attended him told me, if I remember right, that a ball passed entirely
through his body carrying with it portions of his clothing, if such
a thing were possible; but, with his usual nonchalance he laughed at
wounds and while still weak and emaciated went back to his place
again in the following spring at the head of a brigade. He underwent
Chancellorsville, and for the Union cause it was a great misfortune
that his fine brigade was taken from its place on Hooker's right
before Stonewall Jackson made his charge. Had Barlow been there
he might have done something to stay the disaster. At Gettysburg,
however, he was in the front in command of a division. An old soldier,
a lieutenant that day under Barlow, told me that he had charge of the
ambulances of the division and on the march near Emmitsburg Barlow put
into the lieutenant's especial charge the ambulance of his wife who,
with a premonition of calamity, insisted on being near at hand to
help. When the battle joined and Gordon swept overwhelmingly upon
Barlow's division, the lieutenant had difficulty in restraining Mrs.
Barlow from rushing at once upon the field among the fighting men. He
held her back almost by force but she remained close at hand.
Barlow was again desperately wounded, so hurt that his death seemed
inevitable, and when the faithful wife, at last making her way,
presented herself even in the rebel lines with a petition for her
husband, supposed to be dying, Gordon chivalrously gave him up. It
was magnanimous, but for him ill-timed. Again Barlow laughed at his
wounds. In May, 1864, he was in the field at the head of the first
division of Hancock's corps and on the 12th of May performed the
memorable exploit, breaking fairly the centre of Lee's army and
bringing it nearer to defeat than it ever came until the catastrophe
at Appomattox. He captured the Spottsylvania salient together with the
best division of the army of northern Virginia, Stonewall Jackson's
old command, two generals, thirty colours, cannon, and small arms to