May 1864

"General Lee was to have a grand review the very day we left Richmond, and quantities of people were to go up by rail to see it. Turner McFarland writes, 'They did go, but they came back faster than they went. They found the army drawn up in battle array.'*
How many of the brave and gay spirits that we saw so lately have taken flight—the only flight they know—and their bodies left dead upon the battlefield."

*At Gordonsville, Virginia, on April 29, 1864, General Lee reviewed the First Corps of the Confederate army, commanded by Longstreet. Three days later, Union troops under General Grant crossed the Rapidan River and, on May 5, the battle of the Wilderness began.