Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker: Sometime Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel on the Staff of his Excellency General WashingtonMitchell, S. Weir (Silas Weir)
History
Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker: Sometime Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel on the Staff of his Excellency General Washington
Mitchell, S. Weir (Silas Weir)
Quakers -- Fiction; United States -- History -- Revolution, 1775-1783 -- Fiction
When I came to myself, I got up, confused and giddy, and began to walk,
but with painful difficulty, stumbling over dead or wounded men. Our
people were gone, and I saw no one for a little, till I heard the
quick tramp of feet and saw through the fog the red line of a marching
regiment almost upon me. I made an effort to fall to one side of the
street, but dropped again, and once more knew nothing. I think they
went over me. When evening came, I found myself lying with others on the
sidewalk in front of the Wister house. How I was taken thither I know
as little as any. I was stiff, sore, and bloody, but soon able to look
about me. I found a bandage around my leg, and felt in no great pain
unless I tried to move. Men in red coats came and went, but none heeded
my cry for water, until an old servantwoman, who during the fight had
refused to leave the house, brought me a drink. I knew her well. I tried
to tell her who I was, but my parched tongue failed me, and a rough
corporal bade her begone. My watch, a good silver one, was stolen, but
my money-belt was safe.
Beside me were many other wounded, one man hideous with his jaw broken;
he seemed to me dying. By and by soldiers fetched others. Then a
detachment of Virginians went past, in their fringed skin shirts,
prisoners, black with smoke, dirty and sullen. Surgeons’ aids came and
went in and out, and soon the sidewalk was crowded with the wounded. At
last they carried a dying general into the house. I asked his name, but
no one answered me. It was the brigadier Agnew, now lying at rest in the
lower burial-ground by Fisher’s Lane.
An officer came and counted us like sheep. About nine a row of carts
stopped,--country waggons seized for the purpose,--and, with small
tenderness, we were told to get in, or at need lifted in. I was put,
with eight others, in a great Conestoga wain without a cover. Soon a
detachment of horse arrived, and thus guarded, we were carted away like
logs.
The road was never good, but now it was full of holes and cut up by the
wheels of artillery. I shall never forget the misery of that ride. I set
my teeth and resolved to utter no groan. Before us and behind us were
many loads of wounded men, chiefly such as seemed fit to travel. There
were nine of us. One was dead before we reached town. As we jolted on,
and the great wain rocked, I heard the crack of the drivers’ whips, and
far and near, in the darkness or near beside me, curses, prayers, mad
screams of pain, or men imploring water.
When near to Nicetown, came on a cold, heavy rain which chilled us to
shivering. I let my handkerchief get soaked, and sucked it. Then I wet
it again--the rain a torrent--and gave it into the hand of him who was
next me. He could not use his arm, nor could I turn to aid him, nor did
he answer me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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