Page:A narrative of service with the Third Wisconsin Infantry.djvu/139

 morning of the battle, when the prospects seemed good for a lively fight, he had come to me and asked for a musket and some ammunition, for he did not wish to be lurking in the rear while we were in danger at the front. At my suggestion, he had previously posted himself in the tactics, so I now told him to take the place of a Lieutenant in my Company. He was the first man hit, and died in the hospital a few days later.

By a strange coincidence, our picket found on the field in our front the dead body of the Chaplain of the Georgia Regiment with which we had been engaged. We were told by some of the wounded prisoners that he had been shot in coming up to recover the body of his son, a captain in the Regiment, who had been killed early in the fight.

In this battle, for the first time in my experience, Confederate soldiers who might have escaped came in and gave themselves up as prisoners. I think as many as forty did this. They were all thoroughly discouraged, and the same feeling seems to have run through their whole army, for they were more quickly and easily beaten than I had ever seen them before.