From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign: A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier SawDame, William Meade
History
From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign: A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw
Dame, William Meade
United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Personal narratives, Confederate
In the midst of this anxious and high wrought feeling, an excited voice
yelled out, "Look out down the road. Here they come!" We were driven
nearly wild with excited joy, and enthusiasm by the blessed sight of
Longstreet's advance division coming down the road at a double quick, at
which pace, after the news of Hill's critical situation reached them,
they had come for two miles and a half. The instant the head of his
column was seen the cries resounded on every side, "Here's Longstreet.
The old war horse is up at last. It's all right now."
On, the swift columns came! Crowding up to the road, on both sides, we
yelled ourselves nearly dumb to cheer them as they swept by. Hearty were
the greetings as we recognized acquaintances and friends and old battle
comrades in the passing columns. Specially did the "Howitzers" make the
welkin ring when Barksdale's Mississippi Brigade passed. This was the
brigade to which our battery had long been attached, to which we were
greatly devoted, with whom we had often fought, and admired as one of
the most splendid fighting corps in the army. And loud was the cheer the
gallant Mississippians flung back to the "Howitzers."
Everything broke loose as General Longstreet in person rode past. Like a
fine lady at a party, Longstreet was often late in his arrival at the
ball, but he always made a sensation and that of delight, when he _got_
in, with the grand old First Corps, sweeping behind him, as his train.
This was our own Corps, from which we had been separated for some
months. The very sight of the gallant old veterans, as they poured on,
was enough to make all hearts perfectly easy. Our feeling of relief was
complete and as the Brigades disappeared into the woods in the direction
of Hill's breaking right, where the thunder of their still heroic
resistance to overwhelming odds was roaring, we all felt, "Thank God!
it's all right now! Longstreet is up!"
And it _was_ all right. The first brigades as they got up formed, and
rushed right in, one after another, to check the advance of the enemy.
And as they successively went in we could hear the musketry grow more
angry and fierce. Before very long, a crashing peal of musketry broke
out with a fury that made what we had been hearing before seem like
pop-crackers. Our crowd quickly perceived that the sound was receding
from us; at the same time the bullets,--which had been falling over
among us entirely too lively to be pleasant to fellows who were not
shooting any themselves,--stopped coming. We knew what this meant;
Longstreet was putting his Corps in, and they were driving the enemy.
Soon, to confirm our ideas, lines of Federal prisoners, from Hancock's
Corps, they told us, came by, and Longstreet's wounded began to pass.
These fellows told us that our Corps had gone in like a whirlwind, had
already recovered Hill's line, gone beyond it, and were forcing the
Federals back.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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