and nights of peril and suffering and cold and hunger, the swamps and brier thickets, the anticipation of success, and the despair at the thought of recapture; all these, and, finally, freedom and home and friends, what words can express them all? A few words more, and I have finished. We came into our lines a few miles from Williamsburg. Some of the escaped officers reached our lines the third day out from Richmond; and General Butler, who was at that time commandant at Fortress Monroe, sent out, on alternate days, the Eleventh Pennsylvania Cavalry and the First New York Rifles to drive back the enemy, and to patrol the country with tall guidons to attract the notice of the escaping prisoners. The First New York Rifles were our deliverers. No one can describe the kindness shown to us by this body of men. Every attention was showered upon us. We were banqueted at Company A's headquarters, and fêted at Company B's, and banqueted again at Company C's, and so on. As soon as possible, we reported at Washington. Every paper was full of the escape from Libby. Fiftyfive out of one hundred and nine reached our lines; the others were recaptured. We were ordered to rejoin our respective regiments, permission being given to delay reporting for thirty days. Flying visits were made to friends, and then we were back to go over nearly the same ground, although under different circumstances, as we participated in the battles of Resaca, Kenesaw Mountain, Atlanta, and many others in the Georgia campaign, and the two Franklin and Nashville which, so far as the Army of the West was concerned, terminated the war. More than twenty-five years have elapsed since the events portrayed in the preceding pages occurred. During the past few months the narratives of many of my men have been forwarded to me to be used in the history of the regiment. Time should have softened, if it were possible, the distressing and pitiless experiences of these brave men. But if any doubt ever existed concerning the terrible treatment of our prisoners by the Confederate authorities, they have all been removed. "In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established;" and from the East and West, and from the North and South,—from places a thousand miles distant, and from men who have never looked in one another's faces since their dreadful experiences in Andersonville and Libby, - comes the same, same story. Look at Wiestoff, of my company! Delirious from starvation to such an extent that he does not remember passing through Chicago on his way to his farm-home in the county north of the city, death nearly came to him on the threshold of his own home. Look at the deplorable and helpless condition to which so many were reduced by impure vaccination, as narrated by our Sergeant Hileman, of Company H; and the prostration to which Cullen was reduced by successive attacks of small-pox, pneumonia, and erysipelas! Look at our men killing a dog to obtain meat, and the hand-to-hand fight to decide who was to have the meagre nutrition, if any were possible, from the little insignificant field-mouse! We pause in astonishment, and wonder how it was ever possible for human beings to endure such privations, or beings having the semblance of humanity to permit it. If these experiences were not verified by testimony repeated again and again, the terrible story of the sufferings of our soldiers in Rebel pens and prisons would not at this day, when memories are so short, be regarded as reliable or true. And it was not alone from sickness that these brave fellows suffered. The diet was insufficient and absolutely indigestible, inducing disease; the guards, especially those not in active service at the front, seemed absolutely des titute of any feeling common to human beings, and the means resorted to to recapture those who made their escape were simply barbarous. That American citizens, engaged in a warfare against other American citizens, would resort to such measures as letting loose packs of bloodhounds to overtake and recapture emaciated and prostrate prisoners of war, is almost beyond belief. Throughout all these dreadful months and years our men were true to one another and loyal to the old flag, and the patriotic expressions of some will be precious legacies to relatives and friends. The last words of Henry Cutler, who, after suffering in prison, was at last exchanged, and hurried back to rejoin the regiment at the front, and was mortally wounded at Nashville, "God bless father and mother, and save the country!"will never be forgotten; they will be imperishable. Some of the incidents in prison were most noteworthy. The bursting forth of a spring of water in the dreary waste of Andersonville is almost comparable with the pouring out of water from the rock by which the thirst of the children of Israel was quenched. And the summary yet legal disposition, by hanging, of some of their own number, who had forgotten that they were Union. soldiers, and became thieves and villains, earning the designation of “raiders," was only possible among and by such men as composed the glorious and patriotic volunteer army gathered to restore the Union. Were all these sacrifices made for naught? at our great new Nation for the answer, Look the South and the North, the North and the South, redeemed, disenthralled, and reunited, inspiring the whole world with higher aspirations for freedom and a larger and nobler manhood! "Be proud! for she is saved, and all have helped to save her! She that lifts up the manhood of the poor, She of the open soul and open door, With room about her hearth for all mankind! O Beautiful! my Country! ours once more, What words divine of lover or of poet, Could tell our love and make thee know it, Among the Nations bright beyond compare? What were our lives without thee? What all our lives to save thee? We reck not what we gave thee; But ask whatever else, and we will dare!" AN ARTILLERYMAN'S RECOLLECTIONS OF DE THE BATTLE OF ATLANTA. BY RICHARD S. TUTHILL. [Read April 7, 1886.] E GOLYER'S Eighth Michigan Battery (H of the First Michigan Light Artillery), in which the writer had the honor to serve, was from the organization of the Seventeenth Army Corps, Army of the Tennessee, attached to its Third Division. This division, until after the campaign for the opening of the Mississippi River, - ending with the siege and fall of Vicksburg, wherein it bore a most distinguished part, - was commanded by that incomparable soldier and most eminent of all our volunteer officers, General John A. Logan. From the fact that Captain de Golyer, who commanded the battery from its muster into the service. until his death from a wound received during the siege of Vicksburg, a born and bred horseman and racer, -selected for his battery a full equipment of jet-black horses, the battery was also known as "De Golyer's Black-Horse Battery." - Always equipped for field service, first with the James rifle (a brass gun) and afterward with three-inch rifled steel guns of the Rodman pattern, it was pre-eminently adapted to field service. Owing to circumstances which I never could understand, it was generally short of men, making necessary a permanent detail from other commands in order to handle its six guns. The battery was rarely short of horses. There was a tradition among the men, firmly believed in, that after the battle of Champion Hill, in which the battery was, as usual, at the - |