Leaves from the Battlefield of Gettysburg: Letters from a Field Hospital (Abridged, Annotated)

Most people think of Gettysburg as the the three days of titanic struggle between the Union and Confederacy. The horror actually went on for weeks.

"The sights and the sounds are beyond description. There are hundreds of men who will never leave the battle-field alive and hundreds more who have 'fought their last battle.' The amputation-table is plainly in view from our tents. I never trust myself to look toward it."

Within days of the battle of Gettysburg, Mrs. Edmund Souder made her way to the site to do what she could to assist the wounded and dying in a field hospital. What she found was profoundly disturbing to her and she afterwards gathered this series of letters she wrote from Gettysburg.

It is impossible from this place in time to understand how terribly anxious the country about the outcome of the battle while it was still raging. Mrs. Souder shares her feelings with us about those awful days.

She recounts extraordinary courage she witnessed among the shattered and dying men during her time in the field. She helped to care for Union and Confederate soldiers, for whom they cared "as suffering men and not as rebels."

Every memoir of the American Civil War provides us with another view of the catastrophe that changed the country forever.

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