The Shades of the Wilderness: A Story of Lee's Great StandAltsheler, Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander)
History
The Shades of the Wilderness: A Story of Lee's Great Stand
Altsheler, Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander)
United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Juvenile fiction
As the young lieutenant rode away he saw General Lee walking back and
forth before the low fire, his hands clasped behind him, and his eyes
as serious as those of any human being could be. Harry appreciated the
immensity of his task, and in his heart was a sincere pity for the man
who bore so great a burden. He was familiar with the statement that to
Lee had been offered the command of the Northern armies at the
beginning of the war, but believing his first duty was to his State he
had gone with Virginia when Virginia reluctantly went out of the Union.
Truly no one could regret the war more than he, and yet he had struck
giant blows for its success.
A moment more and the tall figure standing beside the low fire was lost
to sight. Then Harry rode among the thickets in the rear of the
Confederate line and it was a weird and ghastly ride. Now and then his
horse's feet sank in mud, and the frogs still dared to croak around the
pools, making on such a night the most ominous of all sounds. It
seemed a sort of funeral dirge for both North and South, a croak
telling of the ruin and death that were to come on the morrow.
Damp boughs swept across his face, and the vapors, rising from the
earth and mingled with the battle smoke, were still bitter to the
tongue and poisonous to the breath. Rotten logs crushed beneath his
horse's feet and Harry felt a shiver as if the hoofs had cut through a
body of the dead. Riflemen rose out of the thickets, but he always
gave them the password, and rode on without stopping.
Then came a space where he met no human being, the gap between Hill and
Longstreet, and now the Wilderness became incredibly lonely and dreary.
Harry felt that if ever a region was haunted by ghosts it was this. The
dead of last year's battle might be lying everywhere, and as the breeze
sprang up the melancholy thickets waved over them.
He was two-thirds of the way toward the point where he expected to find
Longstreet when he heard the sough of a hoof in the mud behind him.
Harry listened and hearing the hoof again he was instantly on his
guard. He did not know it, but the character of the night and the wild
aspect of the Wilderness were bringing out all the primeval and
elemental qualities in his nature. He was the great borderer, Henry
Ware, in the Indian-haunted forest, feeling with a sixth sense, even a
seventh sense, the presence of danger.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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