About thirty of us had become separated from the company and were chasing a squad of about seventy-five or one hundred.

We had got up so close to them that we hollered: "'Halt there, now, or we'll blow your heads off.' "They turned round with, 'halt yourselves; you -- -- Yankee -- -- -- --' "We looked around at this, and saw that we were not one hundred feet away from the angle of the works, which were filled with Rebels waiting for our fellows to get to where they could have a good flank fire upon them.
There was nothing to do but to throw down our guns and surrender, and we had hardly gone inside of the works, until the Johnnies opened on our brigade and drove it back.

This ended the battle at Spottsylvania Court House." Second Boy (irrelevantly.) "Some day the underpinning will fly out from under the South, and let it sink right into the middle kittle o' hell." First Boy (savagely.) "I only wish the whole Southern Confederacy was hanging over hell by a single string, and I had a knife.".