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It will be recollected that, from Piney Branch church, the trains, with the wounded from the Wilderness, were sent to Fredericksburgh.
Major Dudley, of the Fifth Vermont, after suffering untold agony for many days, finally yielded, and died in the embraces of his youthful wife, who had arrived in Fredericksburgh just in time to be present during his last hours. The major had gone into the fight sick with a fever, but his determined bravery forbade him to remain quiet.
"I was ordered to form three regiments as the advance of a column of assault against the heights of Marye's Hill, back of Fredericksburgh. I led the Thirty-third New York, Twenty-first New Jersey and Seventh Maine Volunteers, preceded by the Seventy-seventh New York, who were acting as skirmishers, under a heavy fire of shot and shell." Neill's Report.
Both fell together mortally wounded. Harlowe died almost instantly. The rebels were driven out in a very short time. He was in the Seven Days fight before Richmond, in second Bull Run, Antietam, first Fredericksburgh, Vicksburgh, Jackson, Wilderness, and the campaigns following was as good a soldier as ever wore the blue, and every old officer in the regiment will bear that testimony.
In the noble letter to General Halleck, in which he assumed all the responsibility for the failure at Fredericksburgh, they found renewed assurance that he had all the qualities of a true soldier bravery, integrity and true manhood; but an army must have success, or it cannot long repose confidence in the general.
I trust we have not yet come to that pass of national degradation, that a jury of Irishmen can be found so forgetful of their country's dignity and of their own as to brand with a mark of infamy a colour which is associated with so many recollections, not of party triumphs, but of national glories not with any sect, or creed, or party, but with a nation and a race whose children, whether they were the exiled soldiers of a foreign state, or the soldiers of Great Britain whether at Fontenoy or on the plains of Waterloo, or on the heights of Fredericksburgh, have nobly vindicated the chivalry and fame of Ireland!
In the meantime, the long line of rifled cannon which surmounted Stafford Heights, on the north side of the river, as at the first battle of Fredericksburgh, were throwing huge shells across the wide valley and stream into the works of the enemy. One or two field batteries near the head of our own column, and some attached to the other divisions, got into position and opened a fierce cannonade.
Akin the promise was made that if he would supply a building for a station the road would place an eating house at the point nearest Quaker Hill. There was then no such village or hamlet as Pawling, the locality being known as "Goosetown." Patterson was an old village, west of its present business center one mile, and was known as Fredericksburgh.
When we thought of the noble Wheeler and his brave companions, who had given their lives for their country on yonder heights, and then turned to the sickening scene before us, we could but exclaim, "How are the dead to be envied!" At length, on Saturday night, June 13th, we withdrew from Fredericksburgh, and commenced the memorable Pennsylvania campaign.
The following extract from a letter of a surgeon at Fredericksburgh to his wife, written on the 11th, may convey something of an idea of the experience of the medical officers during those terrible days. He says: "We are almost worked to death; my feet are terribly swollen; yet we cannot rest for there are so many poor fellows who are suffering. All day yesterday I worked at the operating table.
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