SAVANNAH [GA] REPUBLICAN, October 30, 1863, p. 1, c. 2

A Young Girl Killed on the Battle
Field of Chickamauga.

The Brooklyn (N.Y.) News relates the following remarkable incident of the war:
About a twelvemonth since, when disaster everywhere overtook the Union arms, and our gallant sons were falling fast, under that marvelous sword of rebellion, a young lady, scarce nineteen, just from an academy in a sister State, conceived the idea that she was destined by Providence to head our arms to victory, and our nation through successful war. It was at first thought by her parents, a highly respectable family in Willoughby street, that her mind was weakened simply by reading accounts of continued reverses in our arms, and they treated her as they would a sick child. This only had the effect of making her more demonstrative, and her enthusiastic declaration and apparent sincerity, gave the family great anxiety. Dr. B. was consulted, the minister was spoken to, friends advised, and family meetings held, interviews with the young lady by her former companions in the academy were frequent, but nothing could shake the feeling which had possessed her.
It was finally resolved to take her to Michigan. An old maiden aunt accompanied the fair enthusiast, and for a few weeks Ann Arbor became their home. The stern command of her aunt alone prevented her from making her way to Washington to solicit an interview with the President for the purpose of getting command of the United States army. Finally it was found necessary to restrain her from seeing any but her own family, and her private parlor became her prison.
To a high spirited girl this would be unendurable at any time, but to a young lady filled with such a hallucination it was worse than death. She resolved to elude her friends, and succeeded, leaving them clandestinely, and although the most distinguished detectives of the East and the West were employed to find her whereabouts, it was unavailing. None could even conjecture the hiding place. This was last April. She was mourned as lost. The habiliments of mourning were donned by her grief-stricken parents, and a suicide's grave was assumed to be hers. But it was not so. The infatuated girl, finding no sympathy with her friends, resoled to enter the army disguised as a drummer boy, dreaming, poor girl, that her destiny would be worked out by such a mode. She joined the drum corps of a Michigan regiment at Detroit, her sex known only to herself, and succeeded in getting with her regiment to the army of the Cumberland. How the poor girl survived the hardships of the Kentucky campaign, where strong men fell in numbers, must forever remain a mystery.
The regiment to which she was attached had a place in the division of the gallant Van Cleve, and during the bloody battle of last Sunday the fair girl fell, pierced in the left side by a minie ball, and when borne to the surgeon's tent her sex was discovered. She was told by the surgeon that her wound was mortal, and advised to give her name that her family might be informed of her fate. This she finally, though reluctantly, consented to do, and the colonel of the regiment, although suffering himself from a painful wound, became interested in her behalf, and prevailed upon her to let him send a despatch to her father. This she directed in the following manner?
Mr. ____, N______, Willoughby streets, Brooklyn: Forgive your dying daughter. I have but a few moments to live. My native soil drinks my blood. I expected to deliver my country, but the fates would not have it so. I am content to die. Pray, pa, forgive me. Tell ma to kiss my daguerreotype.
Emily.
P.S.—Give my old watch to little Ephh. (The youngest brother of the dying girl.)
We are permitted by the afflicted parents to give the despatch as it came over the wires, suppressing only the family name.
Here, then, is a short incident of war which might read like romance. But to the unhappy family, who are now bowed down with grief, romance loses its attraction, and the actual, sad, eventful history of poor Emily will be a family record for the generation yet to come.

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