The Battle of the Wilderness

IX

AND now on the very heels of Humphreys’s dispatch, his trusted aide, Colonel Morgan, reports that the enemy are advancing on the Brock Road. This news set Hancock’s ardent nature on fire and I think I can see him as it burst into flame; for during one of the charges at Spottsylvania I was near him and felt the blaze of his fierce activity. He orders Birney to send a brigade at once to Gibbon (bear in mind that it is a little after nine, and that we have seen that Birney has need of every man along his bullet-sheeted front). Birney detaches Eustis’s brigade of the Sixth Corps, and starts it toward the junction. A few minutes, and Hancock tells Carroll to send a regiment now; and, probably hearing another of Custer’s guns, he sets the resolute Brooke in motion, and with him Coulter, who has gathered the remains of Baxter’s brigade, the one which the light-haired and light-mustached, medium-sized and trim Kershaw first struck in Lee’s appalling hour. Before Eustis reaches the junction, along comes Leasure’s delayed brigade of Stevenson’s division, and Hancock tells them to keep right on down the Brock Road and help Gibbon;— Eustis, now on hand and seeing Leasure’s column hurrying by, knows he must not break through, and halts. Hancock, having a moment to think, concludes that Gibbon, aided by Tidball with practically all the artillery of the corps, can take care of Longstreet, and directs Eustis to countermarch and go back to his fellows under Wadsworth and Birney.

Only a moment’s respite for Hancock, and here comes ill-faced Trouble again. What is it, creature? Humphreys orders you to take immediate steps to repair the break the enemy has made through Warren’s left (referring to Cutler). Off he propels an aide to Birney to send two brigades to his right to fill Cutler’s gap. And that order is no sooner sent than here comes a message from Meade, saying that he hopes that nothing will delay or prevent his attacking simultaneously with Burnside!

Meet Longstreet as he comes up the Brock Road! attack simultaneously with Burnside! detach two brigades from Birney to fill a gap! Surely Hancock’s measure of trials was pressed down and running over ; and lo! Longstreet was not on the Brock Road at all, there was no gap in Warren’s lines, and Burnside was nowhere near attacking, simultaneously or otherwise. Meade ought to have remembered how long it took “Old Burn” to get ready at Antietam.

But cheer up, gallant Hancock! The hour-glass of your tormenting perplexities is about run out. Gibbon has discovered at last (10.10 A. M.) that the enemy he had seen looming up on the Brock Road are several hundred whitish, hospital-bleached convalescents, who, by some stupid, neglectful provost-marshal at Chancellorsville, have been allowed to follow the corps’ march of the day before around by way of Todd’s Tavern.

On the convalescents’ crossing into his lines I have no doubt that the wrinkle-browed and closely-cropped, reddish-bearded Gibbon breathed a long, deep sigh of relief. Nor have I any doubt that when Hancock got the news, the recording angel suddenly found himself busy, and, when his pen could n’t keep up, looked downward, — apparently there was no end to the emphatic procession in sight, — and, feeling kindly toward Hancock, knowing he was a brave, big-hearted fellow who would reach his hand compassionately to a stricken enemy, and that he had been badly pestered, closed the books and deliberately turned on an electrical buzzer, and cut off all communication with the Wilderness. And behold, when the books were opened again, some great hand, on the plea of the Centurion, I have no doubt, had written “Excused” after every one of the entries.

Meanwhile the lull that has heretofore been referred to is going on, and Wadsworth has dismounted and is alone with Monteith of his staff, who says, “He [Wadsworth] told me that he felt completely exhausted and worn out, that he was unfit (physically) to command and felt that he ought in justice to himself and his men to turn the command over to Cutler. He asked me to get him a cracker, which I did.”

And while this gray-haired patriot and gentleman and the North’s nearest aristocrat and nobleman is resting for the minutes that are left of his cultivated and heroic life, let us see what advantage Longstreet was taking of this ominous lull.

General M. L. Smith, a New Yorker and a distinguished graduate of West Point, doing engineer duty with Lee’s army, had examined our left, and, finding it inviting attack, so reported to Longstreet. Now, there is on Longstreet’s staff a tall, trim, graceful young Georgian, with keen dark eyes and engaging face, whose courage and ability to command Longstreet knows well, for he has been with him on every one of the big fields. His name is Sorrel, and his gallant clay, the long, pendulant, gray Southern moss swaying softly over it, is lying in the cemetery at Savannah. His Recollections of a Confederate Staff Officer has for me, like all the books I love, a low, natural, wild music; and, as sure as I live, the spirits who dwell in that self-sown grove called Literature were by his side when he wrote the last page of his Recollections, and his pen kept step with his beating heart. Longstreet, on hearing Smith’s report, called Sorrel to him, and told him to collect some scattered brigades, form them in a good line on our left, and then, with his right pushed forward, to hit hard. “But don’t start till you have everything ready. I shall be waiting for your gun-fire, and be on hand with fresh troops for further advance,” said Longstreet.

Sorrel picked up Anderson’s, Wofford’s, Davis’s of Heth’s, and Mahone’s brigades, and led them to the old unfinished railroad bed; and, having stretched them out on it, formed them, facing north, for advance. Of course, had Gibbon obeyed Hancock’s order, this movement of Sorrel’s would not have been feasible; as it was, the coast was clear. On Birney’s left, as everywhere along the front, our forces were in several lines, and those of the first had changed places with the second, taking advantage of the little fires at which they had boiled some coffee to boil some for themselves; for many of the troops had not had a bite since half-past three in the morning, and it was now past eleven. Save the skirmish-line, both lines were lying down, and not expecting any danger, when suddenly, from the heavy undergrowth, Sorrel’s three widely-winged brigades burst on their flank with the customary yell, and before our people could change front, or, in some cases, even form, they were on them. Fighting McAlister tried his best to stay the tempest, and so did others, many little groups of their men selling their lives dearly; for the color-bearers planted their banners on nearly every knoll, and brave young fellows would rally around them; but being overpowered, panic set in, and the lines melted away.

As soon as Carroll, Lewis A. Grant, Birney, Webb, and Wadsworth heard Sorrel’s quick volleys, they were all on their feet at once, for the character of the firing and the cheers told them that Peril had snapped its chain and was loose. In a few minutes fleeing individuals, then squads, and then broken regiments, began to pour through the woods from the left.

Kershaw and Field, being notified by Longstreet to resume the offensive as soon as they should hear Sorrel, now pressed forward, seriously and exultingly active. Wadsworth, to stay the threatening disaster (for that lunatic, Panic, travels fast, and every officer of experience dreads its first breath), flew to the Thirty-seventh Massachusetts at the head of Eustis’s brigade, which was just getting back from the junction, and ordered Edwards, a resolute man, to throw his regiment across the front of Field, who, with several pieces of artillery raking the road, was advancing. The Thirty-seventh moved quickly by flank into the woods, and then, undismayed, heard the command “ Forward.” And with it went my friends, Lieutenants Casey and Chalmers, and that pleasant and true one of many a day, Captain “Tom” Colt of Pittsfield, whose mother was a saint. “You have made a splendid charge!” exclaimed Wadsworth, and so they had — the ground behind them showed it; they thrust Field back, gaining a little respite for all hands before disaster; and very valuable it proved to be, for some of the broken commands thereby escaped utter destruction.

While Field and Kershaw assailed Carroll, Birney, and Wadsworth fiercely, fire was racing through the woods, adding its horrors to Sorrel’s advance; and with the wind driving the smoke before him, he came on, sweeping everything. In the midst of the raging havoc, Webb, under instructions from Wadsworth, now in an almost frantic state of mind, is trying to align some troops beyond the road so as to meet Sorrel, whose fire is beginning to scourge the flanks of Carroll and the Green Mountain men, through whom and around whom crowds of fugitives, deaf to all appeals to rally, were forcing their way to the rear. But the organizations, so severely battered in the morning, were crumbling so fast, and the tumult was so high, that Webb saw it was idle to expect they could hold together in any change of position; he returned to his command, and quickly brought the Fifty-sixth Massachusetts, Griswold’s regiment, alongside the road. Fortunately his Nineteenth Maine, withdrawn during the lull to replenish its ammunition, had been wheeled up by the gallant Connor at the first ominous volley from the South. They had barely braced themselves on the road before Carroll, and then the old Vermont brigade, had to go; and now Connor and Griswold open on Sorrel, checking him up roundly.

Seeing his lines falter. Sorrel dashed up to the color-bearer, “Ben” May of the Twelfth Virginia, and asked for the colors to lead the charge. “We will follow you,” avowed the smiling little youth spiritedly, refusing to give them up; and so they did, he and his regiment. Meanwhile, Wadsworth at Webb’s right, and only a few paces behind some troops, is flamingly urging them on. Hidden by smoke and woods, Mahone is coming directly toward him, and at the short range of twenty yards pours in a volley. Wadsworth’s men go down and he with them, his brain spattering the coat of Earl M. Rogers, his aide at his side. The rein of Wadsworth’s horse, after the general fell, caught in a snag, and, Rogers’s horse having been killed by the volley, he vaulted into the saddle, and escaped through the flying balls. Wadsworth lies unconscious within Mahone’s lines; his heart, that has always beaten so warmly for his country, is still beating, but hears no response now from the generous, manly, truth-viewing brain. I believe that morning, noon, and night the bounteous valley of the Genesee, with its rolling fields and tented shocks of bearded grain, holds Wadsworth in dear remembrance.

Everything on the right of the Nineteenth Maine, Fifty-sixth and Thirtyseventh Massachusetts is gone, and they, with fragments of other gallant regiments that have stood by them, will soon have to go, too, for Sorrel comes on again with a rush. Griswold, pistol in hand, advances the colors to meet him, and is killed almost instantly; Connor, on foot, and in the road, is struck and, as he falls, Webb calls out, “Connor, are you hit?” “Yes, I’ve got it this time.” And his men sling him in a blanket and carry him to the rear. Webb, seeing the day is lost, tells the bitterly-tried regiments to scatter, and the wreckage begins to drift sullenly far and wide, some in Cutler’s tracks, and some toward where Burnside is still pottering; but naturally the main stream is back on both sides of the Plank to the Brock Road, and there it straggles across it hopelessly toward Chancellors vi lie.

All of Hancock’s right wing smashed to pieces! And the Plank Road is Lee’s! Yes, the Plank Road is Lee’s,—and the Brock, the strategic key, is within his grasp too! For Longstreet, followed by fresh brigades at double-quick, is coming down the Plank Road determined to clinch the victory!! His spirits are high, and Field’s hand still tingles with his hearty grasp congratulating him on the valor of his troops. Jenkins, a sensitive, enthusiastic South Carolinian, “abreast with the foremost in battle and withal an humble Christian,” says Longstreet, has just thrown his arms around Sorrel’s shoulder,— for the graceful hero has ridden to meet his chief, and tell him the road is clear, — and says, “Sorrel, it was splendid, we shall smash them now.” And then, after conferring with Kershaw, who had already been directed to follow on and complete Hancock’s overthrow, Jenkins rides up to Longstreet ’s side and with overflowing heart says, “I am happy. I have felt despair of the cause for some months, but am relieved and feel assured that we shall put the enemy back across the Rapidan before night.” Put the enemy back across the Rapidan! The Army of the Potomac defeated again, and Grant’s prestige gone!!

Yes! It is a great moment for Jenkins and for them all. The cloudy sky that has been so dark has rifted open, and the spire of the Confederacy’s steeple dazzles, once more in sunshine. And while it dazzles and youth comes again into the wan cheek of the Confederacy, gaunt Slavery, frenzied with delight over her prospective reprieve, snatches a cap from a dead, fair-browed Confederate soldier, and clapping it on her coarse, rusty, gray-streaked mane, begins to dance in hideous glee out on the broom-grass of the Widow Tapp’s old field.

Dance on, civilization’s most repugnant and doomed creature! From amid the oaks the inexorable eye of the Spirit of the Wilderness is on you! Dance on! For in a moment Longstreet, like “Stonewall,” will be struck down by the same mysterious hand, by the fire of his own men, and the clock in the steeple of the Confederacy will strike twelve. And, as its last stroke peals, knelling sadly away, a tall spare figure, — where are the tints in her cheeks now?—clad in a costly shroud, and holding a dead rose in her hand, will enter the door of History. And you, you, Slavery, will be dying, gasping, your glazing eyes wide open, staring into the immensity of your wrongs. And when your last weary pulse has stopped, and your pallid lips are apart and set for good and all, no friendly hand will be there to close them,— oh, the face you will wear! — the eye of the Spirit of the Wilderness will turn from you with a strange, impenetrable gleam. For White and Black, bond and free, rich and poor; the waving trees, the leaning fields with their nibbling flocks, the mist-cradling little valleys with their grassy-banked runs, gleaming and murmuring in the moonlight; the tasseling corn and the patient, neglected, blooming weed by the dusty roadside, —all, all are the children of the same great, plastic, loving hand which Language, Nature’s first and deepest interpreter, her widely listening ear catching waves of sound from the immeasurable depths of the Firmament, reverently called God; all, all are bound by common ties.

The first warning that Hancock had that something serious had happened was the sight of Frank’s brigade, and the left of Mott’s division, tearing through to the Brock Road on Barlow’s right. But now the full stream of wreckage begins to float by him at the junction, and he realizes that disaster has come to his entire right front. “A large part of the whole line came back,” says Lyman. “They have no craven terror, but for the moment will not fight, nor even rally. Drew my sword and tried to stop them, but with small success.”

Colonel Lyman, a tall, lean man with a gracious, naturally cordial manner, an energetic and careful observer, and far away the best educated officer connected with any staff in the army, rode in and reported the state of affairs to Meade, who at once, realizing the appalling possibilities, directed Hunt to place batteries on the ridge east of the run, the trains at Chancellorsville to fall back to the river, and Sheridan to draw in his cavalry to protect them. “Grant, who was smoking stoically under a pine,” says Lyman, “expressed himself annoyed and surprised that Burnside did not attack—especially as Comstock was with him as engineer and staff officer to show him the way.”

Meanwhile men were pouring from the woods like frightened birds from a roost. The tide across the Brock Road was at its height, and it was only when Hancock appealed to Carroll, who had halted his brigade on arriving at the road, to give him a point for rallying, that he and his staff met with any encouragement. “ Troops to the right and left of the brigade,” states the historian of the Fourth Ohio, “were falling rapidly back beyond it.” Carroll rode among the dispirited, trailing groups, shouting, “For God’s sake, don’t leave my men to fight the whole rebel army. Stand your ground!” For he expected Lee to strike at any moment. But how strange! Why do his fresh troops not come on and burst through while Hancock, Carroll, Lyman, and Rice, and scores of officers, are trying to rally the men? Leasure, from his position down the Brock Road, with deployed brigade, his right one hundred paces from the breastworks, has traversed the entire front, encountering but a single detached body of the enemy. What does the continuing silence mean? Certainly something mysterious has happened. Why do they lose the one great chance to complete the victory?

A few words will explain it all. The Sixty-first Virginia, of Mahone’s brigade, had approached within forty or fifty yards of the road, and, through the smoke and intervening underbrush, seeing objects emerging on to it from the bushes on the opposite side, mistook them for enemies and let drive a scattering volley. What they saw was a part of their fellow regiment, the Twelfth Virginia, who with the colors had crossed the road in pursuit of Wadsworth’s men and were returning. The volley intended for them cut right through Longstreet, Kershaw, Jenkins, Sorrel, and quite a number of staff and orderlies, who just then came riding by, killing instantly General Jenkins, Captain Foley, several orderlies, and two of the Twelfth’s color-guard. But of all the bullets in this Wilderness doomsday volley the most fated was that which struck Longstreet, passing through his right shoulder and throat, and almost lifting him from his saddle. As the unfortunate man was reeling, about to fall, his friends took him down from his horse and propped him against a tree. Field, who was close by, came to his side, and Longstreet, although faint and bleeding profusely, told him to go straight on; and then dispatched Sorrel with this message to Lee: “Urge him to continue the movement he [Longstreet] was engaged on; the troops being all ready, success would surely follow and Grant, he firmly believed, be driven back across the Rapidan.”

They carried Longstreet — thought at the time by all to be mortally wounded — to the rear, and just as they were putting him into an ambulance, Major Stiles, from whom I have already quoted, came up; and, not being able to get definite information as to the character of his wound, only that it was serious, — some saying he was dead, — turned and rode with one of the staff who in tears accompanied his chief.

“I rode up to the ambulance and looked in,” says the Major. “They had taken off Longstreet’s hat and coat and boots. I noticed how white and domelike his great forehead looked, how spotless white his socks and his fine gauze undervest save where the blackred gore from his throat and shoulder had stained it. While I gazed at his massive frame, lying so still except when it rocked inertly with the lurch of the vehicle, his eyelids frayed apart till I could see a delicate line of blue between them, and then he very quietly moved his unwounded arm and, with his thumb and two fingers, carefully lifted the saturated undershirt from his chest, holding it up a moment, and heaved a deep sigh. He is not dead, I said to myself.”

Longstreet was taken to the home of his friend, Erasmus Taylor, not far from Orange Court House, and, as soon as he could stand the journey, to a hospital in Lynchburg. Although not fully recovered from his wounds, he rejoined the army about the last of October, after it had taken what proved to be its final stand before Richmond.

Field, it appears from one of his letters, joined Lee and Longstreet when they reached him on their way to the front, and rode beside Lee. On coming to an obstruction of logs that had been thrown across the road by their troops in the early morning, or later by ours, Lee stopped, while Field, at his suggestion, gave the necessary orders for the removal of the logs so that the two guns which were following them could pass. Meanwhile Longstreet with his party rode on, and within fifty yards met with the fate already chronicled. Had the road been clear, Lee would have been with them and received the fire of that fateful volley. But fortunately, not there, not in the gloom of the Wilderness, but at his home in Lexington and after his example had done so much to guide the Southern people into the paths of resignation and peace, was his life to end.

When the nature of the Wilderness is taken into account, the situation into which Lee was plunged in a twinkling, so to speak, by the wounding of Longstreet, was, in the military sense, one of formidable confusion. Behind him in the narrow road, clogged throughout by prisoners, limping wounded, and stretcher-bearers, — who that saw them once will ever forget the pale faces and appealing eyes of their burdens?—were the guns and Jenkins’s big brigade marching in column. Field’s and Kershaw’s divisions were advancing in two or more lines of battle at right angles to the road. On Lee’s right, and also parallel to the road, were Sorrel’s flanking brigades, all in more or less disorder, moving by flank to the rear for the time being, preparatory to the execution of Longstreet’s order for a second attack on Hancock’s left, evey step they take bringing them and the advancing organizations nearer utter confusion. Moreover, and adding greatly to his difficulties, the woods were enveloped in heavy, obscuring smoke.

Such were the circumstances into which Lee was suddenly thrown at that hour of momentous importance. It was an unusual and chafing trial, — I recall no instance during the war when any commander of a large army found himself in a like situation, — one that took him out of his sphere of general command and imposed upon him the burden of details which ordinarily falls on subordinates who, as a rule, from their intimate relations with officers and troops, can more readily deal with them than the commander himself. No doubt Longstreet’s plans were told to Lee by Sorrel and Field, but, whatsoever they were and whomsoever he should designate to carry them out, obviously nothing could be done till the lines were untangled; and so he directed Field to re-form them with a view to carrying the Brock Road, on which his heart was resolutely set.

Field at once began his troublesome task, and, while he is getting his troops ready for the ordeal, Lee giving him verbal orders from time to time, let us turn to the operations of our cavalry, which, for the first time in the history of the Federal army, was on the immediate field with the infantry in a well organized and compact body and under an impetuous leader. Grant had called Sheridan to the command from the western army, and no mistake was made in his choice.

In his relentlessness, boisterous jollity in camp, and in a certain wild, natural intrepidity and brilliancy in action, Sheridan came nearer the old type of the Middle Ages than any of the distinguished officers of our day. I need not give details as to his appearance, for his portrait is very familiar. The dominating features of his fleshy face with its subdued ruddiness were prominent, full, black, flashing eyes, which at once caught your attention and held it. His forehead was well developed, a splendid front for his round, cannonball head. Custer insisted on introducing me to him at City Point after his Trevilian Raid — Sheridan was in his tent, bareheaded, and writing, when we entered. He gave me his usual spontaneous, cordial greeting and searching look, and soon thereafter was off for the Valley, where he won great honors, breaking the clouds that were hanging so heavily over our cause, lifting the North from a state of despondency and doubt into one of confidence in its final success, and giving Grant a relief from his burden which he never forgot. Sheridan and Meade—nature had cast them in very different moulds — soon clashed, and before we reached Spottsylvania the slumbering fire of their mutual and natural incompatibility burst into flames.

It is not my desire to stir the embers of old controversies, but my impression is that, great as Sheridan was, he never could have permanently maintained pleasant official relations with his fellow commanders on any field: he had to be in chief control, tolerating no restraint from equals. Grant alone he bowed to, and the reason Grant admired him and allowed him free rein was that Sheridan did not hesitate to take a bold initiative.

Sheridan early in the morning of the 6th put the cavalry in motion, and Custer’s successful fight with Fitz Lee’s division in the forenoon on Hancock’s left has already been mentioned. I wish my readers could have known Custer, felt the grasp of his hand, seen his warm smile, and heard his boyish laugh. And then, too, if they could have seen him lead a charge! his men following him rollickingly with their long red neckties (they wore them because it was a part of his fantastic dress) and as reckless of their lives as he himself of his own. Really, it seemed at times as if the horses caught his spirit and joined in the charge with glee, the band playing and bugles sounding. There never was but one Custer in this world, and at West Point how many hours I whiled idly away with him which both of us ought to have given to our studies. But what were the attractions of Mechanics, Optics or Tactics, Strategy or Ordnance, to those of the subjects we talked about: our life in Ohio, its coon-hunts, fox-chases, fishing-holes, muskrat and partridge-traps, what “Bob” said and what “Dick” did under certain amusing circumstances; in fact, about all that stream of persons and little events at home which, when a boy is far away from it for the first time, come flowing back so dearly.

It was his like, I have often thought, which inspired that lovable man and soldier, “Dick” Steele, to say in the Spectator, when descanting in his own sweet way on the conversation and characters of military men, “But the fine gentleman in that band of men is such a one as I have now in my eye, who is foremost in all danger to which he is ordered. His officers are his friends and companions, as they are men of honour and gentlemen; the private men are his brethren, as they are of his species. He is beloved of all that behold him. Go on, brave man, immortal glory is thy fortune, and immortal happiness thy reward.”

Reader, let me confide! there are two authors in the next world whom I have a real longing to see; one is Steele, — poor fellow so often in his cups; and the other, he who wrote the Gospel of Saint John and saw the Tree of Life.

Custer, after throwing his old West Point friends, Young and Rosser, back from the Brock Road and Hancock’s left, sought connection with the evertrusted Gregg, then at. Todd’s Tavern confronting Stuart, whose whole force was dismounted and studiously kept under cover, protected everywhere by hastily constructed defenses. That Stuart at this time had some plan in hand is revealed by a dispatch to him from Lee’s chief of staff, dated 10 A. M., to the effect that Lee directed him (Marshall) to say that he approved of Stuart’s designs and wished him success. Probably what he had in mind was one of his usual startling raids; but whatever it was, Gregg prevented him from undertaking it by holding him fast to his lines, thereby retaining the cross-roads at the Tavern and securing the left of the field.

At one o’clock Humphreys, acknowledging a dispatch, tells Sheridan that Hancock’s flank had been turned and that Meade thought he had better draw in his cavalry so as to secure the protection of the trains. Accordingly Sheridan drew in from Todd’s Tavern and the Brock Road. Wilson was brought up to Chancellorsville, and the enemy that night pushed forward almost to the Furnaces, about halfway between Todd’s Tavern and Sheridan’s headquarters at Chancellorsville. Thus by the time Field was ready, the Brock Road beyond Hancock’s left, covering ground at once dangerous to the army if it stood still, and absolutely essential if it tried to go ahead, was abandoned. In regaining it the next day, which had to be done to carryout Grant’s onward, offensive movement, Sheridan had to do some hard fighting, and met with very severe losses, the responsibility for which became the occasion of an acrimonious dispute that broke out between his own friends and the friends of Meade as soon as Sheridan’s autobiography appeared. Death had overtaken Meade some years before the book was published. Perhaps he was misled by Sheridan’s dispatch as to positions of the cavalry, but I have never felt that Meade’s friends were quite fair to Sheridan in blaming him for falling back, since the plain purport of the orders, as I interpret them, was for him to take no responsibilities that would endanger the safety of the trains by being too far extended. To be sure, it so happened that the trains were secure; Lee’s great chance, that hovered for a moment like a black thundercloud over the Army of the Potomac, passed by; and if Sheridan had left Gregg at Todd’s Tavern, which, as we see now, he might have done, the door to Spottsylvania would in all probability have been wide open for Warren. As it was, Warren found it shut.

But let us go to the trains at Chancellorsville, some of which had already started for Ely’s Ford to recross the Rapidan, and for whose protection all this giving up of ground had to be done. And, in explanation of their movement, allow me to say that no one scents danger so quickly as quartermasters in charge of trains. While the commander is thinking how he can get ahead through danger, they are busy thinking how they can get back out of danger. For, as a rule, quartermasters hear very lit tle of the good, but all of the bad news from the slightly wounded and the skulkers who, sooner or later, drift back to the trains, the latter invariably telling the same sad, unblushing story, that their commands are literally cut to pieces. A real adept skulker or coffee-boiler is a most interesting specimen; and how well I remember the coolness with which he and his companion (for they go in pairs) would rise from their little fires on being discovered and ask most innocently, “Lieutenant, can you tell me where the—regiment is?” And the answer, I am sorry to say, was, too often, “Yes, right up there at the front, you damned rascal, as you well know!”

Of course, they would make a show of moving, but they, were back at their little fire as soon as you were out of sight.

That mid-day — I mean just after Hancock’s overthrow, before Sheridan got his orders — not only the skulkers but many a good soldier whose heart was gone, made his way to the trains at Chancellorsville; and the quartermasters had good reason to take their usual initiative toward safety, northward in this case, to Ely’s Ford, expecting every minute to hear the “rebel” yell; for there was presageful honesty in the face and story of more than one who came back. Even the ammunition-train of the Second Corps, which as a rule stood to the last, was affected by the contagious panic and joined the anxious procession. At about six o’clock Sheridan, impressed by the state of affairs, told Humphreys that unless the trains were ordered to cross the river, the road would be blocked and it would be impossible for troops to get to the ford. What would have happened that afternoon among the trains had Longstreet not been wounded and had his troops broken through?

Meanwhile Field, under the immediate eye of Lee, was getting his men ready to renew the contest. Knowing the situation and the country as we do, it is not surprising that there was delay, or to learn from the report of the First South Carolina, one of the regiments which planted their colors on Hancock’s first line of works, that there was much wearisome marching and countermarching before they all got into place for the attack. What were left of the Texans, G. S. Anderson’s and Jenkins’s brigade of South Carolinians, now commanded by Colonel John Bratton of the Sixth of Field’s own division, he put in several lines of battle, for it was on that side of the Plank Road that the main assault was to be made. Kershaw, by Lee’s direct orders, was, with three of his brigades (Humphreys’, Bryan’s, and Henagan’s), moved beyond them, even till his right rested on the unfinished railway. His other brigade (Wofford’s) was detached to help Perry stop Burnside, who, while Field was forming, had finally gotten under headway. The only good, so far as I can see, that Burnside did that day was to detach these two brigades from Lee at a critical time.

At last, after three or four precious hours had been consumed in disentangling and getting ready, four brigades of R. H. Anderson’s fresh division and Longstreet’s old corps which had broken through Sickles’s at Gettysburg and Rosecrans’sat Chickamauga, were under way for another trial, — their last, as it turned out, for, with but one feeble exception, Lee never tried another general assault. Had he had as many men as Grant, I have but little doubt his fighting spirit would have inflamed him to repeat and re-repeat Malvern Hill and Pickett’s charge. But this time Pickett was not with him— his immortalized division was at Petersburg looking after Butler; — nor could Alexander bring up his artillery, as on the famous day at Gettysburg, to shake the lines along the Brock Road. Could he have done so, the effect, I fear, would have been disastrous.

And now, facing east, those seasoned veterans of Antietam and Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Chickamauga, Second Bull Run, and Gettysburg, are all ready. Their line begins near the foot of the knoll that rises in the obtuse angle between the Brock and the old Germanna roads and extends southward clear to the unfinished railway. Brightened here and there and closely overhung by blooming dogwoods and innumerable throngs of spring-green leaves, on slender branches that gently brush faces and colors as the soft breezes sigh by, is the long line of gray, speckled at short intervals by the scarlet of torn banners. Little did those men dream as they stood there that Fate only a few hours before had sealed the fate of the Confederacy, that their cause was lost, and that the sacrifices they were about to be called on to make would be a waste.

On my visit to the field last May, I sat a while beneath the oaks on the knoll,— the spot is quite open and gloried with more of the stateliness of an oak forest than any point in the Wilderness,— and as my mind dwelt on those battle lines waiting for the command “Forward” that would blot out this world for so many of them, I felt one after another the tender throbs of human ties, which stretch back to the cradle and the hearth. I was on the point of yielding to their pathos, when the background of my meditations became a vast, murky-lighted expanse, and from a break in its sombre depths a figure — perchance it was Destiny — beckoned Imagination to come and look down on the brave combatants in their struggle-to-the-death. The spirit of the nation was standing there with anxious look, and at her side was a glowing face. I asked Imagination who that was, and she answered, that is the Future. After many days of hatred and suffering, lo! Goodwill knocked at the doors of Conqueror and Conquered, and she joined their hands in friendly grasp.

(To be continued.)