A Scene After the Battle

(Extract from A letter of L. F. Drake, Chaplain of the 31st Ohio regiment, to the Western Christian Advocate.)

I went to the camp of the 10th Indiana regiment, where the dead and many of the wounded were, and at the request of Captain Hoagland, I visited some of the houses and tents where the wounded of both armies were, and aided all I could to alleviate their sufferings.  About ten o’clock I lay down in a tent and tried to sleep, but the shrieks and groaning of the wounded and dying reached my ears, and pierced my heart, and I could not sleep.  In a short time Dr. Linnett and Mr. Olds, from Lancaster, Ohio, came in to sleep in the tent I was occupying.  One of them remarked that there was a wounded soldier in an old blacksmith shop, who was desirous of seeing a chaplain.  I arose from my couch, and after wending my way through the mud and wet, I found the shop filled with the wounded, and one was lying upon a forge.  Some were mortally wounded, and a few were not.  After conversing and praying with one of them a short time, he obtained peace and pardon.  I then asked him what regiment he belonged to.  Said he, “I am your enemy, but we will be friends in heaven.”  He then requested me to write to his grandfather in Paris, Tennessee who is a Cumberland Presbyterian minister, and inform him of his condition, and his being prepared to die in the full triumph of faith.  I conversed with several others, and tried to point them to the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world.  There are times when the soldiers care but little about being conversed with upon the subject of religion, but when in the condition of these men they would prefer seeing a faithful minister of the Gospel than any of their wicked commanders or associates.  I was also permitted to see General F. K. Zollicoffer, who was laid out on a board in a tent in the cold embrace of death.  I saw the place where he was shot and laid my hand upon his broad forehead.  He was about six feet tall, and completely and well built, one among the finest heads that I ever saw.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, February 1, 1862, p. 2