May 15 — All quiet along the lines to-day except some little skirmish firing to our right.
The Yankees have abandoned their works on the right of their line in our immediate front, and it seems that General Grant is once more changing base by moving to the left. He has entirely abandoned his Richmond trip through Spottsylvania Court House. For ten days General Grant, with an overwhelming force, has been thundering, thumping, and hammering with unabated vehemency at the little barrier of Southern steel that is day after day unwound and unfolded, and opportunely interposed and nicely maneuvered by the master hand of General Lee, between this modern Ulysses with his well equipped host and the heart of Dixie. But the living wall still stands and is as dangerous as ever, and General Grant is still searching and hunting for a weak place whereby he may butt his way through and onward to Richmond.
To-day I wandered over a portion of the battle-field in front of our works where the bloody and sanguinary conflict raged in its wildest frenzy three days ago. Hundreds of the enemy’s dead are still unburied, lying on the field where they fell, and as evidence of the enemy’s desperate and furious assaults to break through General Lee’s line some of their dead are lying within six feet of our breastworks.
At several places I saw where the musketry fire had been so heavy and terrific that all the bushes and underbrush along and in rear of the lines were cut down clean, and there is not a twig on the trees that does not show the nipping bite of a bullet. The trees that stood in the leaden shower are all splintered and shivered, and look as if all the woodpeckers in creation had been at work on them for a month. Some men — and not a few — when they get under a heavy infantry fire become wild with excitement, while others are frenzied with fear, and while in that state they shoot any and everywhere; some of them fire at the moon. I saw large pine trees that stand just in rear of where our infantry line stood, and the trees are full of Yankee bullets from bottom to top; a great many of the bullet marks are fifty feet from the ground. At one place a thick growth of pines covered the ground in rear of General Lee’s breastworks, and in front is a sod field, dipping with a gradual slope toward our works; the pine trees along the line and for a hundred and fifty yards or more were all cut down by a terrible artillery fire from the enemy’s batteries. The trees were from four to eight inches in diameter and were cut off about twelve feet from the ground. In front of that place the enemy made several desperate charges across the open field trying to break our line, but were repulsed every time with fearful slaughter, and to-day the field is still covered with the dead in blue sleeping their last sleep. The whole country around here is covered with breastworks and field fortifications. Damp, rainy day.
