Page:Journal history of the Twenty-ninth Ohio veteran volunteers, 1861-1865.djvu/80

 country—and this is right. For if there is any deed in the power of a mortal which can sway the feelings or soften the heart it is that of one man laying down his life for another. The breast heaves and the eye is suffused with tears at the spectacle of Pythias putting his life in jeopardy only for his friend. There is a halo of glory hovering about the profession of arms. It has its seat in the sacrifice of self, which is its ruling spirit.

The man who stands upon the field of battle and faces the storm of death that sweeps along, whether he merely puts his life thus in jeopardy or is actually carried down in death, torn and mangled in the dread fight, is worthy of endless honors, and though we class the deed with the lowest of human acts, prompted by a hardihood which we share with the brutes, and in which the most ignorant and besotted may compete with the loftiest, yet it is an act before which humanity will ever bow and uncover. Who that walked that field of carnage and beheld the maimed and mangled, and him cold in death, could withhold the tribute of honor and respect? For, could he make that dying soldier's lot his own, or that of his nearest and dearest friend, he would only then justly realize the sacrifice. Our casualties in the fight were: Killed, nine; wounded, thirty-five; missing, one. Total, forty-five.