Whitman

This is excerpted from Memoranda During the War, written in 1864

In one of the late movements of our troops in the valley, a strong force of Moseby's mounted guerillas attacked a train of wounded and the guard of cavalry convoying them. The ambulances contained about 60 wounded, quite a number of them officers of rank. The rebels were in strength, and the capture of the train and its partial guard after a short snap was effectually accomplished. No sooner had our men surrendered, the rebels instantly commenced robbing the train and murdering their prisoners, even the wounded. Among the wounded officers in the ambulances were a lieutenant of regulars, and another of higher rank. These two were dragged out on the ground on their backs, and were now surrounded by the guerillas, a demoniac crowd, each member of which was stabbing them in different parts of their bodies. One of the officers had his feet pinned firmly to the ground by bayonets stuck through them and thrust into the ground. These two officers, as afterwards found on examination, had received about twenty such thrusts, some of them through the mouth, face, etc. The wounded had all been dragged out of their wagons; some had been effectually dispatched, and their bodies were lying there lifeless and bloody. Others, not yet dead, but horribly mutilated, were moaning or groaning. Of our men who surrendered, most had been thus maimed or slaughtered.

At this instant a force of our cavalry, who had been following the train at some interval, charged suddenly upon the secesh captors, who proceeded at once to make the best escape they could. Most got away, but we gobbled two officers and seventeen men, in the very acts just described. The sight was one which admitted of little discussion. The seventeen captured men and two officers were put under guard for the night, but it was decided there and then that they should die. The next morning the two officers were taken in the town, separate places, put in the center of the street, and shot. The seventeen men were placed in a hollow square, half-encompassed by two of our cavalry regiments, one of which regiments had three days before found the bloody corpses of three of their men hamstrung and hung up by the heels to limbs of trees by Moseby's guerillas, and the other had not long before had twelve men, after surrendering, shot and then hung by the neck to limbs of trees, and jeering inscriptions pinned to the breast of one of the corpses, who had been a sergeant. Those three, and those twelve, had been found, I say, by these environing regiments. Now, with revolvers, they formed the grim cordon of the seventeen prisoners. The latter were placed in the midst of the square, unfastened, and the ironical remark made to them that they were now to be given "a chance for themselves." A few ran for it. But what use? From every side the deadly pills came. In a few minutes the seventeen corpses strewed the hollow square. I was curious to know whether some of the Union soldiers, some few, (some one or two at least of the youngsters) did not abstain from shooting on the helpless men. Not one. There was no exultation, very little said, almost nothing, yet every man there contributed his shot.

Multiply the above by scores, aye hundreds--verify it in all the forms that different circumstances, individuals, places, could afford--light it with every lurid passion, the wolf's, the lion's lapping thirst for blood--the passionate, boiling volcanoes of human revenge for comrades, brothers slain--with the light of burning farms, and heaps of smutting, smoldering black embers--and in the human heart everywhere black, worse embers--and you have an inkling of this war.

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Walter Whitman Jr. (1819 – 1892) was an American poet, essayist, journalist, and novelist. He is considered one of the most influential poets in American and world literature. During the Civil War, he volunteered as a nurse in army hospitals.