The Indianapolis Journal

THE GHOST FORT DONELSON.

A Wanderer Over the Battle-Field in Search of the Wounded.

November Wide Awake.

The camp-fires of General Grant's army were lighting up the thick woods, just beyond the Tennessee; the gunboats were hurrying up the swollen river, while the snows and rains of February turned to ice; and the first day of the terrible battle at Fort Donelson the sudden change of weather brought to the soldiers agonies of cold and suffering.

The fight lasted three long days. Shot and shell were poured into the Tennessee river, the gunboats driven back with heavy losses, but Grant's fearless men kept up the siege until the fort surrendered.

After the victory the whole North was exultant. The bells rang joyfully, and cannon shook the New England cities and towns; but frozen and dying hundreds lay on the red snow of the battle-field.

Mother Bickerdyke, the famous Union nurse, had followed her "boys" southward, had blessed them as they went out in the morning to battle, made them barrels of good government coffee, and as well as possible, without houses or hospitals, prepared for their return. This was her first sight of a battle-field, and she told me that none afterward so overcame her.

After the wounded had been cared for with all the small comforts she had, and the exhausted officers had fallen asleep, somebody noticed a bright light moving quickly over the dark, deserted field, where the dead were still lying awaiting burial when it should be light.

One officer after another looked out, and word passed down the line, "Go see what it is." General Grant himself, wrapped in his blanket, stood outside his tent, while his orderly followed the ghost across the snow, and the terrified men huddled close together over their camp-fires, whispering that "the spirits were walking about." Nobody spoke aloud. The bitter wind whistled across the broken fences and through the icy, rattling branches of trees as the orderly returned.

"Well," said he to the General, "it's only Mother Bickerdyke, sir, with her big lantern; here she comes."

General Grant touched her on the shoulder as she came up, and asked in a low voice, "Is anything wrong, mother?"

"Oh, no!" she replied, "but, you see, General, after I got the poor fellows bound up, and full of warm broth and hot coffee, couldn't, someway, feel satisfied till I was sure, by my own eyesight, that nobody was lying out there in the cold and dark, alone and alive, this awful night; so I've just looked 'em all over, and made sure-but they are dead, quite dead, poor boys!"

She swung her lantern bravely along toward her row of tents, while General Grant, worn and haggard, wrapped his blanket about him, and said, to a staff officer close by, "So, that's the ghost! I wish this country was full of just such."