"...two of our army surgeons came into the room and began to tie up my arteries to stop the bleeding, which possibly saved my life. Before they got through, however, several shells struck the house and they left me alone."
Pvt. Ezra E. Stickley, Company A, 5th Virginia Infantry
"When night came we could still hear the sullen guns and hoarse, indefinite murmurs that succeeded the day's turmoil. That night was dark and lowering and the air heavy and dull. Across the river in numeral campfires were blazing, and we could but too well imagine the scenes that they are lighting."
Mary Bedinger Mitchell
"All were calling for water, of course, but none was to be had. We lay there until dusk--perhaps an hour, when the fighting ceased. During that hour, while the bullets snipped the leaves from a young locust tree growing at the edge of the hollow and powdered us with fragments, we had time to speculate on many things-among others, on the impatience with which men clamor, in dull times, to be led into fight."
Pvt. David L. Thompson, Company G, 9th New York Volunteers
"Both before and after a battle, sad and solemn thoughts come to the soldier. Before the conflict they were of apprehension; after the strife there is a sense of relief; but the thinned ranks, the knowledge that the comrade who stood by your side in the morning never will stand there again, bring inexpressible sadness."
Charles Coffin, Army Correspondent
"I have seen more than I ever expected to see. I have laid on the field in front of the enemy, where the dead and wounded were laying in heaps around us."
Sgt. Jacob Fryberger, Company K, 51st Pennsylvania Infantry
"Before the sunlight faded, I walked over the narrow field. All around lay the Confederate dead...clad in `butternut'...As I looked down on the poor pinched faces...all enmity died out. There was no `secession' in those rigid forms nor in those fixed eyes staring at the sky. Clearly it was not their war."
Pvt. David L. Thompson, Company G, 9th New York Volunteers