CLARA BARTON     DIARIES AND JOURNALS    Dec. 1862Dec. 1862, 7 Fredericksburg
I went to 1st Division - 9th corps
hospital, found 8 officers of the 57
lying on the floor with a blanket under them, 
none over.  had had some crackers once 
that day.  About 200 left of the regt -
- went to the Old National Hotel found 
some hundreds - perhaps 400, western men,
sadly wounded, all on the floors - had nothing
to eat.  I carried a basket of crackers - and
gave two apiece as far as they went - and some pails
of coffee.  they had had no food that day and 
there was none for them.  I saw them again at
ten o'clock at night.  they had had nothing to eat.
 A great number of them were to undergo amputations
sometime, but no surgeons yet.  They had
[not dippers] for one in ten -- I saw no straw
in any hospital, and no mattresses, and [its] men
lay so thick that gangrene was setting in -
and in nearly every hospital there has been 
set apart an [erysipelas??] ward.
There is not room in the city to receive the
wounded - and those that arrived in
yesterday - mostly were left lying
in the wagons all night, at the mercy of the
drivers, it rained very hard-  many died
in the wagons, and their companions, where
they had sufficient strength, had raisedup and thrown them out into the street. 
I saw them lying there early 
this morning - they had been wounded 
two and three days previous, had been
brought from the front and after all this 
lay still another night without care 
or food or shelter, many doubtless fam-
ished after arriving in Fredericksburg.
The city is full of horrors and this 
morning [broad parlors] were thrown 
open, and displayed to the view of the 
rebel occupants the bodies of the dead 
Union soldiers lying beside 
the wagons in which they perished -
Only there most slightly wounded 
have been taken on to W. the roads 
are fearful and it is worth the life of 
a wounded man to move him over 
them. A common ambulance is scarce 
sufficient to get through we passed 
them this morning four miles out of town 
full of wounded with the tongue broken or 
wheels crushed in the middle of a hill 
in mud from one, to two feet deep - what 
was to be done with the moaning suffering oc-
cupants God only knew
Dr. Hitchcock most strongly
and earnestly and indignantly re-
monstrates against any more removals
of broken or amputated limbs he de-
clares it little better than murder,
and says the greater proportion of them
will die, these of not better fed and
afforded mere room and better
air. The surgeons do all they can
but no provision had been made for such a wholesale
slaughter on the part of any
one, and I believe it would be im-
possible to comprehend the magnitude
of the necessity without witnessing it.