paused to admire this beautiful gathering of foe-men in whose veins there flowed the same blood as in their own, and whose ancestors had stood shoulder to shoulder with their own in a hundred battles for freedom.
Their sentiment gave place to shouts of battle, and into the silent phalanx a hundred guns poured their red-hot messages of death. The golden grain was drenched with the blood of men no less brave because they were not victorious, and the rich fields of Pennsylvania drank with thirsty eagerness the warm blood of many a Southern son.
Yet they moved onward. Volley after volley of musketry mowed them down, and the puny reaper in the neglected grain gave place to the grim reaper Death, all down that unwavering line of gray and brown.
They marched up to the Union breastworks, bayoneted the gunners at their work, planted their flags on the parapets, and, while the Federals converged from every point to this, exploding powder burned the faces of these contending hosts, who, hand to hand, fought each other to death, while far-away widows and orphans multiplied to mourn through the coming years over this ghastly folly of civil war.
Whole companies of the Confederates rushed as prisoners into the arms of their enemies, and
