Just as the battle-field
sucks everything into its red vortex for the conflict, so does it drive
everything off in long, diverging rays after the fierce centripetal
forces have met and neutralized each other. For more than a week there
had been sharp fighting all along this road. Through the streets of
Frederick, through Crampton's Gap, over South Mountain, sweeping at last
the hills and the woods that skirt the windings of the Antietam, the
long battle had travelled, like one of those tornadoes which tear their
path through our fields and villages. The slain of higher condition,
"embalmed" and iron-cased, were sliding off on the railways to their
far homes; the dead of the rank-and-file were being gathered up and
committed hastily to the earth; the gravely wounded were cared for
hard by the scene of conflict, or pushed a little way along to the
neighboring villages; while those who could walk were meeting us, as I
have said, at every step in the road. It was a pitiable sight, truly
pitiable, yet so vast, so far beyond the possibility of relief, that
many single sorrows of small dimensions have wrought upon my feelings
more than the sight of this great caravan of maimed pilgrims.
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