Jackson, Stonewall, 1824-1863 -- Fiction; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Fiction; War stories
road is my friend, gentlemen, and a better man never mixed a julep! The
old Manassas Gap's got them through! It's a road to be patronized,
gentlemen! The old Manassas Gap--"
A hand plucked at his boot. "For the Lord's sake, governor, come down
from there, or you'll be travelling on the Angels' Express!"
The dust rose higher; there came out of it a sound, a low, hoarse din.
Maine and Vermont, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, New York and Rhode
Island, saw and heard. There was a waver as of grain beneath wind over
the field, then the grain stood stiff against the wind, and all the
muskets flamed again.
The lost brigade of the Army of the Shenandoah, seventeen hundred
infantry and Beckham's Battery swept by the Lewis House, received
instructions from Johnston in person, and advanced against the enemy's
right flank. Kirby Smith led them. Heated, exhausted, parched with
thirst, the regiments came upon the plateau. Not till then did they see
the enemy, the awaited, the dreamed-of foe, the giant whose voice they
had heard at Manassas. They saw him now, and they yelled recognition.
From a thousand dusty throats came a cry, involuntary, individual,
indescribably fierce, a high and shrill and wild expression of anger
and personal opinion. There was the enemy. They saw him, they
yelled,--without premeditation, without cooperation, each man for
himself, _Yaai, Yai ... Yaai, Yaai, Yai.... Yaai!_ That
cry was to be heard on more than two thousand battlefields.
It lasts with the voice of Stentor, and with the horn of Roland.
It has gone down to history as the "Rebel yell."
As they reached the oak woods Kirby Smith was shot. Desperately wounded,
he fell from his horse. Elzey took command; the troops swept out by the
Chinn House upon the plateau. Beckham's battery unlimbered and came,
with decisive effect, into action.
McDowell, with a last desperate rally, formed a line of battle, a
gleaming, formidable crescent, half hid by a cloud of skirmishers. Out
of the woods by the Chinn House now came Jubal Early, with Kemper's 7th
Virginia, Harry Hays's Louisianians, and Barksdale's 13th Mississippi.
They took position under fire and opened upon the enemy's right. As they
did so Elzey's brigade, the 10th Virginia, the 1st Maryland, the 3d
Tennessee, the 8th and 2d South Carolina, the 18th and 28th Virginia,
and Hampton's and Cary's legions charged. The First Brigade came down
upon the guns for the third time, and held them. Stuart, standing in his
stirrups and chanting his commands, rounded the base of the hill, and
completed the rout.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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