"The Butcher" in those days. The
feeling of his army to him was widely different from our feeling for our
General.

All those dead soldiers along a line of five miles lay rotting on the
ground, until we had gone away, and the people of the country
neighborhood had to collect them from the fields, and thickets, and bury
them, for fear of pestilence. And when one remembers that from Thursday,
the 5th of May, to Thursday, the 12th of May, General Grant had lost
40,000 in killed and wounded, the dread sight of death and suffering we
looked upon, can be imagined! The thronging lines of unburied dead,--it
was a shocking and appalling spectacle!

But we could not just then, mind the sights we saw! We got our beef, all
the same! We were the first to get to that cow, and we had to take our
knives and cut through the skin, on the rump, and flay it up, and then
cut out hunks of the flesh, as best we could, and get back to the guns.

As I got back, carrying my big piece of meat, in my hands, Col. H. C.
Cabell, commanding our Battalion, met me. He said, "My dear boy, where
on earth did you get that meat?" I told him. "Well," he said, "I am
almost starved; _could_ you give me a little piece?" I cut off a chunk
as big as my fist, stuck it on a sharp stick, held it a few minutes in a
fire, close by, and handed it up to the Colonel, sitting on his horse.
He took it off the stick, and ate it ravenously. He said it was the best
morsel he ever tasted! It was scant times when a Colonel of artillery
was as famished as he was! I cut up the rest of the beef, and divided
among several of us, and we cooked it on a stick, the only cooking
utensil we had at hand, and ate it, with a keenness of enjoyment that
terrapin, canvass back duck, and Lynnhaven oysters could not provoke me
to now. _My dear!_ but that hot meat was good, to palates accustomed,
mostly, to _nothing_, and _no salt on that_, for about a week. The only
meat we had now,--when we had any at all.--was fat mess pork, and we ate
that _raw_. Hot beef was a delicious change!

Meanwhile the hours had worn on. We limbered up the guns, and moved
several miles off, toward the right, passing through Spottsylvania Court
House. It was here we went by to see Cary Eggleston for the last time.
He died next day.

We halted in a broom-sedge field, some distance beyond the Court House,
and parked our guns, along with some other artillery, already there. And
here we stayed a day or two.

The onl