"I have seen enough of the horrors of war."

Capt. Edwin Brown of the 6th Wisconsin of the Iron Brigade was exhausted on the eve of the battle of Antietam. He wrote to his father after the fighting at Gainesville and Second Bull Run: "I have seen enough of the horrors of war, imagination cannot picture it, it is too horrible to write about, I am weary, worn out. I don't weigh over 115 pounds, and would like to seek repose with my family & friends. I have been on every march. In every place of danger, that my Co. & Regt. have. I have been broken so much of any rest, have had such hard fare that I am tired and thin. I tried to get leave of absence for one week to rest in Washington but was refused. What the end will be I can't tell. Probably a fit of sickness...." Brown was shot and killed in the Miller farmyard the morning of Sept. 17, 1862.