The Days of a Man C1912 



ing hamlet of Sunlight some of the fiercest fighting 

 of the Civil War took place when in 1864 General 

 Grant attempted to force his way to Richmond, 

 after Hooker had failed at Chancellorsville. 

 '^^' McCool's fine clear Spring stands near the noted 



1°;? " Bloody Angle " in the " Poisoned Woods. " Accord- 

 ing to our guide, once when a number of Union 

 soldiers were eating supper by the spring, a group of 

 starved Southerners attacked and drove them off, 

 to be themselves driven back in turn. Meanwhile, 

 however, slaughter was temporarily interrupted. 

 Two Northern men had been hiding behind a log at 

 which the Southerners directed their fire; one having 

 pushed his companion out into the open, the two 

 rose and began to fight. The soldiers on both sides 

 then ceased firing and made a ring about the combat- 

 ants, forgetting everything else for the time being. 

 In the savage onslaught at the "Bloody Angle" only 

 100 out of 592 men of the 15th New Jersey escaped 

 unscathed. 

 Seven After the battle of Spottsylvania Court House a 



miles 0] -11 r 1 1 i 



wounded scven-mile column or ambulances, wagons, and 

 wounded on foot passed down to Fredericksburg. 



This tragic procession conveyed over 7000 maimed and 

 suffering men. What an argument for peace would be a moving 

 picture of the column as it dragged along the Fredericksburg 

 pike that day! If the reader turns to the surgical records he 

 goes back to a distant age, and might imagine himself reading of 

 the surgery of the early Egyptians.^ 



The citizens tell many stories of heart-breaking 

 experiences. The whole town became an operating 

 shambles, for the art of surgery was then in its in- 

 fancy, and every piano, table, bench, or place to lay 



' Captain Louis C. Duncan in "The Military Surgeon." 



c 430 :i 



