Democratic Sentinel, Volume 1, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 August 1877 — A Ghastly Picket Line. [ARTICLE]

A Ghastly Picket Line.

Judge Rowe, writing in the Philadelphia IPecAZy Tinies, relates the following incident of the night after the battle of Fredericksburg: “When, on the return to Marye’s Heights, the command first filed in from the road, there appeared to be a thin line of soldiers sleeping op. the ground to be occupied. They seemed to make a sort of row or rank. It was as if a line of skirmishers had halted and lain down; they were perfectly motionless; their sleep was profound. Not one of them awoke and got up. They were not relieved, either, wlien the others came. They seemed to have no commander—at least none awake. Had the fatigues of the day completely overpowered all of them, officers and privates alike? They were nearest the enemy, xv ith in call of him. They were the advance line of the Union army. Was it thus that they kept their watch, on which the safety of the whole army depended, pent up between the ridge ami the river ? The enemy might come within ton steps of them xVithbnt being seen. The fog was a veil. No one knew what lay or moved or crept a little distance off. The regiments were allowed to lie down. In doing so, the men made a denser rank with those there before them. Still those others did not waken. If you looketl closely at the face of any one. of them, in the mist and dimness, it was pallid, the eyes closed, the mouth open, the hair was disheveled, besides the attitude was often painful. There were blood marks also. These men were all dead. Nevertheless, the new-comers lay down among them ami rested. The pall of night concealed the foe now. The somber uncertainty of fate enveloped the morrow. One was saved from the peril of the charge, but he found himself again on Marye’s hill, near the enemy, face to face with the dead, sharing their couch, almost in their embrace, in the mist and the December night. Why not accept them as bedfellows ? So they lay down with the dead, all in hue, and were lulleil asleep by the monotony of the cries of the wounded scattered everywhere.”