Edward Porter Alexander, Military memoirs of a Confederate: a critical narrative

[437] laying it flat on a knoll some 50 yards from the road. On that door we sat or lay in the rain all night, every half-hour taking turns in walking out to the road to see what command was passing. At daylight the rain ceased to fall, but the sky remained threatening. About 6 A. M., we took our place in the column, and marched 19 hours until 1 A. M. that night. Then we bivouacked until four near Monterey Springs on the Blue Ridge. We then marched again for 14 hours, and bivouacked about 6 P. M. two or three miles beyond Hagerstown. Ewell's corps, moving behind ours, did not leave the vicinity of Gettysburg until about noon on the 5th.

The wagon-train under Imboden moved on roads to our right, via Greenwood to Williamsport. It made better speed than our column of infantry and artillery, but at a cost of human suffering which it is terrible to contemplate. Some of the wounded were taken from the wagons dead at Williamsport, and many who were expected to recover died from the effects of the journey. Among these, it was said, were Gens. Pender and Semmes, neither of whom had been thought mortally wounded.

Imboden gives a harrowing account of the movement of the train, as follows:—

‘After dark I set out from Cashtown to gain the head of the column during the night. My orders had been peremptory that there should be no halt for any cause whatever. If an accident should happen to any vehicle, it was immediately to be put out of the road and abandoned. The column moved rapidly, considering the rough roads and the darkness, and from almost every wagon issued heart-rending wails of agony. For four hours I hurried forward on my way to the front, and in all that time I was never out of hearing of the groans and cries of the wounded and dying. Scarcely one in a hundred had received adequate surgical aid, owing to the demands on the hard-working surgeons from still worse cases which had to be left behind. Many of the wounded in the wagons had been without food for 36 hours. Their torn and bloody clothing, matted and hardened, was rasping the tender, inflamed, and still oozing wounds. Very few of the wagons had even a layer of straw in them and all were without springs. The road was rough and rocky from the heavy washings of the preceding day. The jolting was enough to have killed strong men if long exposed to it.’

From nearly every wagon as the teams trotted on, urged by whip and shout, came such cries and shrieks as these: —

“Oh God! Why can't I die!”