The Star of Gettysburg: A Story of Southern High TideAltsheler, Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander)
History
The Star of Gettysburg: A Story of Southern High Tide
Altsheler, Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander)
United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Juvenile fiction
Yet the grim fighter, Longstreet, never ceased to push on his brigades.
The combat was now often face to face, and sharpshooters, hidden in
every angle and hollow of the earth, picked off men by hundreds.
The great rocky mass known as the Devil's Den was filled with Northern
sharpshooters and for a long time they stung the Southern flank terribly,
until a Southern battery, noticing whence the deadly stream of
bullets issued, sprayed it with grape and canister until most of the
sharpshooters were killed, while those who survived fled like wolves
from their lairs.
The day was now passing, but Harry could see no decrease in the fury of
the battle. Longstreet was still hurling his men forward, and they were
met with cannon and rifle and bayonet. The Confederate line now grew
more compact. The brigades were brought into closer touch, and,
gathering their strength anew, they rushed forward in a charge, heavier
and more desperate than any that had gone before. Generals and colonels
led them in person. Barksdale, young, but with snow-white hair, was
riding at the very front of the line, and he fell, dying, in the Union
ranks.
The Southern charge was stopped again on the left wing of the Union army,
and with the coming of the night the battle there sank, but elsewhere
the South was meeting with greater success. Ewell, making a renewed and
fierce attack at sunset, drove in the Northern right, and, seconded by
Early, took their defenses there. But the darkness was coming fast,
and although the firing went on for a long time, it ceased at last,
with the two enemies still face to face and the battle drawn.
Harry, who had expected to see a glorious victory won by the setting of
the sun, was deeply depressed. His youth did not keep him from seeing
that very little advantage had been won in that awful conflict of
the afternoon, and he saw also that the Army of the Potomac had been
fighting as if it had been improved by defeat. Nor had Lee thrown in
his whole force where it was needed most. If Jackson had only been
there! Harry pictured his swift flank movement, his lightning stroke,
and the crumpling up of the enemy. Jackson loomed larger than ever now
to his disappointed and excited mind.
Harry had been all day long and far into the night on Seminary Hill.
Often he had scarcely moved for an hour, and now, when the firing ceased
and he stood up and tried to peer into the valley of death, he found his
limbs so stiff for a minute or two that he could scarcely move. His
eyes ached and his throat was raw from smoke and the fumes of burned
gunpowder. But as he shook himself and stretched his muscles, he
regained firmness of both mind and body.
"We didn't win much," he said to Dalton.
"Not to-day, but we will to-morrow. Harry, wasn't it awful? It looks
to me down there like a pit of destruction."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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