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A blog of Nineteenth Century history, focusing, but not exclusively, on the American Civil War seen through the prism of personal accounts, newspaper stories, administrative records and global history.
A thousand tales. A miscellany. A maze of historical tangents.

A Capitol View

A Capitol View
Images of 1861 juxtaposed- Union Square, New York vs. Capitol Square, Richmond

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Taking the Train Home



While dining to-day at the head-quarters of the surgeons Cullen, Barksdale, and Maury, a young soldier of Kershaw's brigade was brought in with his right hand crushed. He had deliberately placed it upon the railroad track, and allowed a locomotive to pass over it.
The dinner-table was cleared, and the boy placed upon it, and in a little while his hand was flung out of the window. A friend of the boy had wounded himself a short time since, and had been sent home so this one was trying the same means to accomplish that end. It was the act of a poltroon, and he was made an example of and compelled to remain in the hospital, I had seen a man or two who had shot fingers off in battle to obtain sick leave, but never before one who deliberately allowed a locomotive to run over him.


-IN CAMP AND BATTLE WITH THE WASHINGTON ARTILLERY NEW ORLEANS A NARRATIVE OF EVENTS DURING THE LATE CIVIL WAR FROM BULL RUN TO APPOMATTOX AND SPANISH FORT Compiled by the Adjutant from his Diary and from Authentic Documents and Orders ILLUSTRATED WITH MAPS AND ENGRAVINGS 
by Wm. Miller Owen, First Lieutenant and Adjutant,
B.W.A. Boston Ticknor and Company 1885

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