In the sick camp there lay over two hundred sick and wounded men, faithfully attended and prescribed for by the physicians, but lacking every comfort. Dr. Beatty was worried about the sick, but under the circumstances what could he do? Soon after occurred the terrible battle of Franklin, when our tents were again filled with wounded men. These men were unlike any I have ever nursed. Their shattered forms sufficiently attested courage and devotion to duty, but the enthusiasm and pride which had hitherto seemed to me so grand and noble when lighting up the tortured faces of wounded soldiers, appearing like a reflection of great glory, I now missed. It seemed as if they were yet revengeful and unsatisfied; their countenances not yet relaxed from the tension of the fierce struggle, their eyes yet gleaming with the fires of battle. The tales they told made me shudder: Of men, maddened by the horrible butchery going on around them, mounting the horrible barricade (trampling out in many instances the little sparks of life which might have been rekindled), only to add their own bodies to the horrid pile, and to be trampled in their turn by comrades who sought to avenge them; of soldiers on both sides, grappling hand to hand, tearing open each other's wound, drenched with each other's blood, _dying_ locked in a fierce embrace. It turns me sick even now when I remember the terrible things I then heard, the awful wounds I then saw. During the whole period of my service, I never had a harder task than when striving to pour oil upon these troubled waters, to soothe and reconcile these men who talked incessantly of "sacrifice" and useless butchery. This was particularly the case with General Clebourne's men, who so loved their gallant leader that, at his death, revenge had almost replaced patriotism in their hearts.
I do not consider myself competent, nor do I wish to criticise the generals who led our armies and who, since the war, have, with few exceptions, labored assiduously to throw the blame of failure upon each other. I have read their books with feelings of intense sorrow and regret,--looking for a reproduction of the glories of the past,--finding whole pages of recrimination and full of "all uncharitableness." For my own part, I retain an unchanged, unchangeable respect and reverence for all alike, _believing each to have been a pure and honest patriot, who, try as he might, could not surmount the difficulties which each one in turn encountered_.