Then the camps of the wounded--O heavens, what scene is this?--is this indeed _humanity_--these butchers' shambles? There are several of them. There they lie, in the largest, in an open space in the woods, from 200 to 300 poor fellows--the groans and screams--the odor of blood, mixed with the fresh scent of the night, the grass, the trees--that slaughter-house! O well is it their mothers, their sisters cannot see them--cannot conceive, and never conceiv'd, these things. One man is shot by a shell, both in the arm and leg--both are amputated--there lie the rejected members. Some have their legs blown off--some bullets through the breast--some indescribably horrid wounds in the face or head, all mutilated, sickening, torn, gouged out--some in the abdomen--some mere boys--many rebels, badly hurt--they take their regular turns with the rest, just the same as any--the surgeons use them just the same. Such is the camp of the wounded--such a fragment, a reflection afar off of the bloody scene--while all over the clear, large moon comes out at times softly, quietly shining. Amid the woods, that scene of flitting souls--amid the crack and crash and yelling sounds--the impalpable perfume of the woods--and yet the pungent, stifling smoke--the radiance of the moon, looking from heaven at intervals so placid--the sky so heavenly the clear-obscure up there, those buoyant upper oceans--a few large placid stars beyond, coming silently and languidly out, and then disappearing--the melancholy, draperied night above, around. And there, upon the roads, the fields, and in those woods, that contest, never one more desperate in any age or land--both parties now in force--masses--no fancy battle, no semi-play, but fierce and savage demons fighting there--courage and scorn of death the rule, exceptions almost none.
What history, I say, can ever give--for who can know--the mad, determin'd tussle of the armies, in all their separate large and little squads--as this--each steep'd from crown to toe in desperate, mortal purports? Who know the conflict, hand-to-hand--the many conflicts in the dark, those shadowy-tangled, flashing moonbeam'd woods--the writhing groups and squads--the cries, the din, the cracking guns and pistols--the distant cannon--the cheers and calls and threats and awful music of the oaths--the indescribable mix--the officers' orders, persuasions, encouragements--the devils fully rous'd in human hearts--the strong shout, _Charge, men, charge_--the flash of the naked sword, and rolling flame and smoke? And still the broken, clear and clouded heaven--and still again the moonlight pouring silvery soft its radiant patches over all. Who paint the scene, the sudden partial panic of the afternoon, at dusk? Who paint the irrepressible advance of the second division of the Third corps, under Hooker himself, suddenly order'd up--those rapid-filing phantoms through the woods? Who show what moves there in the shadows, fluid and firm--to save, (and it did save,) the army's name, perhaps the nation? as there the veterans hold the field. (Brave Berry falls not yet--but death has mark'd him--soon he falls.)