That "dress parade" completed the experience of Smith and Brown; and it completed, at the same time, their knowledge of the numbers and efficiency of the Two Hundredth Regiment that was "almost ready to march." In squads of from ten to twenty-five, the soldiers gathered from their slovenly tents, until the observers could count something more than two hundred. Then by squads and afterwards in what was intended as a "regimental formation," they went through a series of marchings, countermarchings and facings, with about the proficiency which would be shown by the same number of entirely raw recruits, and with the same proportion of the most obvious blunderings that used to be exhibited by the "slab-companies" at the "general trainings" or "general musters" in the country sections, when a lamentable caricature upon military spirit was kept up, in the years following the War of 1812.

Not a musket was to be seen in the hands of one of these men, except the few sentries. They "had not been furnished," as the explanation was sure to be given afterwards when the regiment was discovered to be an undisciplined mob! They would probably not be "furnished" until just at the moment when the regiment should be forced to move, and then they would be put into hands liable to be called on to use them in battle within a week—those hands knowing no more of the management of the deadly instrument of modern warfare, than so many Sioux or South Sea Islanders might have known of watch-making or extracting the cube-root.

And yet with these men, and in this manner, the armies of the republic were being recruited; and on the deeds in arms wrought by these men, possibly in the very first conflict into which they were rushed like huddled sheep, the eyes of the military nations of Europe were to be turned with anxious interest. They were to fight, too, against a race of men to whom deadly weapons had been familiar from childhood, and who would consequently make soldiers, to the full extent of their capability, with one-half the training which was to these Northern men an absolute necessity! Is it any wonder that we have occasionally met with a Bull Run or a Second Field of Manassas, with this shameful waste of our opportunities and our war-material?

Smith and Brown left "Camp Lyon," before the completion of the "dress parade," with a him consciousness of being painfully disenchanted in a very important particular.

"Do you know, Smith" said Brown, as they were rolling along in the car, homeward—"that I doubt whether there are three hundred men in that regiment, absentees and all—instead of seven hundred as the papers report?"

"Humph," said Smith, "it seems to be all a humbug together! But I wonder what becomes of the extra pay issued to seven hundred men, when there are only three hundred entitled to receive it? And I wonder what becomes of all the extra rations that are drawn for them every day? Somebody must be making something out of it—eh? I wonder if there are any more regiments in the same condition?"

"Probably!" said Brown. Whereupon the two citizens fell into a very deep and silent train of thought, leaving us no additional speech to record.

Other people than Smith, at about that time, felt like propounding the same queries as to the disposition of extra pay and rations. Some of those queries, which have been propounded, have not yet been answered. When they are, if that happy period ever arrives, we may know something more of the channels and sluices through which the wealth of the richest nation on the globe has ebbed away, leaving such inconsiderable results to show for the expenditure.

And yet Colonel Egbert Crawford, visiting the city two hours afterwards, and dropping in at two or three favorite resorts of men who talked horse, war and politics, on his way to the house of his cousin,—bore himself bravely under his weight of uniform, and more than once threw in a pardonable boast over the services he was rendering the country, the sacrifices he was making, and the rapid growth and efficiency of the Two Hundredth Regiment.

"All brass is not fashioned and moulded in foundries, where men do swelter like to those standing in the flames of the fiery furnace," says an old writer, Arnold of Thorndean, "but much of it doth become shaped in the human countenance."



CHAPTER XVI.

TWO MODES OF WRITING ROMANCES—MORE OF THE UP-TOWN MYSTERY—A WATCH, AN ESCAPE, AND A POLICE POST-MORTEM ON A VACANT HOUSE.

The question may have been asked, before this point in narration, by some of those who have been induced to follow the progress of this story—What has become of some of the prominent characters first introduced, Dexter Ralston, the stalwart Virginian, and the girl Kate, who seemed at that time to be so closely identified with the movements of the "red woman." The curiosity is a natural one, whether there really was such a secret of disloyalty, hidden away either in the house on Prince Street or that on East 5—, as justified Tom Leslie and Walter Harding in their long ride at midnight and their subsequent interview with Police-Superintendent Kennedy. To some extent this question can be answered, at this point; but there will still remain some mysteries unexplainable until the end of this narration, and even some impossible to elucidate until the close of the war and the re-union of Northern and Southern society on the old basis, makes it possible to reveal all that may have occurred during the conflict.

There are two modes in which romances can be written. The first, and perhaps the more popular, is that in which no bound whatever is set by either probability or conscience—in which the narrator assumes to know what never could be known except to an omniscient being, and to describe such circumstances as never could have occurred in any world under the same general regulations as our own. To this writer, no doors are barred, and from him the secret of no heart can be hidden. He has no difficulty whatever in retracing the path of history, back to the days of Michael Paleologus or Timour the Tartar, and describing the viands set upon their tables and the thoughts that may have entered their brains; while in events of the present day he finds no more trouble in describing circumstantially the last moments of a traveller dying alone at the North Pole or in the midst of the most trackless waste of Sahara. The manner in which he became possessed of the facts narrated, is held to be a matter of very little consequence; and if he lacks the opportunity of calling other witnesses or surrounding circumstances to corroborate him, he at least is removed from the fear of any authoritative contradiction. The reader, of course, would sometimes be grateful for a little insight into what is so impenetrably hidden; and if the links binding the narrator to his subject were made a little plainer to the naked eye, perhaps more general satisfaction might be given. When, for instance, in the "Legend of the Terrible Tower," Sir Bronzeface the Implacable is shown as threatening the Lady Charmengarde with the most cruel tortures his slighted love and growing hate can devise—when the very words of that atrocious monster are set down as carefully as if they had been taken from his lips by the rapid pencil of the stenographer—and when in the context we learn that in the midst of his threatenings, the thousand barrels of gunpowder secretly stored in another part of the castle for the purpose of arming a million of retainers to make a deadly onslaught on the stronghold of his hated rival the Lord of Hardcheek, suddenly takes fire, and the castle, with both the interlocutors and all others who could possibly be present, is seen hurled into infinitesimal fragments,—there is some unavoidable curiosity in the mind of the reader, at this juncture, to know precisely how these very words and actions became known to the narrator, as well as how the gunpowder was manufactured in the year of grace nine hundred and eighty-four.

For corresponding knowledge of events in the actual present, the believers in clairvoyance may be able to offer some explanation; but, unfortunately or the reverse, the believers in effective clairvoyance are in a very meagre minority; and the world will cling a little tenaciously to the belief that what cannot be seen, heard, or otherwise realized by the recognized natural senses, cannot be definitely ascertained. Let it not be for one moment supposed, meanwhile, that romances constructed on such bases will be less popular than those which have more reason and probability at the bottom; for the majority of novel-readers desire to be frightened, mystified or idly amused; and perhaps that writer who makes thought a condition of reading and understanding what he writes, commits the most silly of crimes against his own pocket and reputation.

The other mode in which romances can be written, is that in which the writer only details that which he has enjoyed an opportunity to know, embodying with them such speculations and reflections as seem legitimately to grow out of the subject. This mode is unquestionably an unprofitable one to employ; but unfortunately this narration can be conducted on no other. Actual events and conversations only are given, and no speculations as to what might have been can be indulged. It might have been very easy to depict a disloyal or "secesh" household in this city, and a club of fashionable people with pro-slavery sympathies, meeting periodically, with grips, signs and passwords, and exercising an injurious influence on the National cause by holding clandestine correspondence with rebels in the revolted States. That such households have existed in this city during the entire struggle, and that such combinations of disloyal men have been doing their worst to cripple the government and distract the nation, no rational man doubts for a moment. But no loyal citizen has been admitted behind the curtain, in either of the supposable instances. No one could have been, and still remained loyal, without making such public revelations in the interest of patriotism, that any pretended private revelation must necessarily have become a farce. No one, especially, would have held any such secret for months, and then divulged it in the ambiguous mode of a romance, while arbitrary arrests and unexplained imprisonments were making the once free States of the Old Union a second Venice. Suspicious circumstances have been observed, and suspicious persons put under watch; but if anything more than mere suspicion has been reached, the disloyal persons themselves, and the government, are the only parties who possess the information.

All this, to say that the materials for this narration have not been gathered from disloyal sources or found in disloyal company, and that, as a consequence, it does not enter within doors closed to true men, by any magic key of the mind or the imagination. And if any mystery suggested, from that cause remains even partially unsolved, truth and loyalty, and not a desire for mystification, must supply the explanation.

And now to detail, very briefly, what is further known of the house on East 5— Street, and its occupation.

It has already been related that Superintendent Kennedy, in spite of his slighting replies to the two young men, did not really undervalue their information, and that two vigilant detectives, with assistants, were entrusted with the duty of watching the two houses. "L—— and another good man" had been ordered to take charge of the house on East 5—Street, and they entered upon their duties at once. Not as ordinary policemen, of course, for such a plan would necessarily have defeated any chance of successful observation. It was as a very modest private gentleman, elderly, with a cane and a slight limp, that L—— managed to lounge by the house repeatedly within the space of an hour; while his assistant, dressed in the clothes of a glass-mender, and with a box of the proper cut strapped on his back, haunted that street and invited business with a cry which the boys irreverently designated "glass pudding!" During the two hours thus spent, no person entered or left the house, nor was there a sign of life at any of the windows,—though what eyes may really have been watching from those closed blinds, it is quite impossible to say. Enough that they kept their watch closely until the coming on of the same heavy thunder-storm which burst upon the visitors to the sorceress in Prince Street; and that when the first drops of that shower were falling, conceiving themselves very unlikely to be repaid for a thorough wetting, they temporarily withdrew to the Station-house, or, as the act would now be expressed, "raised the blockade" for a very limited period.

Within five minutes after their departure, and when the wind and the rain had fairly begun to play together at rough gymnastics in the street, there was evidence that eyes probably had been observing the elderly gentleman with the limp, walking past the house a little too frequently. At all events, a man of tall figure, wrapped in an oil-skin coat, and with a round black hat and umbrella, emerged from the front door and dashed rapidly up the street. He was gone but a few minutes, and returned in the very height of the storm, in a carriage which drew up at the door. Perhaps ten minutes more, and some of the neighbors, who had been observing these singular movements, saw the same tall man, with an elderly lady and two younger ones, come out and enter the carriage, which, after taking on two large trunks, drove away at ordinary speed. The conclusion to which these good people came, was that the party were obliged to go out in the storm for the purpose of catching one of the late evening trains out of the city; and they may have been very nearly correct in the conjecture.

The storm passed over, and the summer evening came on. The two detectives came back to their places, varying their disguises for the evening. The house seemed all quiet, as before, and L—— came to the conclusion that there was either no one within or that the inmates were disposed to lie very close, as they did not even open the front windows to admit the clear evening air, cooled by the shower, or to look at the splendid sunset sky. So time passed on until nine o'clock, when the two detectives agreed to adopt the "ride-and-tie" principle—one keeping strict watch until midnight and the other until morning. This arrangement was duly carried out; and L——, who had taken the turn till midnight, again resumed his place at six o'clock. All was quiet—no one had entered or left the house, and L—— became thoroughly satisfied that it must be unoccupied. He might have haunted the house in one disguise or another, retaining the same correct opinion, until doomsday, had not one of the neighboring houses contained one of those inquisitive gentlemen (sometimes depreciatingly called "meddlers") who can never be content without knowing the business of all others, better than their own.

This person, partially an invalid, and much confined to the house and to very short walks in the neighborhood,—had observed the surveillance of the day before, still continued that morning; and he had also observed the episode of the carriage in the midst of the thunder-storm, of which the officer was as yet happily oblivious. Putting all the appearances together, he concluded that there had been some accusation, a watch and an escape; and about nine o'clock that morning he strolled out to the sidewalk; accosted the detective; informed him, with a knowing wink of the eye, that he understood the whole matter; and finished by advising him that "the birds had flown," and of the particular time when they took wing. As appendiary matter, he also informed the detective that the house was a furnished one belonging to a wealthy grocer who had just gone to Europe with his family—that it had been rented for a few weeks past to some very odd people—and that he had wondered at their being no attention paid to it before, as he was satisfied it was a receptacle for stolen goods.

To say that L—— was surprised at the first part of this intelligence, would be to say nothing; to say that he was mortified and enraged at being obliged to make such a report to the Superintendent, would be to put the case very mildly; and to say that he felt like amputating the head of a large-sized nail with his teeth, would only being doing justice to his feelings at this juncture.

The communicative neighbor finally informed him that he doubted whether the house was fastened, from the suddenness of the departure the day before; and on the hint the detective acted. The front door was found to be secured, but only by the latch-key bolt; and the area door was entirely unfastened. They entered and explored the house. It was a neatly furnished modern building, with everything in its place and nothing to mark any hasty departure of occupants, except a dinner-table left setting in the dining-room, with food on the plates and evidence that the meal had been left unfinished.

No clothing or other articles that could have belonged to the late inmates had been left behind, except half a dozen books, one of which was Simms' "History of South Carolina," another a copy of that odd jumble of short sketches published three or four years ago by Miss Martha Haines Butt, and a third one of Marion Harland's novels—"The Hidden Path." Part of a letter was found, the signature gone and all one side burned off, as if it had been used in lighting a cigar or a gas-burner, but still showing the date; "Richmond, Va., C.S.A., May 28th, 1862," and apparently written by a young officer in the Confederate army to his sister in this city. No other traces were found, though these were quite enough to increase the chagrin of the detectives, in the knowledge that they had allowed persons to escape who certainly must have been in correspondence with the rebel capital; and with this the crest-fallen L—— and his subordinate prepared to make their report to a superior not much in the habit of excusing failure or making allowance for extenuating circumstances.

It is to be believed that the inquisitive and communicative neighbor enjoyed the best night's rest he had known for a twelvemonth, on the night following, after this conference with a couple of detectives and this peep into a house that had really excited his curiosity. It is doubtful, meanwhile, whether the grocer landlord, informed by his agent, by the next mail, of the exodus of his tenants without liquidation, saw the matter in so enjoyable a light.

Of course, with the fugitives given some fifteen hours start and the use of modern railroad facilities, any thought of pursuit would have been folly, even had there been any conclusive data upon which to found proceedings for their apprehension. And with such meagre and unsatisfactory results closed that portion of the supposed secession mystery—at least for the time. After events showed that the "red woman" disappeared from Prince Street on the same night, whether in company with her former acquaintances or alone. What after-glimpses were caught of any of the other persons concerned, will be shown at a later period of this narration.



CHAPTER XVII.

LOOKING FOR JOHN CRAWFORD, OF DURYEA'S ZOUAVES—THE MORNING OF THE FIRST OF JULY—MCCLELLAN AND HIS GENERALS—THE FIRST BATTLE OF MALVERN—VICTORY IN RETREAT.

It will be remembered that Richard Crawford, lying helplessly on his sofa and murmuring over the bodily disability which at once entailed idleness and suffering, made it one of the grounds of comparisons injurious to himself, that his brother John was on service in Virginia with the Advance Guard—better known, perhaps, as "Duryea's Zouaves"—that gallant corps designated by the rebels as the "red-legged devils," and spoken of by every European officer who has seen their action in battle, as the equals of any body of regulars of any service in the world. The claims of business alone had prevented his being in the ranks of that regiment, if in no higher position, when they marched down Broadway on their departure in the summer of 1861, receiving the merited compliment of being the finest-looking body of men, as to physique and probable endurance, that had ever passed over that procession-trodden pavement, and headed by a gallant officer (Colonel, now General, Abram Duryea) who had been so largely instrumental in making the Seventh Regiment famous for drill, discipline and readiness for any service.

John Crawford, a younger brother of Richard (his only brother, in fact—the whole living family being comprised in Richard, Isabella and John) had left his lucrative employment as a confidential dry-goods clerk, in one of the largest down-town establishments, and joined the Advance Guard. He had participated in nearly or quite all the battles shared in by that lucky corps, from Big Bethel, where they performed the wonderful feat of re-forming under fire in the space of four minutes, after having been thrown into complete disorder by the discharge from an ambuscade of artillery,—to the severe conflicts of the Peninsula, in McClellan's advance upon Richmond; and only once had he been wounded, even slightly. He seemed to bear a charmed life; and there was something in the rollick and dash of his letters home, always full charged with the very sense of bravery and physical enjoyment, well calculated to arouse the feeling, if not the envy, of a brother quite as patriotic and probably quite as brave as himself, but kept back by circumstances and afterwards by ill-health from participating in the same glorious conflicts. No matter whether he described the carnage of the turning point in a day of battle; an hour beside a wounded soldier in the hospital, talking of home and friends; or one of the chicken-and-pig-foraging expeditions for which the Zouaves have been almost as famous as for their fighting,—through all these shone the spirit of the gay, rattling, contented soldier, who might have sat for a portrait, any day, of Paddy Murphy, in the "Happy Man," making his baggage-wagon, commissariat and camp-chest of a one-headed drum, ready to fall in love with the first neat pair of ankles that peeped from beneath a well-kept petticoat, a little regardless of any proprietorship in the same ankles, other than that vested in the actual owner, and splendidly indifferent as to either the time or the mode of his death, whenever that death should become a matter of necessity.

The letters of such soldiers as these are the best recruiting-sergeants that can be sent abroad among any people; just as the letters of whining, lugubrious or dissatisfied men, who have gone into war without expecting any of its dangers or discomforts—who are satisfied with no fare less luxurious than that served up at Delmonico's or the Maison Doree, and who protest against any sleeping which is not done upon spring-mattresses strown with rose-leaves,—cannot do otherwise than discourage and unnerve the whole immediate community in which they fall. Whether the growlers through the press and in general society, have done most to discourage and demoralize the army, or whether the grumblers in the army have wrought more effectually in discouraging enlistments and weakening the national cause, certain it is that the two evil influences have worked together, and that those who have displayed the contrary spirit are entitled to full credit from the whole loyal community.

John Crawford, the Zouave, has not yet made his appearance upon the scene; but it will now become necessary to turn attention to events and incidents in which he was engaged, and to discover what influence his action may have produced on the after events of this story. In this change of scene, too, we pass away for the time from the outside actions and influences of the war—the examination of recruiting officers, their camps and their Broadway parades, with the domestic and social entanglements in which they were involved by the struggle,—to the theatre of the war itself and the sights and sounds involved in one of the deadliest conflicts that ever shook the earth with the thunder created by the blood-shedding descendants of Cain.

It is with the battle of Malvern Hill that we have to do—a battle as yet misunderstood and underrated by many who think themselves thoroughly conversant with the events of the war—one of those marvellous victories in retreat which often more fully than successes in advance illustrate the genius of those who achieve them. When the history of the War for the Union comes to be written at a later day, and when the petty jealousies and misunderstandings are discarded which now embarrass all contemporary records,—it is scarcely to be doubted that the battle of Malvern Hill will be set down as the most terrible conflict ever known on this continent; the most splendid artillery duel of any country or any age; a crowning test of indomitable bravery on the part of both loyalists and rebels; and a brilliant victory for the Union cause, which saved an army, crowned the reputation of its young General, and averted a series of evils which could not have failed to culminate in the fall of Washington and the virtual destruction of the last hope of the republic.

The events which had immediately preceded Malvern Hill are too fresh in the minds of the people to need any extended recapitulation. McClellan, deprived of his last hope for the immediate capture of Richmond, by the unexpected strength shown by the Confederates in front and the withdrawal of McDowell under the orders of the government, when within ten miles of effecting a junction with him;—McClellan, his forces sadly thinned by the labors and the diseases incident to the long delay amid the swamps of the Chickahominy; McClellan, driven at last from the possibility of even holding his position, by the arrival at Richmond of a large proportion of the rebel army driven from Corinth by Halleck, and by the movement of Jackson with a body of forty thousand men to take his right wing in flank;—McClellan had abandoned the White House on the Pamunkey River, on Sunday the twenty-ninth of June, after the terrific conflict of the Friday previous, burning the White House itself and immense quantities of stores and supplies that could not be transported, and was now falling back on the line of the James River, where he could meet the protection of the Union gun-boats and safely await the slow coming of those reinforcements with the aid of which he yet made no doubt of being able to take the rebel capital.

To McClellan's army this movement, accompanied with so much haste and such extensive destruction of valuables, necessarily looked more like a disastrous retreat after defeat than it was in reality; and the consequence was such a depression of spirits in many of the corps, as could only have been prevented growing into demoralization by the confidence that every officer and every soldier yet felt in the young commander. To the rebels, knowing the country better than the loyal troops, the movement appeared nearer what it really was, a successful escape from overwhelming difficulties, to a better and more secure position, from which an offensive movement might again be made at an early day, threatening their capital beyond a hope of defence. To them, a prize long watched and supposed to be securely entrapped, was after all escaping to a place of safety; and every Confederate officer and soldier seemed to feel that the Union army must not be allowed to gain the line of the James as an army, if any series of desperate and continued attacks could suffice to destroy it. Never, perhaps, was greater bravery or more indefatigable energy shown in pursuing a beaten but dangerous foe, than was shown on this occasion by Hill, Longstreet and Jackson; and never, certainly, was the doggedly dangerous defence of the tiger slowly retreating to his jungle, more splendidly shown than by McClellan, Hooker, Sumner, Keyes, Heintzelman and the other Union commanders. The conflict of Monday the thirtieth June, at White Oak Swamp, had brought no substantial benefit to the Confederate arms, nor had it in any considerable degree weakened the Union forces; and on the night of that day it became evident to the commanders of both armies that if Tuesday the first of July should pass without a substantial victory gained by the Confederates, the Union troops would gain the shelter of the James and the gun-boats, and the rebel advance be checked effectually.

It was upon the two armies in this position that the night of Monday closed down; and it was upon the two armies with their positions very little changed, that the morning broke on Tuesday, giving light for the double battle, of a whole day's duration, hereafter to be known as that of Malvern Hill.[11]

[Footnote 11: For the close and accurate description of this battle, the correctness of the technical terms employed, the ground occupied, and some of the very language used,—the writer in this place begs to make his acknowledgments to Mr William H. White, soldier and scholar, a Lieutenant in the Ninth Infantry in the campaign against the city of Mexico, and author of the popular "Sketches of the Mexican War" which have supplied our literature with some of the finest battle-pieces in the language.]

Nature has no sympathy with bloodshed and but little with suffering; and it is only when a God puts off mortal existence that the earth is racked with the thunders and the earthquakes of Calvary. The birds sing as sweetly and the sun shines as brightly as usual, on the day when we lay in the earth all that was mortal of one dearer to us than sunshine or bird-music; and the moon does not turn red or veil her light, even in the presence of midnight murder. If the skies weep rain upon Waterloo, it does not fall because the powers in heaven are making lamentation over the slaughter so soon to be accomplished, but because the crops of the Flemish farmers have called up to the skies for moisture.

The sun peeps lovingly down even on many a battle-field, and it kisses the tips of bayonets soon to be wet with the blood of brothers and the blades of swords that are to be hacked and hammered in deadly conflict, just as it might glint upon the polished barrel of the sportsman or flash from the diamond aigrette of the lady riding forth on her white palfrey to catch the breath of early morning. And how man, with the capacity of thought, shrinks and shrivels within himself when he marks the eternity of the course of nature and the very silent scorn bestowed upon him when he is committing crimes or displaying heroisms that make all his little world one overwhelming convulsion! It was the reply of an officer of undaunted bravery, when asked what was the predominant feeling in his mind when he headed the forlorn-hope in one of the desperate assaults that preceded the taking of the City of Mexico: "I think I heard the singing of the birds in the trees, more distinctly than anything else, and I felt a little vexed that they seemed to care nothing about the terrible scrape we were pitching into." And something of the same dissatisfaction, though more tinged with melancholy, has been felt by many who stood beside the closing grave and heard the same bird-music making harsh discord with the rumbling of the clods falling on the lid of the coffin, and who saw the pleasant sunshine tinging the very sods that were in a few moments to form an impassable barrier between the beloved dead and the miserable living.

Nature smiled upon the field of Malvern, on the morning of the First of July, however the powers that wheel the courses of the sun may have frowned behind their battlements at the sacrifice of life then beginning and the fearful passions then being called into more active exertion. A slight mist lay over wood and river, in the very early morning, but the first beams of the sun dispelled it, and the picturesque Virginia landscape was exposed to full view, with its long stretches of hill and plain, its river glimmering in the distance, its patches of corn and tobacco, its scattered and unthrifty farm-houses flanked with their negro quarters, and its long lines of white and sun-baked roads.

At that point on the direct road from Charles City to Richmond, and about four miles from Malvern Hill in a North-west direction, such a scene was presented, half an hour after sunrise, as has seldom been looked upon by mortal eye. The increasing light brought more and more plainly to view the retreating march of the Union forces—unmistakably a retreat and yet quite as unmistakably no panic. Interminable lines of wagons, whose length and number no one can estimate who has not seen a formidable army on the march, rolled on slowly over the white roads, raising clouds of impalpable dust that rose no higher than the wheels and then settled again without obscuring the view. Battery after battery of rifled Parrots, smooth-bores, howitzers and monster siege-guns, rumbled leisurely along the uneven way. Long lines of jaded cavalry tramped wearily and stiffly, the horses with drooping heads and the riders with listless attitudes and loose seats in their saddles which denoted the very extremity of fatigue and exhaustion. Streams of limping, footsore stragglers and slightly-wounded soldiers flanked the roads on either side, trudging along beside the ambulances in which their worse-wounded companions were being carried forward. Mixed in with these were unshorn Confederate prisoners; teamsters whose mules and wagons lay at various points between the Chickahominy and Turkey Bend; and ruined sutlers whose precious captured stores were now giving aid and comfort to the appreciative stomachs of the hungry rebels. The Provost-Marshal's Guard and fatigue-party of Colonel Porter brought up the rear—picking up stragglers; blowing up ammunition that had been left by the way; burning feed and forage; smashing barrels of liquids, of which the apparent wanton waste on the ground would at any other time have almost produced a revolt in the ranks; bending the barrels and throwing into the swamp, of muskets dropped by dead and exhausted soldiers; breaking up and burning abandoned wagons, and destroying knapsacks, blankets, and all such other articles that could be of any possible use to an enemy, as had been left behind by the regiments that had passed on to the James River.

The position at which our point of view is taken, and through which these streams of wagons, guns, horses and men were passing with the appearance of a retreat and yet with the steady regularity of an ordinary march, formed the camping-ground of Genl. Fitz-John Porter's command, lately the right wing but now the rear of the army of the Potomac. The shattered remnants of the corps of that indomitable General, who after services of the first bravery and importance, was so soon afterwards to be placed in an ambiguous position before the country and dismissed from a service which he had illustrated rather than disgraced,—together with portions of those of Sumner, Heintzelman and Keyes, made up his present command and the rear-guard of the army, holding this point on the Richmond and Charles City road. And whatever may have been the merits of other commands embraced in that still vast army, in that of General Porter was certainly included Borne of the best regulars yet spared to the service, and some of the bravest and most efficient volunteer regiments that were ever suddenly formed from the ranks of civil life, to defend the honor of any country. To them the often-misapplied phrase, "war-worn veterans," could now be applied without mockery, for the men and their encampment furniture looked alike worn and jaded, and it was only by their regularity and evident discipline that they could be recognized for what they really were—the most reliable soldiers in the army, and men well worthy of the trust confided to them, of defending the threatened rear and breaking any sudden assault of a foe flushed with success. Those men who stood upon guard at various points of the hasty encampment, may have been faded and ragged in uniform, the arms they bore may have shown hard usage, and their discolored tents showed little of the "pomp and circumstance of glorious war;" but they had full warrant for all this in past services, for not a storm in all the long campaign that they had not breasted, and not a battle of all the long line on the Peninsula in which they had not sown the soil of freedom with sacred seed from their thinned ranks.

A bloodless military pageant may be a splendid spectacle, and hearts may beat high and eyes grow bright when the steady foot-fall of our "household troops" is heard on Broadway, and they file by with rich music, flashing banners and the proud consciousness of a strength that would be terrible if asserted; but what are such feelings to those with which the truly patriotic look upon those who have lost all their glow and gilding in the "baptism of fire," and acquired that sacred squalor springing from active and dangerous service? The faded, coat and cap and the dingy accoutrements are badges of honor, worth a thousand of those new, bright, untried, and incapable of telling or suggesting any heroic story. And if the ranks of a regiment of such men are thin, there is a glorious shadow standing in every vacant place once filled by a gallant soldier; and a voice rings out which gives the same reply to the inquiry after the absent ones, that was so long given in the armies of Napoleon's time to the roll-call which pronounced the name of La Tour d'Auvergne, the "First Soldier of France"—"dead on the field of honor!" Think of it, lady of the agricultural and ornithological bonnet and the irreproachable silks, when the next time in a city railroad car two "soldiers" sit down beside you, and one is a spruce, natty-whiskered, good-looking member of a pet regiment of the N.G.S.N.Y. or the N.Y.S.M., going down to an evening drill and a supper of oysters after it, and the other a hard-featured and weather-beaten discharged soldier from our Southern battle-fields, lame or otherwise, in faded uniform and a shirt not too suggestive of plentiful washerwomen,—think of this, and if you smile bewitchingly upon the one, as is your nature, when he apologizes for accidentally creasing your dress,—do not father up your robes with too much contempt, from contact with the stained garments of the other, who has outraged your amor propre by taking a place beside you; for though you may be merely shunning contact with a vulgar ruffian or a coward who has deserted his colors in the hour of need—you may be insulting a hero.

Outlying pickets had of course been thrown out from General Porter's force, now posted to keep the advancing rebels at bay until the still immense trains of stores and ammunition could be conveyed to Harrison's Landing, and the siege-guns and field-batteries placed in position at Malvern Hill and other points guarding the new base. McClellan had evidently calculated upon making the last and effectual stand at Malvern Hill, and the rebels had quite as evidently calculated upon his doing so if allowed to reach it; and on the issue of the struggle in that neighborhood was to depend the question whether the Union forces were to be driven pell-mell into the James River, surrender or hold their own and repulse their assailants. Sudden attacks and attempts at surprise were naturally expected by the rear-guard at any moment; and against these usual and unusual precautions had been taken, which would have satisfied old Frederick himself—that hard-headed old soldier who dreaded nothing in war but an attack by surprise.

The nature of the country in the neighborhood as well as indeed along the whole line from the Chickahominy to the James, abounding as it did in woods and swamps, made it impossible to form extended lines of battle even at the spot where successful defence and the holding of a certain position appeared to be the most necessary. Many regiments had not even room to deploy more than half the length of their proper fronts; and the full strength of the command could not possibly be brought to bear against an attacking foe, distributed as it was in knots for miles across the country.

These natural obstacles, meanwhile, were not disadvantageous to the rebels. Their superior knowledge of the section, with its numerous minor swamp-roads, forest-paths and approaches necessarily unknown to the Union forces, gave them immense advantages, such as they had not been slow to improve, in corresponding circumstances, during the whole of the preceding campaign. Aware of these facts, a night attack on Monday might have been expected by the Federal officers, and the men had slept on their arms in anticipation of it. But White Oak Swamp had been too severe a trial of courage and energy; they were not disposed to attack again before receiving more of the reinforcements steadily pouring onward from Richmond; and as a consequence the wearied troops had been allowed to pass the night without disturbance, and they had even overhauled the remains of rations remaining in their haversacks and made their scanty and unsavory breakfasts, long before the expected hostile cloud burst upon them.

It was nearly nine o'clock in the morning when some of the scouts of Smith's brigade came in and announced the enemy advancing in force. In a moment after, the rattling rolls of drums and the brazen notes of bugles resounded among the bivouacs; and with the regimental and national colors planted at prominent points before arranged, the regiments formed upon them and took up the positions assigned. Some of the brigades were hidden in the cornfields adjoining the encampment; some were drawn up along the lines of fences, affording little protection, but obscuring knowledge of the field by an enemy attempting to reconnoitre from a distance; several regiments were thrown into the woods right and left; and a considerable portion of the command awaited the attack on open ground, without other protection than God, the justice of their cause, and their own valor. Kern's Pennsylvania Battery, Martin's Massachusetts, and Carlisle's and Tidball's Regular Batteries, were on the ground. They moved up nearer the front than they had before been lying, the Regular Batteries in the main road and upon an eminence to the right. Kern took position near the edge of the swamp on the left; and Martin found post in a wheat-field to the right. Several brigades of infantry were also thrown well in advance, though not in range of the artillery; and so prepared, the Union troops awaited what they felt was to be a decisive conflict.

Gradually the "crack! crack! crack!" of a scattering fire of small-arms, which had been heard for a quarter of an hour to the westward, came nearer and nearer, as the pickets were driven in, contesting their ground stubbornly as they fell back. On came the Confederates, slowly at first and afterwards with more rapidity, throwing out clouds of skirmishers, in the rear of which the main body marched in such formations as the nature of the ground permitted. Whenever they deployed in line of battle, instead of the customary arrangement of a single line of two ranks, they formed in three lines "closed en masse," thus making their front six ranks deep. This disposition of course was calculated to give increased weight in a bayonet charge, and indeed to make it well nigh irresistible; but besides the fact that the solid formation would render the execution of artillery among them much more destructive, in the event of a repulse it would be almost impossible to rally them, as the different regiments would necessarily lack space in which to manoeuvre, the lines inevitably mix up in an inextricable mass, and the whole body become a disorganized mob. Some of the rebel divisions were formed in column, either of division or company, all closed up at half distance.

It was a matter of remark to the Union officers who saw the advance of the Confederate forces on that day—the most formidable advance, perhaps, that they have made during any battle of the war,—that there were no flashing and showy uniforms, and that but few flags were seen. The same remark had before been made during other conflicts of the Peninsular campaign, and the contrast thus presented to the gaudy and careless dressing of many of the Union troops, seemed one to reflect credit on the Confederate prudence at the expense of that quality on which they had so prided themselves—their chivalry. Except as the sun shone on the sloping musket-barrels and bristling bayonets, there were few brilliant objects in all that formidable array, on which the sharp-shooters of the Federal army could readily fix as targets. Few bright buttons flashed on uniforms, even of officers, and shoulder-straps were so uncommon as to make it difficult to distinguish an officer (even a field or staff officer, if not on horseback) from a private. Our own forces, throughout the war, have probably been needlessly reckless in this regard; and there is no doubt that the brilliant uniforms, particularly of the various Zouave corps, have often made them more easily distinguishable and added to their losses when fighting at long range. But the truly brave man is not apt to consider the consequences to his own safety, of wearing a dress or carrying an insignia which he would otherwise bear with propriety and with pride. It was an inviting mark which Henri of Navarre offered to the foe at Ivry, in the white plume with which he led on his followers; and Murat, when he made those desperate charges to which reference has before been made during the progress of this narration, must have known that his flashing silks, his feathers and embroidery, put his life much more in danger than that of an officer less conspicuously clad; but neither the foe of the League nor the brother-in-law of Napoleon remembered the danger when the glory was to be won and the great object of the soldier accomplished. Perhaps that duellist may be pardoned by those who look on, when he carefully removes from his person every mark that could furnish a target to his enemy, but he is no more than pardoned; and if there is one redeeming trait in the detestable character of the duellist, it is to be found in that ready exposure of his life to the chances of fate and skill, which does not stop to calculate a button or measure the narrowest line of aim which can be presented to an adversary. Straitened circumstances and the want of many of the appliances of luxury, may have had something to do with the lack of personal display on the part of the Confederates, more especially the officers, throughout the struggle; but a long time will elapse before the non-chivalrous "Yankees" whom they have despised, will cease to believe that commendable anxiety for personal safety has lain at the bottom of the self-denial.

The fire of the rebel skirmishers, in this advance, was met promptly by those of the Union army, and so sharply that the former were soon driven back pell-mell on the main body. The Federal sharp-shooters, taking advantage of every tree, rock or knoll, frequently overlapping their flanks, kept up a continual and most destructive fire on the steadily advancing lines and columns. The Confederates came on in excellent order, their dingy lines sometimes bulging to the front, then occasionally bending rearwards,—now the left wing curving forward, and then the right swaying in an opposite direction. But these trifling deviations from mathematical lines were always quickly corrected, and the "dress" of their long fronts was really so good as to give evidence of continued and careful drill on the part of the men and much ability on that of the officers.

A heavy gray-clad body of rebels advanced in soldierly style until they came within two hundred yards of the position occupied by Couch's division, which was lying down in the weeds and partially screened by them. A blast of bugles—a roll of drums—a few sharp words of command; and up rose the before-dormant mass to their feet. A scorching, withering fire of small-arms, delivered by companies from left to right, and with the greatest deliberation, was sent directly into the faces of the advancing rebels—such a close and deadly fire as seems almost as impossible to advance against as against the lightnings of heaven. They halted, wavered, and gave signs of confusion; but they were soon restored to order and again came on. Again one of those close and terrible volleys was poured into them, thinning the ranks and encumbering every step with dead; and again they halted and wavered. This time they deployed in line of battle and commenced a fierce fire on the opposing divisions; accompanied by yells peculiar to themselves—such as no other civilized troops in the world have ever uttered—not a hurrah, a cheer, or even a roar, but a shriek as dissonant as the Indian war-whoop, and more terrible.

On the right and on the left the enemy came hurrying up, their columns at a double quick. But they were met and brought to a stand at every point. Their artillery, ordered to the front, dashed up by batteries, took positions, unlimbered and opened savagely. The Union batteries, already posted, commenced their splendid practice. Sheet after sheet of deadly flame burst from one side and the other of the combatants; the rattling crack of the volleys of firearms became blended with the heavy metallic ring and sullen boom of the artillery; and the first battle of Malvern Hill—that which was to decide the approach to the main position—was now fairly begun.

From various and hitherto unknown paths through the woods and marshes, the gray-clads came on in swarms, every moment adding to the formidable character of the attack, the evident numbers of the assailants, and the certainty that the struggle was to be a close and terrible one. But the gathering thousands were fiercely met by the blue-clad veterans of the Union, and repeatedly driven back in confusion. Let this be recorded, from the personal knowledge of sharers in that combat—whatever after-history may choose to consider authority on the subject,—that the Federal troops never permanently yielded one foot of ground during the fight, however worn-out with fatigue, embarrassed by a cramped position, outnumbered and at one time half-surrounded.

It has before been said that the Battle of Malvern Hill was one of the most magnificent artillery duels known to the history of war; and though the most splendid effects of that terrible arm were shown at a later period, when the whole range of McClellan's heavy pieces came into play, yet even now the effects were such as to have satisfied the very Moloch of destructive war. The play of the Union regular batteries was beautiful, (if such a term can be applied to that which defaces the beauty of God's handiwork, in however holy a cause.) Every shot could be seen to tear open the dense masses of the enemy in wide spaces, through which the white background could be distinctly seen until they were closed again by almost superhuman efforts. The volunteer batteries seemed little behind in their practice—their solid shot and bursting shell falling in a perpetual shower and making fearful havoc alternately in the solid masses of the rebels and among the gunners of their artillery.

When the Confederates opened with their batteries, General Porter, accompanied by a part of his staff, was occupying the upper slope of an eminence to the right, from which a tolerably good view of the battle-ground could be obtained. It was not one of those points "from which all the details of the fight could be taken in at a glance," according to the phraseology of many of the graphic describers of modern battles; for no such spot has ever been known, in the neighborhood of any extensive conflict, since the use of artillery covered every field with smoke and destroyed the romantic opportunities for observation which existed in the days of the lance and the cross-bow. But it was the very best position for a general oversight of the field, attainable under the circumstances; and that it was within easy range of the enemy's missiles was demonstrated by one of the very first shot, which struck a tree immediately behind the General, shattering it to pieces and severely wounding one of the aid-de-camps with the flying splinters.

It is impossible to describe, in such form that it can be realized by the reader, this fiercest of battle-fields for the two hours which followed the first attack. Many men felt it, and of those who live to tell the tale, all will remember it; but it may be said that no man saw it. The canvas best depicting it would be deprived of all the essentials of a picture, and merely made a chaos of destruction, with here the glint of a gun and there the flash of a sabre; here a momentary view of a black piece of heavy artillery, and there a head, an arm and a leg of one of the combatants; here a puff of smoke, and there a volley of belching flame—but all indistinct, terrible and indescribable. Solid shot, conical shell and spherical case went humming, hurtling and howling through the air, blotting out rebels and slaying loyalists. The leaden messengers of the sharp-shooters went shrieking to their living targets, killing, crippling and intimidating; buck, ball and Minie bullets missed and made their marks; and the rattling volleys of companies and platoons became at length blended in one general and irregular burst of all destructive sounds known to modern warfare.

The Union ranks were of course sadly thinned by the murderous discharges from those of the rebels, even if their own fire was so effective. The odds in point of numbers and weight of fire was heavily against them, and they knew it. The prestige of success was not theirs, for though the enemy had been beaten in almost every trial of arms since the first landing on the Peninsula, yet the irresistible force of circumstances (and what the world will always believe blunders) had prevented their reaping the fruits of those repeated victories, and the great object of the expedition—Richmond—had been daily receding and was now apparently out of reach. The brilliant flank movement which McClellan was executing, seemed to them to be a simple retreat which was to take the remains of the Army of the Potomac to the James River for the purpose of an immediate embarkation and abandonment of the campaign. Men less heroic would have grown disheartened and struck feebly in the midst of so many causes of discouragement; and the able review of the Campaign on the Peninsula, by a true man and a soldier, the Prince de Joinville, shows that even with his past knowledge of their bravery and endurance he would not have been surprised to see the spirit of the whole army sinking under sufferings, wrongs and disasters. Perhaps such would have been the case, had they had less confidence in their leaders; but while that existed there could be nothing like demoralization; and if there has ever been a day since that time, when the same noble body of men and the others who have been joined with or replaced them, have displayed that hopeless deterioration of efficiency as an army, the fault has lain in their being led by men in whom they lacked confidence and men who lacked confidence in themselves! Up to this time no such misfortune had fallen upon them. They had learned to suffer and endure, but they had not yet learned to be permanently defeated. Sumner, Franklin, Kearney, Heintzelman, Keyes and Fitz-John Porter, but above all McClellan, possessed their undivided confidence; and whenever, at any point of the retreat towards the James, either of those great chiefs had appeared in their midst or ridden along their battle-thinned ranks—renewed hope and energy had been always evinced by the heartiest acclamations.

Particularly, it has been said, was this the case with McClellan. His extraordinary popularity has been more than once incidentally adverted to, in the course of this narration; and if it has been so, the cause is not to be found in either partisan spirit or man-worship on the part of the writer, but in the unavoidable necessity of echoing what "everybody says." "Little Mac" was then, he is to-day,[12] the most popular soldier of the age, whether the country has or has not anything to show for the confidence long reposed in him by the government and the immense bodies of troops at one time placed at his disposal. No general since Napoleon has ever so gained the love of his soldiers or so inspired them with confidence in his will and ability to take care of them and to accomplish what he was set to do, if not interfered with. Their favorite reply to any suspicion of danger to any corps, was: "Little Mac will take care of us!" and to any doubt of the success of the campaign: "Little Mac knows what he is about!" Blind confidence, perhaps!—but such confidence, or something approaching it, must be commanded by personal qualities, or great operations in war can never be accomplished.

[Footnote 12: February 16th, 1863.]

At no time during the Peninsular campaign has the commanding General so fully commanded the confidence of the soldiers, as during all those severe battles afterwards to be known as the Seven Days. His calm and collected action had been of the very character to inspire that confidence, and could not have wrought more effectually to that end had it had no other purpose. Some men, jubilant and light-hearted when all their plans are progressing favorably, permit their words to become few and their manner sombre and abstracted when difficulties thicken, creating fear and distrust in the minds of those around them, even when they themselves have not lost confidence and are only absorbed in thought. McClellan, always a silent man, displayed the very opposite. One of his staff officers said of him on that terrible Friday afternoon of the first conflict, when the result certainly seemed a most threatening one for the Union arms: "Little Mac seems to have woke up! I have not seen him look so happy before, since he received the news of McDowell's falling back on Washington." And there had not been wanting those to circulate throughout the army his confident and self-possessed action on the morning before—that of White Oak Swamp, when he sat on horseback at the cross-roads, with aid-de-camps dashing up with unfavorable reports, and heads of divisions a little embarrassed if not dispirited around him. "Gentlemen, take it easy! Only obey me, and I will bring you out of all this without the loss of a man or a gun, God willing!"

Such words had been like the pause of the Bruce to cut his armor-strap when flying before the English enemy—they had inspirited the whole command. He had remained, too, the whole of Monday, in the neighborhood of the White Oak Swamp, personally superintending everything and hastening the passage of the immense trains onward towards the James. Nothing had seemed to discourage him, and no exposure in the terrible heat had seemed to fatigue him beyond endurance. All these facts had crept out to every division of the army, as they will do through the subtle and unaccountable telegraphism of comrade-ry; and when regiment after regiment heard of the incident since made memorable by De Joinville, of his rising from his momentary rest on the piazza of a house near White Oak and going out with a smile to prevent his soldiers picking and eating the cherries belonging to his pretty hostess, they had burst out into laughs and cheers more complimentary to the young General's pluck than his devotion to Nelly Marcy, and fancied that he might have been engaged in picking other cherries for himself, that grew on red lips instead of on the tree!

Such were the influences which combatted those otherwise so unfavorable, kept up their spirits even when they could see nothing but defeat and discouragement in every movement, and made every blow they struck at the advancing enemy more deadly than the last. Such were the influences peculiarly active on this day when they were so much needed, and which inspired the army-corps of Fitz-John Porter for the memorable blow struck in the first battle of Malvern. The rebel South will long mourn for its lost children, perished in that sanguinary conflict and in the wider and more destructive but not fiercer one which was so soon to follow at Malvern Hill itself.



CHAPTER XVIII.

MORE OF THE FIRST BATTLE OF MALVERN—A PAUSE—THE ATTACKS ON THE MAIN POSITION—REPULSE AFTER REPULSE—VICTORY—STRANGE INCIDENTS OF THE LAST HOUR OF THE BATTLE.

Still the battle went on—that ferocious attack which seemed to have the desperation of defence, and that steady defence which appeared to have the assured confidence of an attack. The smoke gathered rapidly, rolled away at times, then settled in dense masses, shutting out portions of the battle-field and whole divisions of either army from view, and concealing the movements of either belligerent from the other until lifted in the occasional lulls of the fiery storm or wafted away by the lazy breeze which came sluggishly over from the James River marshes. Men fell thickly, crushed, mangled and dead, or so terribly wounded by shot or shell that life could be henceforth nothing more than one long, helpless agony. Slightly wounded soldiers went limping to the rear, seeking surgical aid; while badly wounded men were eagerly caught up and borne off the field by their "comrades in battle" or by white-livered recreants, anxious to desert their braver companions and place themselves in safety. A certain percentage of such craven-hearted libels on humanity—let it be said here—are always to be found in every army and on every battle-field, dusky backgrounds against which brave men show the brighter, and ever ready to take advantage of any circumstance that will help them to the rear. In the armies of the older and more warlike nations of Europe, where the reins of discipline are much more tightly drawn than in our own, such skulking is prevented by regularly-organized ambulance-parties and by the prompt shooting down of any officer or soldier, not wounded, who dares to leave the ranks without orders. Even in our own service, a Taylor is occasionally found, fighting such a desperate battle as that of the Bad Axe against the Indians, and posting a line of his most reliable troops in the rear, with orders to make short work of the skulkers. Such discipline as this—an enemy in front and an equally dangerous body of friends behind, is generally found efficacious even for the weakest knees; and but few hours of such experience are necessary to produce a marked-change in the steadiness of any corps under fire.

Noon now approached, and the battle had raged for more than two hours, without any intermission except the occasional lulls when batteries were limbered up and dragged off at a gallop to new positions, and when regiments deployed in line or closed in column, making evolutions to the flanks or movements to the front. Attacks had been fiercely made on every portion of the Union lines by the maddened rebels—maddened, as was afterwards discovered, by the gunpowdered whiskey in their canteens; and they had been quite as fiercely repulsed by the loyal troops, who neither needed nor received any such stimulus. This defence had been materially assisted, and the Federal troops enabled to gain ground at every repulse of the rebels, by the arrival of several regiments of infantry and two of his best batteries, sent in haste by McClellan from his main position at Malvern Hill, so soon as the roar of artillery announced that the fight had fairly begun with the rear-guard.

A little before meridian, the musket fire of the enemy slackened perceptibly, while their artillery, operating against the Union left, seemed to redouble its fury. This change was at once made known to Porter, who as quickly divined the intention of Longstreet. This was to engage all attention with the Federal left, while several of his divisions, passing rapidly through roadways and obscure paths in the woods known only to the native Virginians, were to take the right wing in flank. Porter immediately directed counter movements to meet them—movements admirably calculated and as admirably executed. Burns, with his own and two other brigades, moved rapidly to the right and deployed in line opposite the edge of the white oaks from which the rebels must emerge to make their attack. Four batteries went up at a trot and took position where they were masked by a fringe of bushes and some patches of tall corn. From this point the artillery could concentrate a terrible fire of grape, canister and short-fuse shell upon any part of the opposite woods from which the enemy might make their appearance. The infantry were ordered to lie down, and were concealed from view by clumps of trees, corn and underbrush. This repelling force was not kept long in suspense, and it was evident that the movement had not been made a moment too soon for safety. Suddenly from the shadow of the white-oaks, out came the Confederates by regiments, without tap of drum or bugle-call, pouring from the various openings in double-quick time, and by the right and left flanks. They filed rapidly right and left until the woods were cleared; then by a halt and face-to-the-front they were brought quickly into line of battle. A halt of very brief space to align and close up ranks, and they were ordered forward to the attack. On they came, in close order and with long swaying lines, exulting in the prospect of a successful issue to their bold movement, and so confident that they would take the Federal flank and rear by complete surprise, that silence was no longer felt to be necessary and yells and shouts of triumph were beginning to burst from one portion and another of their line. Still on they came, and not a shot had been fired on either side since they emerged from the woods. Their left was thrown forward in advance of the centre and right, as if seeking to surround the positions supposed to be held by the Federal troops. They were even allowed to advance within pistol-shot of some portions of the ambuscade, before the trap laid for them was sprung.

Then what a change!—like that when the thunder-storm, long gathering but still silent, breaks at once into desolating fury. It seemed as if at one and the same instant the four Union batteries opened, and a terrible concentrating storm of flame and projectiles leaped from the muzzles of twenty-four pieces of artillery and burst upon their centre with devastating effect. In an instant after, the infantry sprung to their feet, and a sheet of fire burst from right to left, one deadly and irresistible shower of lead sweeping through the rebel ranks that had so little expected such a reception. They hesitated—halted—recoiled. Before they could recover from the awful shock, volley after volley was poured into their wavering lines, and they could not again be brought forward. On the instant when their discomfiture was clearly perceived, a charge was ordered against them. The Union men dashed forward, glad to have that order at last, and breaking into ringing cheers—the first in which they had indulged that day. The rebels could not stand a moment before that impetuous onset, but broke and ran for the cover of the white-oaks, leaving the ground of the conflict almost impassable with the terrible piles of their dead and wounded.

A general advance of our lines was now ordered, and the command was obeyed with alacrity. The rebel front, weakened by the withdrawal of so many troops for the grand flanking movement, gave way before they could be reached with the steel; and their three-deep lines became mixed up in the most hopeless disorder. Kearney's division made a gallant charge, in this movement, Sickles' Excelsior Brigade once more evidencing that splendid steadiness with the bayonet which had been so conspicuous at Williamsburgh and Fair Oaks. General Heintzelman joined in this brilliant advance, his tall form and blue blouse conspicuous as he rode rapidly along the lines, speaking words of cheer and steadying the men who did not need urging forward.

The Union batteries had meanwhile kept up their terrible fire, while those of the enemy were silenced one after another and drawn off with the recoiling troops, with the exception of one battery, which maintained its fire with invincible obstinacy. It was felt that this battery must be taken or silenced. A stream of men in dingy French blue were seen to leap forward, and it was known that the Excelsior boys were making a dash at the battery. The gunners saw the movement, began to limber up their pieces and succeeded in galloping away with four of them. But the two remaining guns could not be handled quickly enough, and the Excelsiors took them with a rush and a cheer, and in such excellent spirits that one of them was the moment after sitting astride of each gun and waving his cap in token of victory. The battle-flag of one of the Georgia regiments, and three hundred prisoners, were also captured in this gallant dash, which effectually showed how little the spirits of the Army of the Potomac had been damped by recent misfortunes. General Heintzelman lost his horse by the last fire of one of the captured pieces, and at the same time received a wound in the arm—fortunately not serious. The repulse of the rebels was now complete. Longstreet was compelled to "retire" and not by any means in "good order," leaving the field with its dead and wounded, and many arms and other trophies, in the possession of the Federal forces.

Of course this success could not be followed up, the object of the battle having been to secure an uninterrupted line of march to the James River. And of course the Union generals were well aware that while the rebels possessed any remaining strength, they would not give up their cherished object of crippling or destroying the main body before it could reach the shelter of the river and the gun-boats. Fresh troops would be brought up; and but little time would be allowed the Federal troops to recover from the fatigue and excitement of that arduous morning. The rebel plan evidently was to give the Federal forces no rest—to precipitate fresh masses of their own troops continually upon them, when weary and exhausted with previous fighting; and when they were at last fairly worn out and incapable of further exertion, to "gobble them up" (to use an expressive, though not elegant phrase) or destroy them in detail and at leisure. The theory was admirable, and both brain and heart were necessary to prevent its being carried out in successful practice.

The Federal dead were buried on the field where they had so bravely fallen; the wounded were sent on to Harrison's Landing; the slaughtered rebels were left to the tender care of their approaching comrades; the prisoners were gathered together and put properly under guard; and then the army-corps of General Fitz-John Porter fell back under previous orders to the strong position of Malvern Hill proper, where McClellan was certain he would at once be attacked by the rebels in force, its possession being the most important point in their plan of action, and its triumphant retention one of the most important in his own.

The first battle of Malvern was ended; but the curtain was soon to rise on a still more fearful scene of slaughter and one yet more uneven in its character as regarded the losses of the Union army and the rebels.

The main position occupied by McClellan was a splendid one for defence; and, thanks to what De Joinville calls the "happy foresight of the General, who, notwithstanding all the hindrances presented by the nature of the soil to his numerous artillery, had spared no pains to bring it with him"—the preparations for holding that position were magnificently adequate. The extreme right flank was comparatively narrow, and as it was a point liable to a determined attack, strong earth-works had been hastily thrown up entirely across it, and it had been further protected by a thick, impenetrable mass of abattis, the materials for which were so plentifully furnished by the Virginia woods and in the construction of which the quasi-mechanical army was rapidly efficient. The left was protected by the James River and the terror-inspiring gun-boats. In front the hill sloped gently down to the Charles City and Richmond road, and other points by which the enemy must debouch to begin the attack. On this natural plateau not less than three hundred pieces of artillery—a number fabulous in any preceding struggle in the history of the world—were placed in battery; so arranged that they would not interfere With the fire of the infantry along the natural glacis up which the assailants would be obliged to advance unsheltered. In the skirts of the woods lying beyond the foot of the hills, long lines of rifle-pits had been dug—these, and the woods beyond, occupied by a brigade of Maine and Wisconsin infantry and a portion of Berdan's celebrated regiment, to act as sharp-shooters.

The sun was sinking rapidly westward in the direction of Richmond—that coveted capital of Secessia, for the possession of which so much blood and treasure had been unavailingly expended; the trees, which for so many hours had afforded no shelter from the blinding blaze, except immediately beneath their spreading branches and dust-dimmed leaves, began to cast long shadows eastward; and the fervent heat began to be more sensibly tempered by the breeze creeping in from the placid James. Still the Union troops were resting on their arms, weary but undaunted, awaiting the approach of the Confederates, then (at five o'clock) reported as advancing to the attack. The line was formed as follows: the remnants of Porter's and Sumner's corps on the right; Franklin and Heintzelman in the centre; and Couch's division of Keyes' corps on the left. In position, on the left, were two New York batteries, Robertson's United States battery of six pieces, Allen's Massachusetts and Kern's Pennsylvania batteries. Griffin's United States battery, Weeden's Rhode island, and three from New York, held positions in the centre. On the right were Tidball's, Weed's and Carlisle's regular batteries, a German battery of twenty-four pounders, a battery belonging to the Pennsylvania reserve, and one New York battery—in all about eighty pieces.

Within a few minutes of five the signal officers at the various stations waved their telegraphic bunting, announcing the approach of the rebels under Magruder, and immediately afterwards they appeared in sight, in large dense masses reaching apparently quite across the country to the West, North-west and West-south-west,—with cavalry on either flank and artillery thickly scattered at various points, all along their line. Stretching away from the foot of Malvern Hill, in the hostile direction, lay a large open space known as Carter's Field—a field destined that day to be more thickly sown with dead than almost any historic spot on the globe except some portions of the field of Waterloo or that of Grokow. It was a mile long by three quarters of a mile in breadth, enclosed by thick woods on the three distant sides, while that towards the Hill was open. On the two sides flanking the enemy's approach our sharp-shooters were principally concealed. Entirely across Carter's Field stretched the rebel line, while in depth their columns extended so far back that the eye of the signal officer lost them in a wavering line far away in the thick woods extending beyond the scene of the morning's battle.

The Union forces rose up wearily but steadily, and awaited the approach of the Confederate host, known to be at least twice or thrice their own number, and led on by that sanguinary commander otherwise described by a writer who accompanied him through all his battles in the United States service and thoroughly knows his habits of speech and action,[13]—as "the flowery and ever-thirsty John Bankhead Magruder—the pet of Newport and the petter of old wine." The rebels moved forward in good order; slowly at first, and then, as if spurred on irresistibly from behind in all parts of the field, the whole dingy-gray mass broke from the "common time" step into that "dog-trot" known in the tactics of the present day as the "double-quick." At the same moment they broke into those shrieks of horrible dissonance, remarked in the fight of the morning, rising even above the din of the opening artillery, and more resembling the whoops of the copper-skinned warriors of the renegade Albert Pike, than soldiers of what is called a Christian nation, led on by a commander believing himself the very "pink of chivalry."

[Footnote 13: White—"Mexican War Sketches."]

Gallantly, it must be owned by all who saw the movement, did the gray-clads spring forward to the encounter, rushing over the field at an accelerating speed which soon increased to a full run. Then and not till then again burst the deadly storm of defence. From the Federal lines across the hill there belched murderous blasts of grape and canister into their front, and from the rifle-pits and woods went shrieking showers of rifle shots and Minie balls into their flanks, the two terrible influences almost sweeping them away like leaves caught by the gale. They fell by hundreds at a discharge, encumbering the ground and leaving wide gaps in their ranks; yet still their dense columns closed again and dashed resolutely up, until more than two-thirds the distance across Carter's Field was accomplished. Here the carnage, from the combined effects of artillery and small-arms at short range, became absolutely terrible among the rebels—such a spectacle as even loyal soldiers, gazing at it, could not but feel to be a species of wholesale murder for which the cause could no more than give excuse. The bones in the rebel regiments seemed to be crushed like window-glass in a hailstorm; masses of gory pulp that had but a few moments before been men, began to form an absolute coating for the ground; and the fierce yells of attack had become awfully commingled with the shrieks of those mangled beyond endurance and dying in agony. It was too much for human bravery to withstand—probably no troops in the world would have stood longer under that withering fire, than the brave but misguided tools of the secession heresy. Their lines began to waver with a ricketty, swaying motion, to and fro, as if the whole body was one man and he was exhausted and tottering; then there-was a movement to the "right about," and the whole head of the column sought hasty shelter under the friendly woods in the rear, from which they had so lately debouched.

A terrific artillery-duel proper was now commenced, and kept up for more than an hour, the Confederates showing no disposition to renew the attack, and the Federal forces contented to hold them at bay under circumstances in which the balance of damage by artillery must be so largely in their own favor. Then came a sudden lull in the storm, during which the Confederates made preparations to capture the flanking rifle-pits of the Federals, which had annoyed them so severely in the charge. Several desperate attempts were made upon them in quick succession, and they were taken and retaken repeatedly. In the end, however, they were permanently held by the defenders, whose stubborn pluck, aided by the enfilading fire of the advanced batteries, proved more than a match for the determined bravery of the attacking forces.

On the summit of Malvern Hill, and nearly in the middle of the plateau formed by the whole eminence, stands a red brick mansion-house, quaintly built, antique and sombre. The house is of two stories, long and low. Solemn shade-trees surround it; and corn and wheat fields stretch away from the Virginia fences of its spacious yard, down the slope of the hill and across the lowland to the margin of the James. In time of peace, this old house boasted a most charming situation, and the view from the verandah was one of the very finest in the country, taking in at a glance the long line of the winding river for many miles in either direction, and looking up the river, the high range of bluffs on the other side on which has been erected that serious obstacle to an advance on Richmond by water—Fort Darling. At the eastern end of the mansion stand the inevitable "negro-quarters," now empty and deserted, and with nothing about them to remind one of their former dusky denizens, except that unmistakable odor which supplies an obvious parody on Moore's aroma of the roses in the broken vase. Opposite the west end of the house is a deep, roof-covered well; and around this crowds of the wounded and thirsty Union soldiers were continually gathered during the fight, drinking in, as fast as permitted, that sweetest as well as freest of Nature's blessings—water.

On the west gable of this mansion, on the afternoon of the battle, a signal-officer was stationed, with his ten-foot staff and odd-shaped parti-colored yard of muslin, and his field-glass. His view extended far in the direction of Richmond, taking in the various camps of Wise's Legion, Jackson's and Huger's divisions, and others of the rebel forces; while riverwards his eye could easily reach, with the aid of the glass and when the smoke of the field did not arise too thickly, the famed Drury's Bluff and the redoubtable Fort Darling itself, still frowning defiance at the threatening little Monitor.

The failure to take the rifle-pits had been followed by a second lull, betokening, to the experienced soldier, fresh rebel preparations for an attack in another quarter. Suddenly, when the sun was just sending the last of its rays through the murky clouds of the battle-field, as if in indication that the eye of heaven had not wholly deserted the brotherhood of Cain,—the Federal signal-officers in the distance waved their flags, and other signal-officers in the vicinity repeated their motions. These pantomimic exhibitions, mysterious to the unpractised eye, told to the officers in command, that the Confederates, strongly reinforced by the fresh troops of Jackson and Huger, and their troops inspired by fresh draughts of the maddening gunpowdered whiskey, were being marshalled for another and final attack upon the Federal position.

But a few moments elapsed before the roar of the Confederate batteries gave proof that this warning had not been in vain. Every piece they could bring to bear sent its missiles of death hurtling into the Union lines, the next charge to be made under cover of that cannonade. But probably even they had not calculated upon such a reply as was given by the artillery of McClellan. Never before, since war became a science of butchery, did so many pieces thunder at once upon the devoted ranks of any attacking force. Never before were the very peals of the artillery of heaven so terribly rivalled. Only a portion of the Union guns had before been brought into play: now nearly the whole three hundred belched forth their deadly defiance in crashing and booming repetitions. Those who heard the sound will never forget it; nor will many of them live to hear that sound repeated. Far away among the mountains, a hundred and fifty miles distant, the boom of that terrible cannonade was heard, announcing the conflict to loyalist and rebel who had no other means of knowing that it was in progress. At times the firm earth shook with the continued reverberations, as if an earthquake was passing; and combatants even stood still in the very face of the deadliest danger, under a momentary impression that some fearful convulsion of nature must be in progress and that the sinking sun must be going down on the last day of a crumbling earth.

The rebel artillery was skilfully managed, and their range proved to be excellent; while the management and effect of the Union guns can only be described by one word—magnificent. The superior weight and management of the Federal metal was manifest from one fact if no other—the continual limbering up and changing positions of the rebel pieces, to escape the deadly aim of artillerymen who have probably never been excelled in any service. The only historian who has as yet dealt with the events of that great day,[14] says that it was "madness for the Confederates to rush against such obstacles," and that during the entire day, owing to the weight and superior management of the Federal artillery, they fought "without for a single moment having a chance of success." And yet this was the artillery of an army, and this was the army itself, spoken of by detractors as "defeated" and "demoralized," and utterly incapable of further offensive movements against Richmond, however rested and reinforced!

[Footnote 14: De Joinville.]

Under cover of the smoke of this fire, the mighty hosts of Huger, Jackson and Magruder advanced to the second general assault. Onward they rushed, and, emerging from the sulphurous clouds, rolled forward in heavy columns. They presented a still more imposing front than at the first attack, stretching more than half a mile across the fatal Carter's Field, with scarce a break or an interval in its entire length. On they pressed—steadily, resolutely, desperately—pausing an instant to pour in their fire, and then forward again at quick step. The advance was met with belching volumes from rifles, muskets and batteries, sending such storms of "leaden rain and iron hail" as no body of men on earth could hope to withstand, and joining with the shrieks and shouts of the combatants and the dying, to create such a din as might well have given the impression that the chains of Pandemonium were unloosed and all the lost replying to the thunders of heaven with screams of blasphemy and desperation.

At this moment, too, a new element of terror and destruction broke suddenly into the conflict. As if the powers of the air had indeed begun to take part in the struggle, fiery meteors fell out of the air, from a direction not commanded by the Federal batteries—fiery meteors before which whole ranks of men seemed like stubble before the scythe. One of them would fall hissing through the air, burst with a horrible explosion, and the moment after nothing would remain of the ranks of rebels within thirty or forty feet of it, but a mass of shattered and mangled fragments, limbs torn from limbs and heads from bodies. At first the rebels could not understand the meaning of this new and awful visitation, and even the Union troops were not for the time aware what new power had come to their aid, destroying more of the enemy at a blow than their heaviest and best-served batteries. But the signal officer on the gable of the old mansion on Malvern Hill saw, and soon communicated the fact to the officers in command—that the gun-boats Galena and Aroostook (not the Monitor, as has been sometimes reported), had steamed up from their anchorage at Curl's Neck, two miles below, and opened furious broadsides of shell from their heavy rifled guns. These shells were the terrible missiles working that untold destruction in the rebel ranks; and the horrors and dangers of the fight to them must have been intensely aggravated by these fiery monsters that came tearing and shrieking through the forest and exploded with concussions that shook the earth like discharges from whole batteries. Only after the battle was over could the ravages made by this agency be fully appreciated, from the effects produced on natural objects lying in the line of their course. In many places, avenues rods long and many feet in width, were cut through the tree-tops and branches; and in not a few instances, great trees, three and four feet in diameter, were burst open from branch to root, split to shreds and scattered in splinters in all directions.