Sunday, August 9, 2020

Diary of Private Daniel L. Ambrose: Tuesday, February 18, 1862

This morning a fatigue party is detailed from the Seventh to help bury the dead on the battle field, and those who died from wounds received in battle, who are now lying in every house in Dover (a small village on the banks of the Cumberland inside the fortifications). All day yesterday the fatigue parties were engaged burying the noble slain. War is indeed a mad machine, terrible in its work.

Silently extended on the gory main,
The fallen warriors mid the carnage lay;
No hand was there to ease the racking pain,
And staunch the life blood ebbing fast away.

But when the old flag comes home to Tennessee, over the Union soldiers' graves will be built up all that their posterity shall desire of order and government.

SOURCES: Daniel Leib Ambrose, History of the Seventh Regiment Illinois Volunteer Infantry, p. 42-3

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