HOW IT FEELS TO KILL A MAN.

Thames Star, Volume xv, Issue 4776, 30 April 1884, Page 2

HOW IT FEELS TO KILL A MAN.

"I believe I must have killed a dozen of the enemy during my three years' service in the army," said General Charles F. Manderson, of Nebraska. " One gets uaed to that sort of business, just as a surgeon becomes hardened and calloused in his profession. The first man that I killed was before Richmond, when Me-" Clellan was in command. I was doingpicket duty late one night, near the bank of a creek, and had been cautioned to be especially watchful, as an attack was expected. I carried my musket at half-cock, and was startled by every rustle the wind made among the trees and dead leaves. It was sometime after midnight that I saw a Confederate cavalryman dash down the opposite side of the creek iv my direction. As he was opposite me I fired upon the horse and it fell. The cavalryman, regained his feet in a moment and had drawn his pistols. I called to him to surrender, but his only reply was a discharge from each revolver, one bullet iuflicting a flesh wound in my arm. Then I let him have it in the breast. He leaped three feet in the air and fell with his face down. I knew I had finished him. I ran and jumped across the creek, picked him up, and laid him on his back. The blood was running out of his nose and mouth, and poured in a torrent from the ragged hole in his breast. In less than it takes to tell it he was dead, without having said a word. Then my head began to swim, and I was sick at my stomach. I was overcome by an indescribable horror of the deed I had done. I trembled all over, and felt as faint and weak as a kitten. It was with great difficulty that I managed to get into camp. There they laughed at me, but it was weeks before my nervous system recovered from the shock. Even ia my dreams I saw the pale fac9 of the dying cavalryman, and the spectre haunted me like a Nemesis long after I had gotten over the first shock of the affair. It was simply horrible, but in time I recovered, and at the close of the war I was quite as indifferent to the sacrifice of human life as you could imagine."