Part 4 (1/2)
I pa.s.sed the brigade. Ayers's and Carlisle's batteries were there. I found the spring beyond a little hillock. While drinking, there was sudden confusion in Schenck's brigade. There was loud talking, cannon and musketry firing, and a sudden trampling of horses. A squadron of Rebel cavalry swept past within a few rods of the spring, charging upon Schenck's brigade. The panic tide had come rolling to the rear. Ayers lashed his horses to a gallop, to reach Cub Run bridge. He succeeded in crossing it. He came into position to open upon the Rebels and to check their pursuit. The road was blocked with wagons. Frightened teamsters cut their horses loose and rode away. Soldiers, officers, and civilians fled towards Centreville, frightened at they knew not what. Blenker's brigade was thrown forward from Centreville to the bridge, and the rout was stopped. The Rebels were too much exhausted, too much amazed at the sudden and unaccountable breaking and fleeing of McDowell's army, to improve the advantage. They followed to Cub Run bridge, but a few cannon and musket shots sent them back to the Stone Bridge.
But at Blackburn's Ford General Jones crossed the stream to attack the retreating troops. General Davies, with four regiments and Hunt's battery, occupied the crest of a hill looking down towards the ford. The Rebels marched through the woods upon the bank of the stream, wound along the hillside, filed through a farm-yard and halted in a hollow within a quarter of a mile of General Davies's guns.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGHT AT BLACKBURN'S FORD, July 21, 1863.
1 Blackburn's Ford.
2 Mitch.e.l.l's Ford.
3 Rebel troops.
4 Davies's brigade and batteries.
5 Richardson's brigade.]
”Lie down,” said the General, and the four regiments dropped upon the ground. The six cannon and the gunners alone were in sight.
”Wait till they come over the crest of the hill; wait till I give the word,” said the General to Captain Hunt.
The men stand motionless by their pieces. The long column of Rebels moves on. There is an officer on his horse giving directions. The long dark line throws its lengthening shadows upward in the declining sunlight, toward the silent cannon.
”Now let them have it!” The guns are silent no longer. Six flashes of light, and six sulphurous clouds are belched towards the moving ma.s.s.
Grape and canister sweep them down. The officer tumbles from his horse, and the horse staggers to the earth. There are sudden gaps in the ranks.
They stop advancing. Officers run here and there. Another merciless storm,--another,--another. Eighteen flashes a minute from those six pieces! Like gra.s.s before the mower the Rebel line is cut down. The men flee to the woods, utterly routed.
The attempt to cut off the retreat signally failed. It was the last attempt of the Rebels to follow up their mysterious victory. The rear-guard remained in Centreville till morning recovering five cannon which had been abandoned at Cub Run, which the Rebels had not secured, and then retired to Arlington.
So the battle was won and lost. So the hopes of the Union soldiers changed to sudden, unaccountable fear, and so the fear of the Rebels became unbounded exultation.
The sun had gone down behind the Blue Mountains, and the battle-clouds hung thick and heavy along the winding stream where the conflict had raged. It was a sad night to us who had gone out with such high hopes, who had seen the victory so nearly won and so suddenly lost. Many of our wounded were lying where they had fallen. It was a terrible night to them. Their enemies, some of them, were hard-hearted and cruel. They fired into the hospitals upon helpless men. They refused them water to quench their burning thirst. They taunted them in their hour of triumph, and heaped upon them bitterest curses. They were wild with the delirium of success, and treated their prisoners with savage barbarity. Any one who showed kindness to the prisoners or wounded was looked upon with suspicion. Says an English officer in the Rebel service:--[4]
[Footnote 4: Estvan.]
”I made it my duty to seek out and attend upon the wounded, and the more so when I found that the work of alleviating their sufferings was performed with evident reluctance and want of zeal by many of those whose duty it was to do it. I looked upon the poor fellows only as suffering fellow-mortals, brothers in need of help, and made no distinction between friend and foe; nay, I must own that I was prompted to give the preference to the latter, for the reason that some of our men met with attention from their relations and friends, who had flocked to the field in numbers to see them. But in doing so I had to encounter opposition, and was even pointed at by some with muttered curses as a traitor to the cause of the Confederacy for bestowing any attention on the d---- Yankees.”
Notwithstanding the inhuman treatment they received at the hands of their captors, there were men on that field who never quailed,--men with patriotism so fervent, deep, and unquenchable, that they lay down cheerfully to their death-sleep. This officer in the Rebel service went out upon the field where the fight had been thickest. It was night.
Around him were the dying and the dead. There was a young Union officer, with both feet crushed by a cannon-shot. There were tears upon his cheeks.
”Courage, comrade!” said the officer, bending over him; ”the day will come when you will remember this battle as one of the things of the past.”
”Do not give me false hopes, sir. It is all up with me. I do not grieve that I must die, for with these stumps I shall not live long.”
He pointed to his mangled feet, and added: ”_I weep for my poor, distracted country. Had I a second life to live, I would willingly sacrifice it for the cause of the Union!_”
His eyes closed. A smile lighted his countenance, as if, while on the border of another world, he saw once more those who were dearest on earth or in heaven. He raised himself convulsively, and cried, ”Mother!
Father!”
He was dead.
He sleeps upon the spot where he fell. His name is unknown, but his devotion to his country shall s.h.i.+ne forevermore like a star in heaven!