face of the
brave General Richardson, dead, with a bullet through his breast. At
the farmhouses, rows of men were already lying in the straw, waiting
their turn at the surgeon's hands, while long lines of men were
bringing the fallen on stretchers. With hatred of war in his heart,
but with faith in its stern necessity, Carleton rode on to see the
fight which raged in front of Sumner, noticing that the cannon of
Hooker and Mansfield were silent, cooling their lips after the
morning's fever. Of the superb Pennsylvania Reserve Corps, which he
had seen a year ago at review, there was now but a remnant. He
ascended the ridge, where thirty pieces of cannon were every moment
emptying their black mouths of fire and iron.

All day long Carleton was witness of the battle, and then sent home
from Sharpsburg, September 19th, in addition to his preliminary
letter, a long and comprehensive account in five columns of print. It
was so animated in style, so exact in particulars, and so skilful and
clear in its general grouping, that its writer was overwhelmed with
congratulations by the best of all critics, his fellow correspondents.
In two other letters from Sharpsburg, he reviewed the whole subject
judicially, and then returned home for a few days' recuperation.

From Philadelphia we find two of his letters, one describing the
transport of troops and the monitors then on the stocks, or in the
Delaware, and another reviewing the account of Antietam which he had
read in the Charleston _Courier_. Indeed, all through the war, Mr.
Coffin took pains to inform himself as to Southern opinion, and the
methods of its manufacture and influence by the press. He was thus
able to correct and purify his own judgments. He preserved his copies
of the Southern papers, and gradually accumulated, during and after
the war, a unique collection of the newspapers of the South. His first
opinion about the battle of Antietam, written October 8, 1862, is the
same as that which he held thirty years later:

"In reviewing the contest, aided by the Southern account, it seems
that all through the day, complete, decisive, annihilating victory lay
within our grasp, and yet we did not take it."

Let us read further from the closing paragraph of that letter, which
he wrote in Philadelphia, before moving West to the army in Kentucky:

"In saying this, I raise no criticism, make no question or blame, but
prefer to look upon it as a controlling of that Providence whi