had made no arrangements for the safe
arrival of its reinforcements. So they were ambushed soon after passing
through Fredericksburg; and that night, before ten o'clock, all the
places I had succeeded in making vacant were filled with the wounded
from this reinforcement. How many of them were brought to Fredericksburg
I do not know; but it must have been a good many, when some were sent to
my den of horrors.

One evening, after dark, I went to the dispensary, and found a surgeon
just in from the front for supplies. While they were being put up, he
told us of the horrible carnage at Spottsylvania that day, when the
troops had been hurled, again and again, against impregnable
fortifications, under a rain of rifle balls, which cut down a solid
white oak tree, eighteen inches in diameter.

The battle had ceased for the night, and it was not known whether it
would be renewed in the morning.

"But if it is," said the speaker, "it will be the bloodiest day of the
war, and we must be whipped, routed. The Rebels are behind breastworks
which cannot be carried. Any man but Grant would have known that this
morning, but he is to fight it out on this line, and it is generally
thought he will try it again in the morning. If he does, it will be a
worse rout than Bull Run."

No one was present but the surgeon in charge of the church, the
dispensary clerk, and myself; so he was no alarmist, for when he had
done speaking, he took his package, mounted his horse and left. People
had said, through the day, that the roar of guns was heard in the higher
portions of the city, but no news of the battle seemed to have reached
it during all the next day.

I spent it in preparing for the worst, warned Georgie and tightened the
reins on my nurses. I had had no reason to complain of any, and felt
that I should hold them to duty, even through a rout. It also seemed
well to know where our wounded were located, in that part of the city,
so that if an attempt were made to remove them, in a hurry, there might
not be any overlooked.

At half-past eleven that night I had heard nothing from the front, and
went to sleep, with heavy forebodings. At two o'clock I was aroused by
the sounds of a moving multitude, rose and looked out to see, under the
starlight, a black stream pouring down the side street, on the corner of
which our quarters were situated, and turning down Princess Ann, toward
the river landing. To me, it was the nation going to her doom,