rebels appearing to have aimed specially at them. The names of those who fell, so far as they belong to Worcester, will be found on another page. The names of the commissioned officers who were killed, wounded or missing, were as follows. The killed were Captain Getchell, Co. K; Second Lieutenant Grout, Co. E. The wounded were Licutenant-Colonel Ward; Captain Sloan, Co. F, slightly; Captain Forehand, Co. G; Captain Philbrick, Co. H, slightly; First Lieutenant Holden, Co. G. Prisoners, Captains Rockwood, Simonds, Bowman, Studley; First Lieutenant Greene, and Second Lieutenants Vassall and Hooper.

There was, as a matter of course, great suffering in the regiment. Not only were the wounded in want of many things which the kindness of friends alone could supply; but those soldiers who escaped unscathed in battle, needed clothing and equipments. In this connection, the following letter from Colonel Devens may be inserted. It was addressed to Hon. A. H. Bullock, in reply to a letter making inquiry concerning the wants of the regiment, and asking especially in what way their friends at home could serve them most effectually. It was dated at Camp Foster, Poolsville, October 27.

"DEAR SIR: - I am exceedingly obliged to you for your note of sympathy and encouragement, received by Mr. Pratt. Although the loss of the regiment was perfectly terrible my list of killed, missing and wounded being three hundred and ten, while six hundred and twenty-five was the largest number I had during the engagement, yet its courage was most nobly brave and enduring. The battle was hopelessly lost before General Baker was killed, yet the cool manner in which the regiment, half an hour after, marched over from the right of the line to protect the left, would have won for it a historic name, if it had been done on the battle-fields of Europe.

The men here of course lost almost everything in the way of clothing and equipments, but I trust that the government will make immediate provision; if it does not, I will have no hesitation in appealing to yourself and other patriotic citizens to aid.

Before this disaster I had intended to write that each man in the regiment ought to be supplied with an extra blanket and mittens, (not supplied by the government) by the towns from which the regiment comes, and this I am very desirous should still be done.

The brave companions whom we have lost cannot be restored to us, but their number may. Will not the towns of the county of Worcester, from which these companies came, see to it that each company is recruited again to its maximum standard, with vigorous and resolute young men from their own town or its immediate vicinity, and not leave us to be filled from recruiting officers of cities? Let the determination of no one at home waver. The courage of the regiment is unshaken; two nights ago, at an alarm, it turned out as calmly as if nothing like this calamity had ever happened, and the sick in the hospitals would be brought to the windows to see it march. It brought its colors from the field, and be its original members many or few, they will yet be seen to wave high above the emblems of treason and secession.

Allow me to ask you to communicate this note to his Honor, the mayor, to whom I am prevented from writing fully, and believe me, with many thanks for your expressions of kindness,

Yours most truly,

CHARLES Devens."

Such a letter could not fail of a suitable response. The ladies were soon at work in behalf of their brothers in the field, and efforts were immediately made to recruit the broken ranks of the regiment. In a few weeks organized effort was brought into action in their behalf. An appeal was addressed to the people of Worcester county, signed by Hon. Levi Lincoln, Hon. Isaac Davis, Hon. Stephen Salisbury, Hon. A. H. Bullock, Rev. Dr. Hill, Rev. J. J. Power, and many others, calling for three hundred and fifty men, to fill the deficiency in the regiment. The influence of the services on Thanksgiving day, November 21, were all in the same direction. The discourses and prayers in all the churches referred to the crisis of the country. Dr. Sweetser, showed how good is mixed with evil, but how the evil is eliminated, in the succession of events. So in this war, we hope for good, under the providence of God. Dr. Hill reflected the advancing public sentiment in favor of abolishing the cause of the war. Rev. Mr. Richardson spoke with characteristic force and earnestness on the blessings of civil liberty. Rev. Mr. Hager, at All Saints Church, treated of slavery as a terrible disease that had been working in the veins of the republic. The poison was sinking deeper and deeper, the

cancer had been tampered with, and was growing larger, contaminating the whole system; and now God in his providence, directed us to use the knife for its extermination. Rev. Mr. Tucker, Baptist, held that God intended to bring about the liberation of the slave, and that he would hold us face to face with our enemies till the problem of emancipation should be solved. Rev. Mr. Dadmun, Methodist, spoke in the same general strain, recognizing slavery as the great curse. Rev. Mr. Cutler preached on the Right of the Sword. The design of the sermon was to remove the doubts of patriotic men who had conscientious scruples in regard to war in any case. He showed the right of defensive warfare, and the duty of all citizens to sustain the government. There was a general desire to have the discourse repeated on some more public occasion. In accordance with this wish, the discourse was repeated to an audience which filled Union Church to the doors.

A public meeting was held in the City Hall on the evening of the third of December, in behalf of the Fifteenth, which was fully attended. Hon. Isaac Davis, the mayor, presided, and after appropriate remarks, introduced Rev. Mr. Scandlin, the chaplain, who spoke for an hour in an earnest and eloquent manner, appealing to the citizens of the county to come forward and fill up the broken ranks. He drew many graphic pictures of scenes and incidents in the late fight, at which our officers and men bore themselves so bravely against such terrible odds. While the banners of other regiments were trailed in the dust, or destroyed to prevent their capture, the colors of the Fifteenth, given to them by the ladies of Worcester, were sacredly and safely guarded, and borne unsullied from the field amid the fire of bullets.

Judge Chapin then came forward, and made a spirited and stirring appeal to the young men to rally again at the call of their country. In this struggle two modes of civilisation totally irreconcilable, and as impossible to be mixed as oil and water, were striving for the mastery. It was a face-to-face conflict of freedom with slavery, and one or the other must prevail over all the land; one or the other must be extinguished; there was no other alternative.

"Those who shed their blood like rain,

The fathers of our race,

They surely shed their blood in vain,
If we their names disgrace;

If Freedom's forces rally not,

On mountain, vale and strand,

To wipe away the dark plague spot
That curses this our land."

At the conclusion of Judge Chapin's speech, a committee was appointed to aid in enlisting recruits in Worcester for the regiment. The committee consisted of the following gentlemen, viz., Hon. Dwight Foster, A. M. F. Davis, and Charles B. Pratt.

On the twelfth of December, the Hon. Edward Everett lectured in Mechanics Hall, to an audience which occupied every seat. He treated in his own inimitable manner, of the contest; its nature, origin, progress and tendency, and showed that the nation was struggling towards an advanced position in the vanguard of true progress. And on the sixteenth, the Hon. Daniel S. Dickinson, of New York, spoke two full hours, to an applauding audience, on public affairs. All these sermons, speeches and addresses, which appealed to the higher principles of our moral nature, had a powerful tendency to develop a true patriotism.

Perhaps this chapter cannot be closed better than by copying the two following letters; the one showing how our noble boys bore their wounds and sickness in the hospital, and the other how tenderly and respectfully the dead were buried.

The first was from a lady who had been for some months in Washington, and who had spent some time at Poolsville. She wrote as follows:

"The beautiful heroism of some of those sick beds, when a precious limb is lost, or life is slowly ebbing, is more amazing than the bravery of the day of battle. A young carpenter is sitting at the same table with me, answering a letter from Rev. Dr. P. He is a Sterling boy, and the name of his town applies to him. I remarked his face when I first came, so full of honest dignity and sweetness. I have been reading some of his letters to and from home, full of patriotism and genuine piety, the best

product of New-England culture. He sketches prettily, and writes with simplicity, and is one of the hundreds of thousands of privates whose lite would quietly bless his little circle, but whose death may be needed by his country; he joyfully yields all for her. After I had tucked a fine little fellow of eighteen into his bed for the night, and had made the pillow easy for the stump of an arm, and had his thanks for the comfort, I spoke to him tenderly of his loss, and the manly answer was: 'I do not regret it; it was lost in a good cause, and I do not wish it otherwise.'”

The other letter was written by Rev. Christopher Cushing, then of North Brookfield, and was published in the Spy, under the head of "Our Dead at Ball's Bluff."

"I know that your readers will be interested in any facts respecting the brave soldiers who fell in the recent engagement at Ball's Bluff, and particularly as to the burial of the dead. This sad service accidentally devolved on Captain F. F. Vaughn of the Rhode Island battery, who was assisted by twelve men, mostly of the Nineteenth Massachusetts Regiment. He found most of the bodies in the woods around the open field of which such frequent mention has been made in the papers. Two of the bodies were deprived of their clothing, with the exception of the shirts. This being contrary to the customs of war, the rebel officers expressed regret when they saw it, and said they wished it distinctly understood that this was contrary to their orders, and did not meet with their approbation. In some other instances a coat or a jacket was taken. As indicating what the rebels are destitute of, it is a significant fact that the hats and caps, and boots and shoes, were all taken, and the buttons ripped off from the clothing. There was no instance of a body having been mutilated by the enemy. But everything which the soldiers carried in their pockets was taken, and the search was so thorough that there were only three instances in which anything could be found to aid in identifying the bodies. On the pants of one was found the name of Captain Alden; under the body of another there was an envelope superscribed James Douglas; into the top of the socks of another were beautifully inwrought the letters W. H. H. L.

Forty-seven bodies were buried upon the battle-field, twelve were brought over to Harison's Island, and almost twenty were left for the enemy to bury. The sad work was left thus unfinished, because the darkness of night interposed, and the next day Captain Vaughn was sick. So thoroughly had the battle-field been examined by the enemy, that only two bodies of the rebel dead were found during the whole day, and only two of our wounded men; these were claimed as prisoners of war, and sent to the hospital at Leesburg. Our dead were buried with their clothing on, laying the body upon the side in trenches, usually two, three, or