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ment, hopes that he will not be taxed with exaggeration, or as claiming undue credit for the troops of his native State, when he says they covered themselves with glory in the bloody conflict they took so conspicuous a part in and around Chancellorsville, Va., on the 3d and 4th of May, 1863. The Georgia troops who took prominent parts in the several engagements were those of Phillips' s and Cobbs's legions and the Sixteenth, Eighteenth, and Twenty- fourth Georgia regiments the latter regiment the writer had the honor of commanding. These brave sons of noble old Georgia did their duty well and unflinchingly, losing heavily both of officers and men. Hundreds upon hundreds of these brave boys are now filling unmarked graves and long neglected trenches in/md around Chan- cellorsville and all along the banks of the Rappahannock. These silent homes of honor and neglected abodes of patriots still speak not only to Georgians, but to the entire world and say, we who lie here died in vindication of a righteous cause, a cause, though it failed, left not a stain on the unsullied escutcheon of our State or one foul blot on a single page of her history. No dishonorable act of ours in this contest should cause a blush to mantle the cheek of any honest, true-hearted Southern man.
OLD SALEM CHURCH.
Old Salem Church, around whose hallowed portals were enacted so many deeds of heroic valor and awful scenes of desperate conflicts, will long be remembered by every one who witnessed them. Scarcely ever before in the history of ancient or modern warfare was so hor- rible a spectacle of death and carnage presented to human sight. This venerable old edifice, that has so long been consecrated to God, and so long used for His service by the followers of the Prince of Peace, standing as it did, midway between Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, was the very centre of one of the fiercest and most destructive battles of the war between the States. Here hundreds upon hundreds of the wounded of both armies were gathered up and brought for surgical attention the building being used as a field hospital. The scenes of death and carnage witnessed here no human tongue or pen can adequately describe. Even the stoutest hearts of those who had been long inured to scenes of blood and suffering, stood pale and speechless and trembling as they beheld these heart- rending sights. After the house was filled the spacious churchyard was literally covered with wounded and dying. The sight inside the building, for horror, was, perhaps, never equalled within so limited
