THE SIEGE OF LEXINGTON.
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faster. Still the deadly fire poured into their ranks. But on they went; awild line of steel, and, what is better than steel, irresistible human will.They reached the hospital, burst open the door, without shot or shout, untilthey encountered the enemy within, whom they hurled out and sent flyingdown the hill. £
Our surgeon was held by the enemy, although we had released the Con-federate surgeon on his mere pledge that he was such. It was a horrible thingto see those brave fellows, mangled and wounded, without skillful hands tobind their ghastly wounds; and Captain David P. Moriarty, who had been aphysician in civil life, was ordered to lay aside his sword and go into thehospital. He went, and through all the siege worked among the woundedwith no other instrument than a razor. Our supply of water had given outand the scenes in the hospital were fearful to witness, wounded men sufferingagonies from thirst and in their frenzy wrestling for the water in whichthe wounded had been bathed.\
On the morning of the 19th the firing was resumed, and continued all day.Our officers had told the men that if they could hold out until the 19th weshould certainly be reenforced, and all through that day the men watchedanxiously for the appearance of the friendly flag under which aid was toreach them, and listened eagerly for the sound of friendly cannon. But theylooked and listened in vain, and all day long they fought without water, theirparched lips cracking, their tongues swollen, and the blood running downtheir chins when they bit their cartridges and the saltpeter entered their blis-tered lips. But not a word of murmuring.
The morning of the 20th broke, but no reenforcements had come, and stillthe men fought on. ☆ The enemy appeared that day with an artifice which
j) The Union force held the building an hour ortwo, when they were again dislodged. In regardto the capture of the hospital by the Confederates,and to its recapture by the Union forces, we findthe following in the ‘‘ History of Lafayette County,Missouri ” (St. Louis: Missouri Historical Com-pany, 1881), a work which, in its treatment of thesiege of Lexington, exhibits impartiality and apainstaking research, the more valuable by reasonof the meagerness of the official reports of theengagement:
“This hospital matter lias been much animadvertedupon by partisan writers on both sides. Colonel Mulli-gan assumed that the Confederates were guilty of abreach of civilized warfare in firing on a hospital; and,consequently, when his men retook the building, havingthis belief firmly fixed in their minds, they gave noquarter, but killed every armed man caught in thebuilding. Some of the minor Confederate officers seemedto labor under the same impression, and claimed, as anexcuse or justification for the capture, that the Federalshad fired upon them from inside the building; but thiswas positively denied at the time by the surgeon, Dr.Cooley, and the priest, Father Butler, who were in thehospital, and by Major Meet, Mr. H. Boothman, andothers, still living in Lexington, who were at the timein that part of the intrenchment nearest the hospital.But, aside from this, the official report of General Harris,made at the time, shows that there was no such reasonfor the capture; but that it was deliberately plannedand ordered as a rightful military movement. The Fed-
erals had no military right to expect that a strategicposition so important to their opponents as the Andersonhouse and premises manifestly were, would or should beleft in quiet possession merely because they had seen fitto use some part of it for hospital purposes. Nevertheless,that first false scent has been followed and barked afterfor twenty years — the Federals erroneously claimingan unjustifiable attack on the hospital, and the Confed-erates erroneously claiming that they were first firedon by Federals from inside the building, and that forthat reason the attack was made.” EDITORS.
\ After the investment, the Union forces beingentirely cut off from the river, “ Marshall’s cavalry-men and some of the teamsters had watered theirhorses out of the cisterns at the college, and therewas but little water left, what there was beingmuddy. Two springs at the foot of the bluffs —one on the north and one on the south — wereclosely guarded by the enemy. . . . One of
Colonel Mulligan’s men, in an account of the battle,said: ‘On the morning of the 19th it rainedheavily for about two hours, saturating ourblankets, which we wrung out into our canteensfor drinking’” (“History of Lafayette County,Missouri ” ).—Editors.
No reenforcements reached Colonel Mulligan,though efforts were made to relieve him. Septem-ber 16th, Sturgis with 1100 men, but without ar-tillery or cavalry, was ordered by General Pope to