er and pass in review before the mind all the leading and exciting
incidents of past life, these events and scenes are again displayed with
all the vividness and strength of first impression. These thoughts were
suggested to the writer upon meeting Lieutenant H. M. Neil of the
Eleventh Ohio Battery at the meeting of the Society of the Army of the
Tennessee at St. Louis, in 1882. Twenty years had passed since I had
seen his face, and I had reckoned him among the brave spirits of the war
which had gone to rest. When I saw him last before this, he was
commanding his battery in the thickest of the fight at the battle of
Corinth about 11 o'clock in the forenoon of October 4, 1862. His rank
was that of Second Lieutenant. All officers of higher grade were absent
in hospital from wounds received fifteen days before at Iuka, in which
battle this battery of a few more than 100 men had eighteen killed and
fifty-two wounded, and out of 148 horses had but three left standing at
the close of the engagement. The battery was captured by the rebels and
recaptured by our troops. Lieutenant Neil was the only commissioned
officer on duty at the close of the engagement, and he had been wounded
twice with shell and twice with bullets--severe flesh wounds. He was
besmeared with blood. The Lieutenant was, notwithstanding full of pluck.
He said the next morning, "If I can have one hundred men detailed from
the infantry and horses furnished, I will have the battery in fighting
trim again in two weeks." Infantry soldiers readily volunteered upon
call to man the battery, and horses were furnished by the Quartermaster,
and on the afternoon of the 3d of October--fourteen days from the
annihilation of the battery the battle of Corinth was fought and the
Lieutenant having marched up from Iuka without escort, came upon the
field with his battery fully manned, equipped and drilled, amid the
hurrahs and tears of the infantry that had seen it destroyed under the
terrible fire of the 19th of September, and who now seemed to feel that
the battery men, horses and all, had come back from the regions of the
dead to aid in the terrible struggle now going on between the same
armies.

"The Lieutenant received the heartiest congratulations of all officers
who had been with him in the battle of Iuka. While receiving those of
the writer he said: "I want you to stay right by my battery with your
regiment when it goes into action here, and if you will no rebel
battali