United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Fiction
hot struggle, she could see--could hear--the aiders and the aided swept
in one torn, depleted tumult, shattered, confounded, and made the more
impotent by their own clamor. Here was the many-ravined, tree-dotted,
southward rise by which, in concave line, the Northern brigades and
batteries, pressing across the bends of the branch, advanced to the
famed Henry house plateau--that key of victory where by midday fell all
the horrid weight of the battle; where the guns of Ricketts and Griffen
for the North and of Walton and Imboden for the South crashed and mowed,
and across and across which the opposing infantries volleyed and bled,
screamed, groaned, swayed, and drove each other, staggered, panted,
rallied, cheered, and fell or fought on among the fallen. Here cried Bee
to the dazed crowd, "Look at Jackson's brigade standing like a stone
wall." Here Beauregard and Johnson formed their new front of half a
dozen states on Alabama's colours, and here a bit later the Creole
general's horse was shot under him. Northward here, down the slope and
over the branch, rolled the conflict, and there on the opposite rise,
among his routed blues, was Greenleaf disabled and taken.
All these, I say, were in Anna's changing picture. Here from the left,
out of the sunken road, came Howard, Heintzelman, and their like, and
here in the oak wood that lay across it the blue and gray lines spent
long terms of agony mangling each other. Here early in that part of the
struggle--sent for at last by Beauregard himself, they say--came
Kincaid's Battery, whirling, shouting, whip-cracking, sweating, with
Hilary well ahead of them and Mandeville at his side, to the ground
behind the Henry house when it had been lost and retaken and all but
lost again. Here Hilary, spurring on away from his bounding guns to
choose them a vantage ground, broke into a horrid mêlée alone and was
for a moment made prisoner, but in the next had handed his captors over
to fresh graycoats charging; and here, sweeping into action with all the
grace and precision of the drill-ground at Camp Callender, came his
battery, his and hers! Here rode Bartleson, here Villeneuve, Maxime with
the colors, Tracy, Sam Gibbs; and here from the chests sprang Violett,
Rareshide, Charlie and their scores of fellows, unlimbered, sighted,
blazed, sponged, reloaded, pealed again, sent havoc into the enemy and
got havoc from them. Here one and another groaned, and another and
another dumbly fell. Here McStea, and St. Ange, Converse, Fusilier,
Avendano, Ned Ferry and others limbered up for closer work, galloped,
raced, plunged, reared, and stumbled, gained the new ground and made it
a worse slaughter-pen than the first, yet held on and blazed, pealed,
and smoked on, begrimed and gory. Here was Tracy borne away to field
hospital leaving Avendano and McStea groveling in anguish under the
wheels, and brave Converse and young Willie Calder, hot-headed Fusilier
and dear madcap Jules St. Ange lying near them out of pain forever. Yet
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account