The town of Gettysburg gave no evidence of having been the scene of any great struggle. No houses had been burned, no walls injured by artillery, not even windows broken. The high discipline of the Confederate Army is attested by this fact. They took bread and food from the inhabitants, but little else. I am sorry to say, that their army probably did less damage in Pennsylvania than ours has often done in Virginia; and the reason is, that a severe and rigid discipline has been enforced by the Confederate generals, which our generals have not been able to imitate. Theirs is a regular army: ours is one of volunteers. Inferior to ours in enthusiasm and intelligence, they are a better machine for fighting purposes. Any man who deserts or flinches is shot: but our good-hearted President allows no such severity among us; and so thousands of lives are lost by disastrous retreats and defeats, in order to save a few deserters from being punished. The awful nature of war requires that it be carried on as war, and not as peace.

So, I say, the little village of Gettysburg, containing between three and four thousand inhabitants, had not suffered severely from the thousands of shell and shot which had been fired directly over it from two hundred cannon in position. I walked up its streets, and saw its ladies sitting in their open doorways, talking, laughing, as though nothing had happened. And, indeed, some of them told me, that, on one of the three days, they did not know the battle was going on till it was over. All the churches of the place had been turned into hospitals. I went into one or two of them, seeking for the young lieutenant-colonel whom I had come to look after. The pews were floored over, and the men lay close together, with every variety of wounds, in the head, the body, the arms, the limbs; but they were all so patient and so quiet, that it touched one's heart to see them.

I found my lieutenant-colonel at last, after two or three hours' search among the ten thousand wounded in and around Gettysburg. He was a graduate of Harvard, 1862; and commanded a regiment of four hundred men in the first day's battle, when the First and Eleventh Army Corps held back, for four long hours, the whole of Lee's army.

This regiment, with two others, making twelve hundred in all, held back five thousand. They were shelled for an hour, and then were under a fire of musketry from the I whole five thousand for another hour. Most of the officers were hit, some of them two or three times. Of four hundred men belonging to this regiment, who went into the fight, a hundred and five only came out untouched. The young man of whom I write, the Harvard graduate, commanded his regiment through this fight, and was hit three times; the last time as he was standing in front of his line, waving his sword to encourage his men, when his sword dropped, and he found himself shot through the arm. He went back, tied up his arm himself, then selected an officer to take his place; and, not wishing to take a single man away from the fight, walked alone a mile and a half to the hospital, and reported himself to the surgeon, who amputated the arm. I mention this case, because I happen to know it, to illustrate the spirit in which our young soldiers go into the battle.

I walked up the road from the town, toward the cemetery. All along the way lay torn equipments, broken ramrods and guns and bayonets, cartridge-boxes and cartridges. Here lay in the road a dead horse. In a field, not far off, I saw what looked like a man. I went up, and found a man, in the rebel uniform, lying on his back, his face black as a coal, from exposure to the sun, his hand white, and held up toward me in an attitude which seemed to say, "Help me!" I went on, and came to another. He

was lying crouched together, his gun fallen under him. Some were shot through the head, others through the body. So I walked on, looking at one and another, each lying in a different attitude, each attitude seeming to show the last thought and feeling which was in the mind of the poor fellow as he died. To us, these men are only rebels; but each of them had a home, mother, wife, children. They look out of their cabin-window, like the mother of Sisera, and say, "When will he come back?" The little children say, "When will papa come back? and what will he bring me?" The mother says, "He has gone into Pennsylvania with Gen. Lee, and he will bring back something for us." "Have they not sped? have they not divided the prey?" Poor desolated homes, South as well as North! Long will they look, and look in vain, for the return of those, dear to them as ours to us, who lie undistinguished, cumbering the bloody field.

usual

I went into the Provost Marshal's room to ask my question; and, seeing a young man sitting by the window, said to him, "Is that the Provost Marshal?" He answered, "I don't know: I am a Confederate officer." He was one who had just come in and surrendered himself. I looked in his face: he was young and fair, and with a pleasant expression. "Well," said I, "I don't see that you rebels are so very different from us, after all." Still, there is this great difference: They fight for the South; we, for the nation. They fight for what they call independence: we fight for justice, humanity, and universal liberty against cruel oppression. Our officers and soldiers understand more and more that the conflict is between liberty and slavery, between civilization and barbarism, between Christianity and Antichrist. What else supports them all, and gives them so much patience and fortitude? It is the most marked and glorious feature of the war, this angelic

patience, this supreme peace of men who seem to have lost every thing that makes life worth having. I saw a man, whose eyes were shot out, who was as cheerful, and even merry, as a child. I saw men maimed and with broken constitutions, cruelly lacerated, cripples for life; but they all said, "No matter: we beat them." Some asked, “What do the people say at home about it? don't they think we've done a big thing?" One young man, who had lost a foot,

said, "I'd rather have lost the other than not have won the victory." When I opened the door of my nephew's room, I confess I trembled. I thought of that lost right arm, such a loss to a youth in the beginning of life. It seemed almost too hard. But when I saw him so cheerful and contented, and only wishing to get well that he might go back again to his place, with his sword in his left hand; when I saw them all so, and heard these young officers, shot through the back and shoulder and arms and both legs, talking about it as of some grand and glad experience through which they had safely come; when I saw them so modest and so manly, without any undue exultation, but with this earnest satisfaction in having done something really great, I shared their spirit, and could not grieve any more for their loss. I saw that each lost limb, each scar, each wound, was the cross of the Legion of Honor, to be worn always, as a proof that they had deserved well of their country, as a proof to themselves that they had not lived in vain. These young men, who, had there been no war, would many of them have passed inglorious lives for common objects, have risen to a point of great self-devotion, and are ennobled in soul and heart for ever; so that the old now look to the young for inspiration and consolation. We go to them for lessons of patience and of courage. We catch their nobler fire, and are comforted in their comfort, partaking of their enthusiasm for the good cause. "Out

of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast Thou ordained strength, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger."

This war has had one grand effect. It has brought all the best men and women of every section into intimate contact; giving them full knowledge of each other, and strong sympathy with each other. They fight side by side on the same battle-field; they lie side by side in the hospitals, men of Minnesota and of Maine, of Illinois and Massachusetts; women of New England in hospitals on the Mississippi, or teaching contrabands in Louisiana and South Carolina. This is what is to make the Union more solid and real than ever before. The war of the Revolution, in which men of all the States fought together, was the foundation of the present Union. It made the adoption of the Federal Constitution possible. The present war will make a better Union still. Never was New England so well known, and therefore so much loved and honored, as to-day. At Toledo and in Milwaukie, I lately talked with eminent men who had never seen New England, Western governors and Congress-men; and they spoke in terms of admiration of Massachusetts, stronger than I ever heard at home. In Baltimore, I found Massachusetts men on the staff of the commanding-general, Massachusetts men in other offices of importance, Massachusetts men in charge of hospitals, Massachusetts men in the Sanitary Commission. When I wanted a pass and transportation to Gettysburg, Massachusetts men were there ready to get it for me. When I wanted information

at head-quarters, or at the Medical Bureau, or at military offices in Philadelphia or Baltimore or Gettysburg, there was Massachusetts to help me. Everywhere I met Massachusetts. Massachusetts was on its way to the sick and wounded, in the form of men and women, going to nurse