Impressions of Gettysburg.
[The following description of a battle-field is taken from the correspondence of the "American Messenger," and presents to the reader a picture of some of the terrible scenes incident to war. G. W. A.] After spending some days in Gettysburg and the hospitals around it, during the week following the great battle which occurred the first three days of July, I wish to put upon record some thoughts which were deeply impressed upon me there. The awfulness of war, in its attendants and results, is beyond description. The most vivid imagination in its picturings comes short of the reality, and words seem feeble to convey any adequate conception of the facts. Here lies before you a field of battle, six or seven miles in length and from two to three in breadth, over which 140,000 men had for three days been engaged in deadly conflict, surging backward and forward as victory perched upon this or that banner. The ground is furrowed with ploughing balls, and strewed with tons of metal thrown from hundreds of cannons; the trees are denuded of their limbs, and their trunks starred all over with bullet marks; the surface of the battle-field is covered with slain horses, in many places more thickly strewn than are shocks of wheat in the newly reaped harvest-field; graves of men isolated or in groups meet the eye every few rods for miles upon miles; while here and there lie, now a week after the battle, some bodies unburied and fast decaying. Broken gun-carriages, muskets by the thousand, blankets, haversacks, caps—every thing belonging to an army, are strewed over the whole area traversed by the contending hosts. And this is but the outside view. Go into the hospitals. They are the most populous places about the city. The theological seminary, the college, the courthouse, the churches, the public halls in the city, the large farm-houses and capacious barns surrounding Gettysburg, are full of wounded and dying men; and the groves in the rear of the Federal battle-field are filled with men lying upon the ground without even the shelter of a tent. Ten thousand wounded men are yet here, it is said, groaning under the agony of ghastly wounds, and some of them deadly wounds, away from friends and home comforts; many of them will die for want of the medical and nursing care which a good home would afford. The surgeons' operating-tables are in full view, and human limbs are lying about them, so that you can scarce pass near without stepping upon them. J. M. S.