Early in the morning of Sunday the 14th, the Brigade fell back, but still farther to the left, where they spent the day in quiet. The temptation to visit the deserted houses in the town was too great for many, and though the orders to the contrary were very imperative, yet not a few of the men left the lines upon various pretexts, and went sight-seeing. The effect of our shots upon the buildings was very severe, and the ruin and desolation thereby occasioned, furnished one of the saddest chapters in that campaign. Family portraits were torn from the walls of the dwellings, costly pianos and elegant furniture broken, marble mantles thrown down, and the cherished keepsakes of once happy families strewn about the floors and streets. In some instances huge shells had entered the buildings and exploded, tearing the walls open, leaving nothing but a mass of ruins; while in others, solid shots, speeding with the velocity of lightning, had passed entirely through the buildings, leaving black-looking but smoothly-cut apertures of the size of one’s head. “I had no temptation to take anything which I found in my searches through these shattered homes, though filled with many articles of great value. I was so impressed by these sad scenes of war, that I hastened back to my regiment, sorry to have witnessed such desolation and ruin,” says a soldier of the regiment, in a letter to his wife. These are the true sentiments of a good soldier, and if they had been more generally entertained by the soldiers of both armies, there would have been far less wanton and needless destruction of property during the war.
It was by a mere accident that the regiment did not become actively engaged in the battle. On the afternoon of the 13th, the division of General Burns was ordered to support General Franklin’s corps; in moving towards Franklin’s position, it became somewhat exposed to the artillery fire of the enemy, and Lieutenant Carpenter of Company H (Twenty-ninth), was slightly, and James L. Pettis of Company E severely, wounded. The other regiments of the Brigade (Christ’s) suffered some loss, the Twenty-seventh New Jersey, which was next the Twenty-ninth in the line, losing seventeen killed and wounded.[40]