The Battle of the Wilderness

VIII

AND now let us turn and deal, in such sequence as may be, with the progress of the battle itself. Lee, whose plans I ’m inclined to think were more clearly defined in his mind than Grant’s were in his, had ordered Ewell to attack at 4.30, — the very hour Grant had first set for resuming the offensive, — his object being to divert attention thereby from his front on the Plank Road, where he meant to make his supreme effort as soon as Longstreet, Anderson, and Mahone should arrive. Lee’s plan, in that it aimed a crushing blow at his adversary’s most vital point, was better and indicative of a clearer if not higher soldierly genius than Grant’s, displayed in his order for a general assault all along the lines.

Ewell accordingly, a little before five o’clock, threw his left brigades against Sedgwick’s right; but Sedgwick flung him back with a vengeance, and then by determined assault forced him to his very utmost to hold his lines. The loss of life on both sides was heavy.

Griffin in his front drove the enemy’s weighty skirmish line back into their breastworks, which, during the night, had been made exceedingly strong, and was assembling batteries to bring their fire on to them before he assaulted. At five o’clock the signal gun at Hancock’s headquarters boomed, and his troops and those of Wadsworth, who had been waiting for it, moved promptly, the latter through the encompassing woods, with Baxter in his centre, Rice on his right, and Cutler on his left, all facing south for the Plank Road.

To Birney, an erect, thoughtful-looking man, wearing a moustache and chin-beard, —the steady light of his eyes would have made him notable in any company, — Hancock assigned the command of his right. It included Birney’s own, Mott’s and Getty’s divisions, together with Owen’s and Carroll’s brigades of Gibbon’s division. He moved with Hays’s old brigade on the right of the road, its front when deployed, owing to its losses of the day before, barely equal to that of an average regiment. On the left was Ward’s of his own division and part of Owen’s brigade. Mott’s second brigade was on the left of Ward and completed Birney’s front line. In the second line was Getty, formed with Wheaton across the road, the valiant Vermonters on his left; and in rear of their fellow brigades was Eustis. Carroll was in two lines of battle behind all the foregoing that were north of the road; and there, too, in line but not moving with him, was the Nineteenth Maine of Webb’s brigade, which had reported to him when the battle was raging, in the twilight of the previous evening. It was under the command of Selden Connor, late Governor of Maine, and rendered great service that day, as it had on many a field. When Carroll moved he told Connor to wait for Webb.

Birney soon struck his foes of the night before, and, after some quick, sharp fighting, drove them from their hastily-thrown-together defenses, consisting of logs, chunks, and brush which they had collected during the night, Ward’s and Hays’s brigades capturing colors and prisoners. Birney, followed by Getty, now pushed on, covering ground very rapidly, giving the enemy no rest, and gathering in prisoners by the score. By this time Hays’s brigade had obliqued to the left, and was wholly on the south side of the road, abreast with its companion brigade. Soon Wadsworth, sweeping everything before him, emerged from the north, and, wheeling to the right, the colors of some of Baxter’s brigade mingling with those of Hays, Owen, and Ward on the south side of the road, joined in the pursuit of the now almost routed men of Heth’s and Wilcox’s divisions, who had experienced such heavy losses the night before.

Birney, finding Wadsworth on the north, drew Getty to the south side of the road. Meanwhile Cutler, his left on the road, was advancing in two or three lines of battle, behind the right of Baxter’s brigade and the left of Rice’s, the latter’s right reaching and curving to the slopes of the Tapp field. The momentum of the advance had not yet been checked.

About this time Lyman reached Hancock at the junction of the Plank and Brock roads, under orders from Meade to report by orderlies the progress of events during the day. On making his mission known, Hancock cried, “Tell General Meade we are driving them most beautifully. Birney has gone in and he is just clearing them out beautifully.” On Lyman reporting that only one of Burnside’s divisions was up when he left headquarters, which, as will be recalled, were within a few hundred yards of the Pike, “I knew it! Just what I expected!” exclaimed Hancock. “ If he could attack now, we could smash A. P. Hill all to pieces! ”

Meantime Wadsworth has crossed the last morass on his side, which, on account of its tortuous course, irregular and in places almost declivitous banks, and densely matted thickets, made a line of strong defense. His and Birney’s fronts are now drawing near their line of farthest advance. Wadsworth is within two or three hundred yards of the Widow Tapp field, and Baxter and Birney are within a like or less distance of the easterly line of the field prolonged. Rice, who asked to be turned toward the enemy when he was dying at Spottsylvania a few days later, has caught sight through the trees of the old field’s pearly light, and is preparing to try to take a battery planted among its starting broom-grass. Birney’s sharpshooters are already abreast of the east line of the field, and can get glimpses of the meagre, huddled buildings, with their splaying peach and knotted plum trees, whose leaves and the sashes in the windows tremble at every discharge of the guns, —and are beginning to place their shots among the cannoneers of Williams’s North Carolina battery, whose right piece is almost, if not quite, in the Plank Road, belching shell and shrapnel, firing over McGowan and Thomas of Wilcox’s division, who, the former on the north, the latter on the south, side of the road, are still contesting, but on the verge of disrupting completely. The field and the day are almost ours.

The Plank Road back to the junction is packed, wounded men making their way alone, trying as best they can to stanch their wounds, some more seriously hurt resting their arms on the shoulders of their fellows, many on stretchers, with appealing eyes, and not a few of them breathing their last.

Mingled with and trailing one another are scores on scores of lank, wild, staring prisoners, quickening their step to get beyond the range of their own men’s guns; and, breasting them all, mounted staff officers coming and going with all possible speed. Edging alongside the road are patient little mules with boxes of ammunition strapped to them; and off in the woods on both sides of the road the dead are scattered, some not yet cold; and off, too, among them is many a poor coward who at heart despises himself but cannot face danger. And yet I have not a bit of doubt that here and there among them is one who, before yielding a moral conviction, would face the fires of the stake with calm equanimity.

And now, over the throng in the road, the motley, fast-breathing, torn shreds and tatters of war, a section of our artillery, with elevations too low and time-fuses cut entirely too short, bursts its shells, shells that are intended for the enemy’s line, where our men are beginning to feel a new pressure, and are fighting with increasing desperation, but where, owing to the character of the woods and the ground they have covered, they are, so far as organization is concerned, in bad shape. There is now scarcely the semblance of continuous and effective formation; regiments and brigades that started in the rear are now in the front and on different flanks; their commanders scattered through the woods in little detached, anxious groups, a staff officer or two, an orderly with the headquarters guidon. Every one is filled with a desire to go ahead, but each one is helpless to remedy the disorganization that is growing greater and more distracting at every moment. Wadsworth and Getty are in or near the road, the former ablaze and looking for a chance to lead a regiment at the first sight of the enemy, — that was his prevailing weakness as a commander, — the latter cool as usual, although each moment tells him now that a crisis is near. What is that screaming warcry they hear at this moment through the increasing roar of the musketry? We need not tell them, they know it well: it is the wild fierce yell of Gregg’s Texans as they greet Lee, and come on to meet almost their extermination. Ward, Owen, and Hays’s old brigade, all that is left of it, keeping step to that trumpet of Duty which ever spoke to their dead leader, have crushed or brushed away Lane, Scales, Walker, and Cooke, and are now crowding Thomas back and on to McGowan, who at last, under withering fire from Wadsworth, is staggering into the field behind the guns.

In line behind Birney is Wheaton, and then the iron-hearted Vermonters. Coming up on the north side of the road is Carroll, his brigade in two lines, the crash of the musketry, the battlefield’s hottest breath, only bringing new fire into his face. Yes, he is coming up with that brigade, which, when the Confederates in the twilight of the second day at Gettysburg broke our lines and were spiking the pieces, Hancock called on to regain them. As one of those gallant regiments, the Fourth Ohio, had boys in it from my old home, with some of whom I played in my childhood, my heart beats again with pride, and tenderness, too, for one of them, a close friend, Nelson Conine, was killed that day and his body never found. Yes, with pride and tenderness my heart beats as I see them following the heroic Carroll.

Webb, Alexander S. Webb, my old West Point instructor, — Heaven bless him! his hair, once so dark, now almost as white as snow, — is leading up his starry brigade, starry for its leader and starry for men like Abbott of the Twentieth Massachusetts and Connor of the Nineteenth Maine that are behind him. Yes, he is leading them up, and nowhere on that field beats a heart with more native chivalry. On, too, are coming to join him my friend, William Francis Bartlett of Pittsfield, the embodiment of his country’s valor, ennobled with a spirit of heavenly, redeeming magnanimity; and that other hero from Massachusetts, Griswold, at the head of the Fifty-sixth. They belong to the division of “Tom” Stevenson, of Burnside’s corps, who is soon to lay down his life. Meade had intended to hold this division at the Pike for a reserve, but Hancock, scenting a crisis, had asked for it.

Sheridan is at Chancellorsville. Torbert is there too, and unwell; and before night has turned the command of his division, the First, over to Merritt. Custer, having set out at two o’clock, has reached the Brock Road where it is intersected by what is known as the Furnace Road, one that rambles by the Welford and Catherine furnaces back to Chancellorsville and forward to the Catharpin Road. He is already feeling pressure from Rosser and FitzLee, who have an eye on that strategic point. Gregg, one of the best and most reliable cavalry commanders, is at Todd’s Tavern. Wilson, who has been drawn in during the night to Chancellorsville for renewal of ammunition and supplies, is posting one of his brigades at Piney Branch church and the other at Alrich’s. His division, the third, had done about all the cavalry fighting of the day before, save that of Gregg, who drove Rosser and Lee back to Corbin’s bridge. I cannot mention those names of Wilson and Custer and Merritt without seeing their faces again as cadets, and feeling a wave of warm memories. God bless the living; and Trumpets, peal once more for me, if you will, over Custer’s grave.

That we may account for what happened on Hancock’s front in the next thirty minutes, during which the tide that had been running our way so irresistibly halted suddenly, and rushed back angrily, let us go to the other side of the field: there we shall see what set it against us and came near sweeping us at last into utter defeat.

But, before we do this, it should be said in justice to Hancock, through whose hands the victory now slips, that at seven o’clock he ordered Gibbon to move with Barlow’s big, fresh division and attack Hill’s right; for by this time he had discovered that a part at least of Longstreet’s corps was in his front up the Plank Road. Unfortunately this order was not carried out: Gibbon said he never got it — two staff officers say they delivered it to him. We cannot resist the vain regret that Barlow was not moved as Hancock wanted him moved, for another story would certainly have had to be written; and I have no doubt that to Hancock’s dying day the longings over this failure kept repeating themselves out of the fogging coast of the Past like a mournful bell on a swinging buoy.

When the narrative parted with Lee about eleven o’clock the night before, he was in his tent on the western border of the Widow Tapp’s field. Whether his night was one of care or sleep we know not, but in the course of the evening he sent his accomplished aide, Colonel Venable, with an order to Longstreet, in bivouac at Richards’s shops, to leave the Catharpin Road and strike over to the Plank and join Hill at an early hour. About eleven o’clock a guide reported to him; at two A. M. he started, following the guide through wood-roads. The guide lost the way, but his divisions reached the Plank Road at daylight, and then, doubling up, quickened their pace, and came down the road abreast. Before them the sun was rising very red, bronzing the tree-tops; behind them was Richard H. Anderson’s division of Hill’s corps, who had bivouacked at Verdierville. In all, fourteen fresh brigades were coming on to strike the hardfought, torn, and wearied divisions of Birney, Wadsworth, and Getty, and to struggle with them and Webb, Carroll, and Owen, for the mastery of the field. And all this time Barlow, Brooke, and Miles, as well as Smyth with his gallant Irishmen, are held, expecting a part if not all of Longstreet’s ten brigades to appear on the Brock Road from the direction of Todd’s Tavern! Does any one who knows Gregg’s record as a soldier think for a moment that he would not have unmasked at a very early hour the first steps of a movement of this kind from his position at Todd’s Tavern? It is true that word had been sent in to Hancock during the night that Longstreet’s corps was passing up the Catharpin Road to attack his left; but, as a matter of fact, his tired troops, as we have seen, having covered twenty-eight miles or more, had gone into bivouac at dark some eight or ten miles west of the tavern, and were in deep, well-earned sleep.

The evidence goes to show that Meade, Hancock, and presumably Humphreys in a measure, all harbored in regard to Longstreet’s movements a notion of him appearing suddenly on the left, which, like a portentous spectre, was forever casting its image on their minds. There is no evidence, however, that any such notion had stolen into Grant’s mind, for, neither at that time, nor ever after, was there magic in the name of Longstreet, Lee, or any other Confederate, for him. (Warren always, when Lee’s movements were uncertain and a matter of discussion, referred to him as “Bobbie” Lee, with an air and tone that said he is not a man to be fooled with.) And so, let Longstreet be on the road to strike him at whatsoever point, Grant wanted Hill and Ewell to be beaten before help could reach them; hence his sound conclusion of the night before, to attack at daylight.

Meanwhile, the sun is mounting and Longstreet’s men are coming on, — not long ago I traveled the same road and the limbs of the trees almost mingled over it, and the woods on each side were still and deep, — can now hear the battle, and are meeting the faint-hearted who always fringe the rear at the first signs of disaster. They are passing the crowded, field-hospitals, and encountering ambulances, horsemen, stragglers, and the ever-increasing stream of wounded; and swerving off through the woods on both sides of the road are the limp fragments of Heth’s division. And now comes one of Lee’s aides, making his way urgently to Parker’s Store to tell the trains to get ready to withdraw, and another to Longstreet to hurry up, for, unless he comes quickly, the day is lost. At this appeal the men break into the doublequick, and Kershaw, whose division is perhaps a hundred yards ahead of that of Field, rides forward with a staff officer of General Wilcox who has been sent to show him his position. But before they reach Wilcox’s line, it breaks, and Kershaw hurries back to meet his division. Out in the old field Lee, Hill, and their staffs are throwing themselves in front of the overthrown, fleeing troops, imploring them to rally. From all accounts, Lee’s face was a sky of storm and anxiety, and well it might be, for Catastrophe was knocking at the door. It is now a question of minutes. The rolling musketry is at its height, one roar after another breaking, sheets of bullets are thridding the air, and a half-dozen resounding cannon are rapidly firing blasting charges of double canister, for our men are close up.

Kershaw throws all of Henagan’s brigade, save the Second South Carolina, well to the left of the road; that he deploys on the right under the fire of Birney’s troops, who are penetrating the woods to the left of the Confederate batteries. His next brigade, Humphreys’s, is rushing up, its left on the south side of the road, Henagan having swung off, making room for him in the immediate front of our most advanced line. Field throws his first brigade, G. T. Anderson’s, to the right of the road; but before this movement could be followed, Longstreet, who was on hand with his usual imperturbable coolness, so says Venable, tells Field to form and charge with any front he can make. Accordingly in an instant he puts his second brigade, the Texans, in line of battle under Gregg.

Just as they start, Lee catches sight of them and gallops up and asks, “ What brigade is this? ” “ The Texas brigade,” comes back. “General Lee raised himself in stirrups,” — so said a courier, in the Land We Love, only a few years after the war, — “uncovered his gray hairs, and with an earnest yet anxious voice exclaimed above the din, ‘My Texas boys, you must charge.’ A yell rent the air,” and the men dashed forward through the wreckage of Hill’s corpse On they go, and now they have passed through Poague’s guns, their muzzles still smoking, when suddenly they hear, “Charge, charge, men!” from a new, full voice, and there behind them is Lee himself, his warm brown eyes aflame. “Come back, come back, General Lee !” cry out Poague’s cannoneers earnestly; he does not heed and rides on; but a sergeant now takes hold of Traveller’s rein. It is a great pity that we have not a picture of that sergeant’s face as he turns the big gray horse and exchanges a firm, kindly glance with his rider. Lee yields to his better judgment and joins Longstreet who, on the knoll near by, is throwing his brigades in as he did at Gettysburg, with the calmness of a man who is wielding a sledge.

Field, the large, handsome “Charley” Field of our West Point days, he who rode so proudly at the head of the escort for the present King of England when he came as a boy to visit the Point, — I wonder, if in the reveries of his old age he was mounted once more, whether it was Benning’s Georgians or the battalion of West Point cadets that he was leading, — oh, what children of Destiny we are! — But on he comes with Benning, who is following the track of the Texans. Perry, commanding Law’s brigade of Field’s division, is turning into the field at doublequick, and beginning to form spryly. His Fifteenth Alabama passes within a few feet of Lee, behind whom, on their horses, are a group of his staff. His face is still flushed — he has just returned from trying to lead the Texans — and his blazing eyes are fixed intently on Kershaw’s leading regiment that is forming line of battle and through whose ranks the retreating masses of Heth’s and Wilcox’s divisions are breaking. Aroused by this jeopardous disorder, he turns suddenly in his saddle toward his staff and, pointing his gloved hand across the road, says in vigorous tones, “Send an active young staff officer down there.” Then, looking down on the ragged men filing by him, he asks kindly, “What men are these?” A private answers proudly, “Law’s Alabama brigade.” Lee bares his gray hairs once more and replies, “God bless the Alabamians!” They, with colors slanting forward, grasp their arms tightly and swing on, the left obliquing till it brushes the young pines along the northern boundary of the old opening. Already from the smoke-turbaned woods come bleeding and mangled Texans and Georgians, their blood striping across the dooryard and the path to the well; but on with increasingspeed toward the dead-strewn front march the brave Alabamians.

And who is this officer on the litter? Benning; Gregg has already been borne to the rear. And now what organization is that we see coming into line, there on the western edge of the field beyond Lee and Longstreet, obstructed by Hill’s retreating fragments? That is “Charley” Field’s largest brigade, made up entirely of South Carolinians. And the colors over them? The Palmetto Flag, the ensign and pride of their contumacious, insubordinate state, the first to nurse the spirit which has led the dear Old Dominion and her sister states into their woe. As usual, it is fluttering mutinously, hankering to engage the Stars and Stripes, which has not forgotten that this Palmetto ensign flaunted over the first guns to fire on it, as it flew, the emblem of Union and Peace, flew warm with the hopes of the obscure of all civilized lands, and dreaming of the day when every flag of the world shall do it homage. And at its very sight the nation’s colors flame anew with righteous hostility; and where or whensoever seen, in the Wilderness or at Gettysburg or Chickamauga, with an eagle’s scream the old banner of Washington’s day has cried, so to speak, “Come on, Palmetto Flag!” And lo! to-day, to the credit of our common natures, the two banners are reconciled.

The onset of Gregg’s Texans was savage, — it could not have been less after asking Lee to go back. They dashed at Wadsworth’s riddled front, through which the battery had been cutting swaths; and besides that, two 12-pound guns and one 24-pound howitzer had run forward into the Plank Road and begun to pour canister into his huddled and crumbling flanks. Fatigue and want of coherence were breaking down the fighting power of his men, yet they met this shock with great fortitude. Cope, and he was right there, said in a dispatch to Warren, “Wadsworth has been slowly pushed back, but is contesting every inch of the ground”; and it was not until Benning and Perry struck them that they began to waver, then break, and finally disrupt in great confusion. About half of them, under Rice and Wadsworth, fled back across the morass to the last line of logs and chunks from which they had driven the enemy; the other half with Cutler took the course they had come the previous evening. The narrative has already told where they were met.

While these troops were breaking, Carroll, not yet engaged, was ordered by Birney in person to send some of his brigade back to the north side, he having moved by flank across to the south of the road, having heard heavy firing in that direction. He sent the Eighth Ohio, Fourteenth Indiana, and Seventh West Virginia; and, notwithstanding their proverbial gallantry, they, too, with Wadsworth were soon swept away, what was left of them drifting back to the junction.

Thus, apparently, at that moment the north side of the road was clear for Field; but he could not push his advantage, for Birney, Ward, and Coulter, who had taken Baxter’s place after he was wounded, held Kershaw stubbornly. Moreover, Owen, followed by the Nineteenth Maine of Webb’s brigade, who had reported to Carroll the night before, had gained a position on the immediate south side of the road, and was firing into Benning’s and Perry’s right, causing them to suffer severely.

“ The enemy held my three brigades so obstinately,” says Kershaw, “that urged forward by Longstreet, I placed myself at the head of the troops and led in person a charge of the whole command, which drove the enemy to and beyond their original lines.” This position was just about opposite to where Wadsworth was now collecting the fragments of his command on the north side of the road, and was held by Carroll and the Vermonters, and these men Kershaw could not budge. Grimes and Wofford, who had advanced on Kershaw’s right, had not made material headway against McAlister on Mott’s left, but they had discovered what finally almost gave them the day, that our lines did not extend to the unfinished railroad, in fact they did not reach over a half-mile, if that, from the Plank Road.

In the midst of Kershaw’s onslaught Getty was wounded, and Lyman in his notes says, “Getty rode past me looking pale; to my inquiry he said, ‘I am shot through the shoulder, I don’t know how badly.’ A man [goes on Lyman] of indomitable courage and coolness. One of his aides (the fairhaired one) shot through the arm, the other, his horse shot. Immortal fighting did that Second Division, Sixth Corps, on those two bloody days.”

While Carroll, the Vermont brigade, and the stout-hearted of all the broken commands that had rallied behind them, were standing off Kershaw, up the road comes Webb at the head of his gallant brigade. Wadsworth and Birney are there, trying to form troops for an advance. “There were several commands and no orderly arrangement as to lines, front, etc.,” says Governor Connor. On reportingto Birney, Webb is directed to deploy on the right of the road and move forward and join Getty, whom Birney, just before he was wounded, had asked to send some strength to the north side of the road. But after some hard fighting, the troops he had sent had been forced back and had gathered on the original line of battle along the Brock Road. Webb deploys, and on he comes; the Nineteenth Maine have gladly reunited with their comrades and been put on the extreme right. On the left is the Twentieth Massachusetts under Abbott. “Waved my hand to Abbott,” says Lyman, “as he rode past at the head of the Twentieth, smiling gayly.” Smile on, dear heroic young fellow! Your smile will play on many a page, and the Wilderness holds it dear; for her heart is with you, and in years to come, when the dogwood and the wild roses are blooming, she will softly breathe your name through the treetops as she recalls that smile. Oh, how close we are to woods and streams, the traveling winds, the banded evening clouds, and, yes, even the distant stars!

On comes Webb, his line strung out through the woods, no skirmishers ahead, for he is expecting momentarily to come up with Getty, when suddenly there is a terrific crash, causing a fearful loss. But, standing among the wounded and the dying, his brigade holds fast and returns the fire; the enemy are just across the morass, in places not more than twenty or thirty yards away. He has come squarely up against what is left of Gregg’s, Benning’s, and about all of Perry’s fresh brigade. Woolsey of Meade’s staff sends back word: “7.27 A. M. Webb, who went in a short time since, is doing very well. The fire is very heavy, but not gaining. Wounded returning on Plank Road. 7.35. The fire is slackening and our men cheer. 7.40. The firing is heaviest on the right of the Plank Road [Webb’s]; our men are cheering again.” And there they battle back and forward amid a continuous roar of musketry; not they alone, for Kershaw, knowing that Lee’s and Longstreet’s eyes are on him, is crowding his men desperately against Carroll’s and Birney’s and Mott’s iron-hearted veterans, and those ever steadfast sons of the Green Mountain State. The barked, slivered, and bullet-pitted trees around them are wreathed in smoke, and, like sheaves of wheat, bodies are lying on the leaf-strewn ground, unconscious now of the deafening crashes with which the gloomy Wilderness jars far and wide, and roars to the overarching, listening sky.

The enemy having appeared on Webb’s right in force, he changed front to rear at double-quick on his left regiment, the Twentieth Massachusetts, and stood them off.

Meanwhile Hancock, having been notified by Meade that Burnside was about to attack Field’s flank, sent for Wadsworth and told him that he had ordered three brigades, Webb’s, Ward’s, and Bartlett’s of Stevenson’s division, to report to him, and wished that he with these additional troops would carry, if possible, the enemy’s position on the right-hand side of the road. The intrepid Wadsworth, returning to the front, and seeing the Twentieth Massachusetts athwart the road where Webb had left it, his vehement spirit set ablaze by Hancock’s ardent and communicative aggressiveness, asked in pungent, challenging tones, “Cannot you do something here?” Abbott hesitating, mindful of Webb’s order to hold that point at all hazards, the high-spirited Wadsworth, who by nature was more an individual combatant than the cool and trained commander, leaped the little barrier of rotten planks torn from the decaying road-bed, and of course Abbott and the Twentieth followed him. Wadsworth’s horse was killed, and the regiment was met immediately with a withering volley. After striving in vain to drive the enemy, Abbott had to desist from further efforts. He then ordered the men to lie down so as to escape a wicked, sputtering fire; but he himself, young and handsome, coolly and without bravado walked back and forth before his line, his eyes and face lit by the finest candle that glows in the hand of Duty. “ My God, Schaff,” said to me the brave Captain Magnitsky of the Twentieth, with moistened eyes, “I was proud of him as back and forth he slowly walked before us.” A shot soon struck him and he fell. They tenderly picked up the mortally wounded, gallant gentleman and carried him to the rear.

Just then my friend Bartlett’s regiment, and that of Griswold, were making connection with Webb’s wheeling brigade, for he was now changing front forward again. On their way to him they had passed over our own and Confederate wounded, and had shared their canteens alike with the suffering. One of Griswold’s— of which Stephen M. Weld of Boston was lieutenant-colonel, who, when Griswold was killed, took command — gave drink like a good Samaritan to a wounded Confederate, who, as soon as the line passed him, seized a musket and began to fire on the very men who had been kind to him. With righteous indignation they turned and exterminated the varmint; and then on with renewed determination to have it out with their country’s enemies. When Bartlett reached Webb he went forward with him, under his command, and two more valiant hearts were not beating that day. Wadsworth, his zeal ablaze, catching sight of Bartlett’s colors flying defiantly in the face of Field’s oncoming veterans, called on him in person to charge over some troops weakened by repulses, who were hesitating — and he and his men responded well. I can hear Bartlett’s voice ringing, “Forward,” and see his spare, well-bred face lit up dauntlessly by those intense blue eyes ; eyes I have seen glint more than once with pleasant humor, for he had, besides courage, the spirit of comradeship, that pleasant, cloud-reflecting stream, rippling and green-banked, that flows through our natures. But in a little while a shot struck him in the temple, and he followed his college friend Abbott to the field hospital; — he had already lost his left leg at Yorktown, and been seriously wounded in two places leading an assault at Port Hudson.

Wadsworth, after the charge, exclaimed, “Glorious!” but, like all the gains, theirs was temporary. For Field, having fresh veterans coming up from where Burnside should have held them, drove the line back to its original position ; yet, try as he might, Webb finally fought him to a standstill. And so was it on the other side of the road: Carroll, Grant, and Birney’s remnants, and McAlister of Mott’s division, had thrown Kershaw and Wofford back till they, too, were glad to stop for a while.

At the mention of McAlister’s name my sense of humor asks, “Can’t you stop the narrative long enough to tell about General—— ?” This general represented Gibbon’s lone response to Hancock’s order to attack at seven o’clock up the bed of the unfinished railroad with Barlow’s big division. He was a whiskey-pickled, lately-arrived, blusterous German, and when he reached McAlister on the left of the line, he wanted to burst right through, saying his orders were “To find the enemy wherever he could find him and whip him!!!” Having blown this trombone Germanic blast, he spurred his nag and dashed at the “rebels.” Pretty soon he sent to McAlister to come up and relieve him, which McAlister refused to do, when back came part of the brigade running and Blank with them. “I want to get ammunition,” he said. “Where?” asks McAlister. “Away back in the rear,” he exclaimed, and off he went. “That was the last I saw of him or his command,” says McAlister. Notwithstanding there is a considerable strain of German blood in my veins, there is something about the swelling assertive military airs of that nationality which is very humorous and at the same time very nauseating. But I suppose really that McAlister ought to have given the poor fellow a little aid, if, for no other reason, than that his land sent so many Hessians here during the Revolution.

When the narrative was halted it was saying that the Confederates and ourselves were glad to stop for a while. It was now going on ten o’clock, and there was a lull all along the lines. And while it lasts, let us turn to Hancock, not forgetting that the dread of Longstreet on his flank was still haunting him, and we shall see that, while Birney and Wadsworth and Webb were engaging so fiercely, he was beset with distracting and untoward happenings “in good measure, pressed down and shaken together and running over.” At nine o’clock, while his attention is strained on the renewed offensive up the Plank Road, a dispatch from Humphreys is handed to him: “Sheridan has been ordered to attack Longstreet’s flank and rear by the Brock Road.” “ Flank and rear by the Brock Road! ” he repeats to himself. Humphreys must have located him definitely, and, to help confirm this halfway expected news, for prediction has been pointing her finger that way steadily, the distant boom of Custer’s guns comes through the smothering timber; and the footsteps of the haunting peril that has been dogging him all the morning are closer than ever.

(To be continued.)