r the remnant of all that portion engaged at Gaines's Mill;--the
Reserves, Porter's Corps, Slocum's division, and Meagher's
brigade,--perhaps thirty-thousand men. They covered the whole of Tent's
farm, and were drawn up in line, heavily equipped, with their colors in
position, field officers dismounted, and detachments from each regiment
preparing hot coffee at certain fires. A very few wagons--and these
containing only ammunition--stood harnessed beside each regiment. In
many cases the men lay or knelt upon the ground. Such hot, hungry, weary
wretches, I never beheld. During the whole night long they had been
crossing the Chickahominy, and the little sleep vouchsafed them had been
taken in snatches upon the bare clay. Travelling from place to place, I
saw the surviving heroes of the defeat: Meagher looking very yellow and
prosaic; Slocum,--small, indomitable, active; Newton,--a little gray, a
trifle proud, very mercurial, and curiously enough, a Virginian;
Meade,--lithe, spectacled, sanguine; and finally General McCall, as
grave, kindly odd and absent, as I had found him four months before. The
latter worthy was one of the first of the Federal Generals to visit
Richmond. He was taken prisoner the second day afterward, and the half
of his command was slain or disabled.

I went to and fro, obtaining the names of killed, wounded and missing,
with incidents of the battle as well as its general plan. These I
scrawled upon bits of newspaper, upon envelopes, upon the lining of my
hat, and finally upon my shirt wristbands. I was literally filled with
notes before noon, and if I had been shot at that time, endeavors to
obtain my name would have been extremely difficult. I should have had
more titles than some of the Chinese princes; some parts of me would
have been found fatally wounded, and others italicized for gallant
behavior. Indeed, I should have been shot in every part, taken prisoner
at every place, killed outright in every skirmish, and marvellously
saved through every peril. My tombstone would have been some hundreds of
muster-rolls and my obituary a fortune to a newspaper. I recollect, with
some amusement, the credit that each regiment took upon itself for
distinguished behavior. There were few Colonels that did not claim all
the honors. I fell in with a New Jersey brigade, that had been decimated
of nearly half its _quota_, and a spruce young Major attempted to convey
an idea of the battle to me. He said, in brief, t