1912] Aftermath of the Wilderness 



planks was demanded for the thousands of wounded. 

 This continued for days as they straggled in from the 

 Court House, twelve miles away, until people became <jfhorror 

 callous to pain and death. "Women even forgot 

 whether their own children were alive or dead!" 



From a private letter of George W. Stone, mayor 

 of Santa Cruz, a chaplain in the United States Army 

 stationed at Fortress Monroe in 1864, I make the 

 following extracts: 



The battles of the Wilderness were the most horrible in every 

 respect of any that took place in the war. The public has never 

 known and never will know the full details of these bloody 

 battles. No person can adequately describe them. ... No 

 list of casualties can possibly include the sufferings of those who 

 participated in these dreadful conflicts. The very flower of the 

 nation, seasoned soldiers of both North and South, brave, 

 desperate, blood-mad, closed in a death grapple that only ended 

 when exhaustion of numbers and physical strength found their 

 limit. . . . 



Wounded men were brought down the Potomac in river 

 steamboats, which were held back in order to arrive under cover 

 of darkness to avoid the notice of newspaper men. From 

 Fortress Monroe they were transferred on flat cars to Camp 

 Hamilton, where the hospitals, under direction of the remarkably 

 able surgeon, Ely McClellan, were located. ... I shall 

 never forget the look on McClellan's face as I sat by his side one 

 evening not merely of exhaustion but of indescribable sadness. 

 I once saw the same look on the face of Abraham Lincoln at 

 four o'clock one morning as he was returning from the War 

 Department, where he had spent the night waiting for news 

 from the front. . . . 



McClellan said: "I must get away from the operating room. 

 I am sick of blood." In the camp chapel boards had been laid 

 across the backs of the pews, and the five surgeons stood around 

 those improvised tables with sleeves rolled up, covered with 

 blood, and worn to the point of falling through sheer exhaustion. 

 Scant examinations only could be made, and most of the men 

 died under the knife. 



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