The Scouts of Stonewall: The Story of the Great Valley CampaignAltsheler, Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander)
History
The Scouts of Stonewall: The Story of the Great Valley Campaign
Altsheler, Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander)
United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Juvenile fiction
Harry found himself shouting triumphantly over one of the captured
guns, but the Southern troops were allowed no time to exult. The sun was
already sinking over the swamps and the battlefield, but Lee and Jackson
lifted up their legions and hurled them anew to the attack. McClellan
was not there when he was needed most, but Porter did all that a man
could do. Only two of his eighty guns had been taken, and he might yet
have made a stand, but the last of Jackson's force suddenly emerged from
the forest and again he was struck with terrible impact on the flank.
The Northern army gave way again. The Southern brigades rushed forward
in pursuit, capturing many prisoners, and giving impulse to the flight
of their enemies. Their riflemen shot down the horses drawing the
retreating cannon. Many of the guns were lost, twenty-two of them
falling into Southern hands. Some of the newer regiments melted entirely
away under an attack of such fierceness. Nothing stopped the advance of
Lee and Jackson but the night, and the arrival of a heavy reinforcement
sent by McClellan. The new force, six thousand strong, was stationed in
a wood, the guns that had escaped were turned upon the enemy, Porter and
Slocum rallied their yet numerous force, and when the dark came down the
battle ceased with the Northern army in the east defeated again, but not
destroyed.
As Harry rode over the scene of battle that night he shuddered. The
fields, the forests and the swamps were filled with the dead and the
wounded. Save Shiloh, no other such sanguinary battle had yet been
fought on American soil. Nearly ten thousand of the Southern youths had
fallen, killed or wounded. The North, standing on the defensive, had not
lost so many, but the ghastly roll ran into many thousands.
That night, as had happened often in the valley, the hostile sentinels
were within hearing of each other, but they fired no shots. Meanwhile,
Lee and Jackson, after the victory, which was called Gaines' Mill,
planned to strike anew.
Harry awoke in the morning to find that most of the Northern army was
gone. The brigades had crossed the river in the night, breaking down the
bridges behind them. He saw the officers watching great columns of
dust moving away, and he knew that they marked the line of the Northern
march. But the Southern scouts and skirmishers found many stragglers in
the woods, most of them asleep or overpowered by weariness. Thus they
found the brilliant General Reynolds, destined to a glorious death
afterward at Gettysburg, sound asleep in the bushes, having been lost
from his command in the darkness and confusion. The Southern army rested
through the morning, but in the afternoon was on the march again. Harry
found that both St. Clair and Langdon had escaped without harm this
time, but Happy Tom had lost some of his happiness.
“This man Lee is worse than Jackson,” he lamented. “We've just fought
the biggest battle that ever was, and now we're marching hot-foot after
another.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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