L. P. Brockett, The camp, the battlefield, and the hospital: or, lights and shadows of the great rebellion

But I can render you no idea of the battle caldron that boiled on the plateau. An incident here and there I have given you, and you must fill out the picture for yourself. Dead rebels lay thick around Bragg's headquarters and along the Ridge. Scabbards, broken alms, artillery horses, wrecks of gun-carriages, and bloody garments, strewed the scene; and, tread lightly, oh! loyal-hearted, the boys in blue are lying there; no more the sounding charge, no more the brave, wild cheer, and never for them, sweet as the breath of the new-mown hay in the old home fields, “The soldier's return from the war.” A little waif of a drummer-boy, somehow drifted up the mountain in the surge, lies there; his pale face upward, a blue spot on his breast. Muffle his drum for the poor child and his mother.

Our troops met one loyal welcome on the height. How the old Tennessean that gave it managed to get there nobody knows, but there he was, grasping a colonel's hand, and saying, while tears ran down his face “God be thanked! I knew the Yankees would fight!” With the receding flight and swift pursuit the battle died away in murmurs, far down the valley of the Chickamauga; Sheridan was again in the saddle, and with his command spurring on after the enemy. Tall columns of smoke were rising at the left. The rebels were burning a train of stores a mile long. In the exploding rebel caissons we had “the cloud by day,” and now we are having “the pillar of fire by night.” The sun, the golden dish of the scales that balance day and night, had hardly gone down, when up, beyond Mission Ridge, rose the silver side, for that night it was full moon. The troubled day was done. A Federal general