must be given up to the enemy. He actually shed tears, and both he and General Pillow seemed borne down by the keen est humiliation, when, after turning over the command to General Buckner, they embarked their men hurriedly on the boats at night, and effected their escape. Every one knew that they could do no good by remaining, and that, by so doing, they would only give so many more prisoners to the exultant victors; but many of those who were left behind seemed to consider their departure as cowardly, and as an attempt to shirk danger, and greeted them with hisses and groans as they embarked. I was indignant at this, for I knew that they had done all that could have been expected of them, and that for them to participate in the surrender would only increase the extent of the disaster, and add to the importance of the Federal victory.
This was undoubtedly one of the most terrible battles of the whole war, the fact of its having been fought in the midst of an unusually severe winter serving to increase its horrors tenfold. Towards the last, the contest between the besiegers and besieged was hand to hand, both sides contending for the mastery with a ferocity which I cannot pretend to command words to describe. Again and again were the Federals repulsed from the works, and, at some points, they were so much cut up that it seemed impossible for them to rally again. Re-enforcements of fresh troops, however, came continually to the relief of the defeated assailants, while each hour thinned out the garrison terribly. After every repulse, the enemy advanced to the attack with increased force, or made a furious assault in a new place, and by the time General Buckner surrendered the fort to General Grant, the vicinity of the earthworks, for miles around, presented a sickening spectacle of devastation and human suffering.
After the Battle.
In every direction the ground was trampled by thousands of feet, was cut up by the artillery carriages, and was strewn with dead horses and men, and with all kinds of munitions of war. In many of the trenches, especially where the fiercest fighting had taken place, the bodies were heaped together, six or seven feet high, and the faces of the corpses, distorted with the agonies of their death struggles, were hideous to look at. Those who fell, and died where they were shot, were
