Chapter 3

Sheridan Hurrying to Rally His Men

So he galloped the whole twelve miles with the men everywhere rallying behind him and following him at full speed. At last he came to the forefront of the battle where Getty's division and the cavalry were holding their own and resisting the rapid approach of the whole Confederate Army. Sheridan called upon his horse for a last effort and jumped the rail fence at the crest of the hill. By this time the black horse was white with foam, but he carried his master bravely up and down in front of the line and the whole brigade of men rose to their feet with a tremendous cheer and poured in a fierce fire upon the approaching Confederate troops. Sheridan rode along the whole front of the line and aroused a wild enthusiasm which showed itself in the way that the first Rebel charge was driven back. Telling Getty's and Lowell's men to hold on, he rode back to meet the approaching troops. By half-past three in the afternoon, Sheridan had brought back all the routed troops, reformed his whole battle line and waving his hat, led a charge riding his same gallant black horse. As they attacked the Confederate front, Generals Merritt and Custer made a fresh attack and the whole Confederate Army fell back routed and broken and was driven up the valley in the same way that earlier in the day they had driven the Union soldiers. Once again the presence of one brave man had turned a defeat into a victory.

Sheridan took no credit to himself in his report to Lincoln, simply telegraphing, "By the gallantry of our brave officers and men, disaster has been converted into a splendid victory."

"My personal admiration and gratitude for your splendid work of October 19th," Lincoln telegraphed back and the whole country rang with praises of Phil Sheridan and his wonderful ride. The day after the news of the battle reached the North, Thomas Buchanan Read wrote a poem entitled "Sheridan's Ride," with a stirring chorus.

The last verse sang the praise both of the rider and the horse:

"What was done? what to do? A glance told him both,Then striking his spurs with a terrible oath,He dashed down the line, mid a storm of huzzas,And the wave of retreat checked its course there because,The sight of the master compelled it to pause.With foam and with dust the black charger was gray;By the flash of his eye, and the red nostrils' play,He seemed to the whole great army to say,'I have brought you Sheridan all the wayFrom Winchester, down to save the day.'"

"What was done? what to do? A glance told him both,

Then striking his spurs with a terrible oath,

He dashed down the line, mid a storm of huzzas,

And the wave of retreat checked its course there because,

The sight of the master compelled it to pause.

With foam and with dust the black charger was gray;

By the flash of his eye, and the red nostrils' play,

He seemed to the whole great army to say,

'I have brought you Sheridan all the way

From Winchester, down to save the day.'"

CHAPTER VIII

THE BLOODY ANGLE

It takes courage to charge, to rush over a space swept by shot and shell and attack a body of men grimly waiting to beat back the onset with murderous volleys and cold steel. Sometimes, though, it takes more courage to stand than to charge, to endure than to attack. The six hundred gallant horsemen of that Light Brigade who charged an army at Balaclava were brave men. The six hundred Knights of St. John who at the siege of Malta by Solyman the Magnificent defended the tiny fortress of St. Elmo against thirty thousand Turks until every man lay dead back of the broken ramparts and the power and might of the Turkish Empire had been wasted and shattered against their indomitable defense were braver. The burghers of Leyden who lived through the siege of their city on shoe-leather, rats and bark, who baked their last loaves and threw them down to the besiegers in magnificent defiance, who shouted down to the Spaniards that they would eat their left arms and fight with their right, and who slept on the ramparts night and day until they drove back the greatest army in all Europe were braver.

"It's dogged that does it," said the grim Duke of Wellington when his thin red line of English fighters endured through that long summer day against attack after attack until at twilight the Old Guard were repulsed for the last time and the great battle of Waterloo won.

Many men are brave in flashes. They are good for a dash. Few are those who can go the distance.

This is the story of a Union general who could endure and whose courage flared highest when defeat and death seemed certain. It is the story of a little band of men who were brave enough to stand against an army and whose endurance won a seven-day battle and opened the way for the capture of the Confederate capital.

It was the fourth year of the War of the Rebellion, and the end was not yet in sight. The Confederate cause had fewer men, but better officers. Robert E. Lee was undoubtedly the most able general in the world at that time. Stonewall Jackson had been his right arm, while Longstreet, Johnston, Early and a host of other fighting leaders helped him to defeat one Union army after another. The trouble with the Union leaders was that they didn't know how to attack. There had been McClellan, a wonderful organizer, but who preferred to dig entrenchments rather than fight and who never believed that he had enough men to risk a battle.

Then came Meade who won the great battle of Gettysburg and beat back the only invasion of the North, but who failed to follow up his advantage and had settled down to the old policy that the North knew so well of watchful waiting. At last came the Man. He had been fighting in the West and he had won,—not important battles, but more important, the confidence of the people and of Abraham Lincoln, the people's president. For this new man had a new system of generalship. His tactics were simple enough. He believed that armies were made to use, not to save. He believed in finding the enemy and hammering and hammering and hammering away until something broke—and that something was usually the enemy. His name was Ulysses S. Grant.

"He fights," was all that President Lincoln said about him when a party of politicians came to ask that he be removed. That was enough. What the North wanted was a fighter. Other generals would fight when they had to and were satisfied to stop if they defeated the enemy or broke even, but Grant was like old Charles Martel, Charles the Hammerer, who won his name when he saved all Europe from the Saracens on the plains of Tours by a seven-day battle. The great host of horsemen which had swept victorious through Asia, Africa and half the circle of the Mediterranean whirled down on the solid mass of grim Northmen. For six long days Charles Martel hammered away at that flashing horde of wild warriors. On the seventh his hammer strokes shattered the might of the Moslems and they broke and fled, never to cross the Pyrenees again. Now like Charles, the Hammerer of the Union Army was facing his great test, the terrible Seven Days in the Wilderness. Between him and the Confederate capital lay Lee's veteran army entrenched in that wild stretch of Virginia territory which was well named the Wilderness. Every foot of the puzzling woods, ravines, thickets and trails were known to the Confederates and well they ought to know it since they had already won a great battle on nearly the same field. In this tangled waste an army that knew the ground had a tremendous advantage. Lee chose his battle-field, but did not believe that Grant would join battle. He was to learn to know his great opponent better. Grant would always fight.

On May 4, 1864, the head of Grant's army met Lee's forces on one of the few roads of the Wilderness, known as the Orange Plank Road. The battle was joined. At first the Union forces drove the Confederates back into the thick woods. There they were reinforced and the knowledge of the field began to tell. Everywhere Confederate soldiers were sent by short cuts to attack the entangled Union forces and before long the Union line was shattered and driven back only to form again and fight once more for six long days. And what a battle that was! As in the fierce forest-fight between David and Absalom the wood devoured more people that day than the sword devoured. The men fought at close quarters and in the tangled thickets of stunted Virginia pine and scrub-oak they could scarcely see ten yards ahead. Every thicket was alive with men and flashed with musketry while the roar and rattle of guns on all sides frightened the deer and rabbits and wildcats that before that day had been the only dwellers in those masses of underbrush. The men fought blindly and desperately in both armies. Artillery could not be used to much advantage in the brush. It was largely a battle of musket and bayonet and wild hand-to-hand fights in the tangle of trees. The second day the Confederate lines were rolled back to the spot where Lee himself stood. Just as they were breaking, down the plank road at a steady trot came a double column of splendid troops paying no attention to the rabble and rout around them. Straight to the front they moved. It was the brigade of Longstreet, Lee's great "left hand." At once the Union advance was stopped and the Confederates began to reform their lines. At this moment from the pines streamed another Federal brigade with apparently resistless force down upon the still confused line. Then it was that a little force of Texans did a brave deed. They saw that if the Union advance was not checked, their men would not have time to form. Although only eight hundred strong, they never hesitated, but with a wild Rebel yell and without any supports or reinforcements, charged directly into the flank of the marching Union column of many times their number. There was a crash, and a tumult of shouts and yells which settled down into a steady roar of musketry. In less than ten minutes half of the devoted band lay dead or wounded. But they had broken the force of the Federal advance and had given the Confederate line time to rally.

Back and forth, day after day the human tide ebbed and flowed until the lonely Wilderness was crowded with men, echoing with the roar and rattle of guns and stained red with brave blood. At times in the confusion scattered troops fired upon their own men, and Longstreet was wounded by such an accident.

At one place the Federal forces had erected log breastworks. These caught fire during the battle and both forces fought each other over a line of fire through which neither could pass. From every thicket different flags waved. The forces were so mixed that men going back for water would find themselves in the hands of the enemy. In places the woods caught fire and men fought through the rolling smoke until driven back by the flames that spared neither the Blue nor the Gray. Both sides would then crawl out to rescue the wounded lying in the path of the fire. In some places where the men had fought through the brush, bushes, saplings and even large trees were cut off by bullets four or five feet from the ground as clean and regularly as if by machinery. For the first few days the Confederates had the advantage. They knew the paths and the Union men were driven back and forth among the woods in a way that would have made any ordinary general retreat. But Grant was not an ordinary general. The more he was beaten the harder he fought. The more men he lost the more he called into action from the reserves.

"It's no use fighting that fellow," said one old Confederate veteran; "the fool never knows when he's beaten. And it's no use shooting at those Yanks," he went on; "half-a-dozen more come to take the place of every one we hit."

At last the Union soldiers got the lay of the land. They couldn't be surprised or ambushed any more. Then they began to throw up breastworks and to cut down trees to hold every foot that they had taken. The Confederates did the same and the two long, irregular lines of earthworks and log fortifications faced each other all the way through the Wilderness. Yet still the lines of gray lay between Richmond and the men in blue. For six days the men had fought locked together in hand-to-hand fights over miles and miles of wilderness, marsh and thicket. The Union losses had been terrific. All along the line the Confederates had won and again and again had dashed back the attempts of the Union forces to pass through or around their lines. The Union Army had lost eleven officers and twenty thousand men and had fought for six days without accomplishing anything. Yet on that day Grant sent to Washington a dispatch in which he wrote: "I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer."

Through all this tumult of defeats and losses he sat under a tree whittling and directing every movement as coolly as if safe at home. Finally the great Hammerer chose a spot at which to batter and smash with those tremendous strokes of his. The Confederates had built a long irregular line of earthworks and timber breastworks running for miles through the tangled woods. At one point near the center of the lines a half-moon of defenses jutted out high above the rest of the works. At the chord of this half-circle was an angle of breastworks back of which the Confederates could retreat if driven out of the semicircle. Grant saw that this half-moon was the key of the Confederate position. If it could be captured and held, their whole battle line could be broken and crumpled back and the Union Army pass on to Richmond. If taken at all, it must be by some sudden irresistible attack. He chose General Hancock, a daring, dashing fighter, to make the attempt for the morning of May 12th. It rained hard on the night of May 11th and came off bitter cold. The men gathered for the attack about ten o'clock and huddled together in little groups wet and half-frozen. All that long night they waited. Just at dawn the word was passed around. Crouching in the darkness, a division pressed forward and rushed like tigers at the half-circle and began to climb the breastworks from two sides. The sleepy sentries saw the rush too late. The first man over was a young sergeant named Brown. With a tremendous jump he caught a projecting bough, swung himself over like a cat and landed right in the midst of a crowd of startled soldiers. Finding himself entirely alone with a score of guns pointed at him, he lost his nerve for a minute.

"I surrender, don't shoot," he bellowed like a bull. At that moment from all sides other soldiers dropped over the rampart.

"I take it all back," shouted Brown, now brave again, and to make up for the break in his courage he rushed into the very midst of the defenders and, single-handed, captured the colors. The Confederates were taken entirely by surprise. In the dim light they fought desperately, but they were attacked from two sides with bullets, bayonets and smashing blows from the butt-ends of muskets used like clubs. Almost in a moment the entrenchments were in the hands of the Union soldiers and over three thousand prisoners, two generals and twenty cannon were captured. Those who were left took refuge back of the angle-breastworks which guarded the approach to the half-moon. There they fought back the charging troops until Lee, who had heard of the disaster, could pour in reinforcements. He knew full well that this center must be retaken at any cost. Every man and gun that could be spared was hurried to the spot. Lee started then to take command in person. Only when the soldiers refused to fight unless he took a safe place did he consent to stay back.

With all his available forces Grant lapped the half-circle on every side and began to hammer away at this break in the Confederate line. The Confederate reinforcements came up first and Hancock's men were driven back from the angle until they met the reinforcements pouring in from the troops outside. For a moment they could not face the concentrated fire that came from the rear breastworks. Flat on their faces officers and men lay in a little marsh while the canister swished against the tall marsh-grass and the minie balls moaned horribly as they picked out exposed men here and there. Soon another regiment came up and with a yell the men sprang to their feet and dashed at the breastworks which loomed up through the little patch of woods through which they had retreated. In a minute they had rushed through the trees with men dropping on every side under the murderous fire. Before them was the grim angle of works to be known forever as the Bloody Angle.

As they came nearer they found themselves in front of a deep ditch. Scrambling through this they became entangled in an abattis, a kind of latticework of limbs and branches. As they plunged into this many a man was caught in the footlocks formed by the interwoven branches and held until he was shot down by the fire back of the breastworks. These were made of heavy timber banked with earth to a height of about four feet. Above this was what was called a "head-log" raised just high enough to allow a musket to be inserted between it and the lower work. Inside were shelves covered with piles of buck and ball and minie cartridges. Through the ditch and the snares, up and over the breastworks charged a Pennsylvania regiment, losing nearly one hundred men as they went.

Once again there was the same confused hand-to-hand fighting as had taken place at the outer fortifications. This time the result was different. The crafty Lee had hurried a dense mass of troops through the mist. These men crawled forward in the smoke, reserving their fire until they got to the very inside edge of the Angle. Then with the terrible long-drawn Rebel yell, they sprang to their feet and dashed into the breastworks with a volley that killed every Union soldier who had crossed over. Down too went the men in front, still tangled in the abattis. Every artillery horse was shot and Colonel Upton of the 95th Pennsylvania Volunteers was the only mounted officer in sight.

"Stick to it, boys," he shouted, riding back and forth and waving his hat. "We've got to hold this point!"

In a dense mass the Confederates poured into the breastworks and for a moment it seemed as if they would sweep the Union forces back and retake the half-moon salient. At this moment the Pennsylvanians were reinforced by the 5th Maine and the 121st New York, but the Confederates had the advantage of the breastworks and the Union men began to waver. Then a little two-gun battery of the Second Corps did a very brave thing. They were located at the foot of a hill back of a pine-grove. As the news came that the Union men were giving way, they limbered the guns, the drivers and cannoneers mounted the horses and up the hill at full gallop they charged through the Union infantry and right up to the breastworks, the only case of a charge by a battery in history. Then in a second they unlimbered their guns and poured in a fire of the tin cans filled with bullets called canister which was deadly on the close-packed ranks of the Confederates hurrying up to the Angle. The Union gunners were exposed to the full fire of the men back of the breastworks, but they never flinched. The left gun fired nine rounds and the right fourteen double charges. These cannonades simply mowed the men down in groups. Captain Fish of General Upton's staff left his men and rushed to help this little battery. Back and forth he rode before the guns and the caissons carrying stands of canister under his rubber coat.

"Give it to 'em, boys," he shouted. "I'll bring you canister if you'll only use it."

Again and again he rode until, just as he turned to cheer the gunners once more, he fell mortally wounded. The guns were fired until all of the horses were killed, the guns, carriages and buckets cut to pieces by the bullets and only two of the twenty-three men of the battery were left on their feet. Leaving their two brass pieces which had done such terrible execution still on the breastworks cut and hacked by the bullets from both sides, the lone two marched back through the cheering infantry.

"That's the way to do it," shouted Colonel Upton. "Hold 'em, men! Hold 'em!" And his men held.

The soft mud came up half-way to their knees. Under the continued tramping back and forth, the dead and wounded were almost buried at their feet. The shattered ranks backed off a few yards, then closed up and started to hold their place out in the open against the constantly increasing masses of the enemy back of the breastworks of the Angle. The space was so narrow that only a certain number of men on each side could get into action at once. A New Jersey and Vermont brigade hurried in to help while on the other side General Lee sent all the men that could find a place to fight back of the breastworks. Into the mêlée came an orderly who shouted in Colonel Upton's ear so as to be heard over the rattle of musketry and the roar of yells and cheers:

"General Grant says, 'Hold on!'"

"Tell General Grant we are holding on," shouted back Colonel Upton.

The men in the mud now directed all their fire at the top of the breastworks and picked off every head and hand that showed above. The Confederates then fired through the loopholes, or placed their rifles on the top log and holding by the trigger and the small of the stock lifted the breach high enough to fire at the attacking forces. The losses on both sides were frightful. A gun and a mortar battery took position half a mile back of the Union forces and began to gracefully curve shells and bombs just over the heads of their comrades so as to drop within the ramparts. Sometimes the enemy's fire would slacken. Then some reckless Union soldier would seize a fence-rail or a piece of the abattis and creep close to the breastworks and thrust it over as if he was stirring up a hornet's nest, dropping on the ground to avoid the volley that was sure to follow. One daring lieutenant leaped upon the breastworks and took a rifle that was handed up to him and fired it into the masses of the Confederate soldiers behind. Another one was handed up and he fired that and was about aiming with a third when he was riddled with a volley and pitched headlong among the enemy.

A little later a party of discouraged Confederates raised a piece of a white shelter tent above the works as a flag of truce and offered to surrender. The Union soldiers called on them to jump over. They sprang on the breastworks and hesitated a moment at the sight of so many leveled guns. That moment was fatal to them for their comrades in the rear poured a volley into them, killing nearly every one.

All day long the battle raged. Different breastworks in the same fortifications flaunted different flags. Gradually, however, all along the line the firing and the fighting concentrated at the Angle. The head logs there were so cut and torn that they looked like brooms. So heavy was the fire that several large oak trees twenty-two inches in diameter back of the works were gnawed down by the bullets and fell, injuring some of the South Carolina troops. Toward dusk the Union troops were nearly exhausted. Each man had fired between three and four hundred rounds. Their lips were black and bleeding from biting cartridge. Their shoulders and hands were coated and black with grime and powder-dust. As soon as it became dark they dropped in the knee-deep mud from utter exhaustion. But they held. Grimly, sternly they held. All the long night through they fired away at the breastworks. The trenches on the right of the Angle ran red with Union blood and had to be cleared many a time of the piles of dead bodies which choked them. At last, a little after midnight, sullenly and slowly the Confederate forces drew back and the half-moon and the Bloody Angle were left in possession of the Union forces. The seven days' hammering and the twenty hours of holding had won the fierce and bloody Battle of the Wilderness.

CHAPTER IX

HEROES OF GETTYSBURG

Heroes are not made of different stuff from ordinary men. God made us all heroes at heart. Satan lied when he said "all that a man hath will he give for his life." The call comes and commonplace men and workaday women give their lives as a very little thing for a cause, for an ideal, or for others. When the great moment comes, the love and courage and unselfishness that lie deep in the souls of all of us can flash forth into beacon-lights of brave deeds which will stand throughout the years pointing the path of high endeavor for those who come after.

Women the world over will never forget how Mrs. Strauss came back from the life-boat and went down on theTitanicwith her husband rather than have him die alone.

Boys have been braver and tenderer their lives long because of the unknown hero at Niagara. With his mother he was trapped on a floe when the ice-jam broke. Slowly and sternly it moved toward the roaring edge of the cataract. From the Suspension Bridge a rope was let down to them. Twice he tried to fix it around his mother, but she was too old and weak to hold on. The floe was passing beyond the bridge and there was just time for him to knot the rope around himself. Young, active and strong, he would be safe in a moment, but his mother would go to death deserted and alone. He tossed the rope away, put his arm around his old mother and they went over the Falls together.

Every American sailor has been braver and gentler from the memory of Captain Craven who commanded the monitorTecumsehwhen Fighting Farragut destroyed the forts and captured the Rebel fleet at Mobile Bay. TheTecumsehwas about to grapple with theTennessee, the great Rebel ram, when she struck a torpedo, turned over and went down bow foremost. Captain Craven was in the pilot-house with the pilot. As the vessel sank they both rushed for the narrow door. Craven reached it first, but stood aside saying, "After you, pilot." The latter leaped through as the water rushed in and was saved. Craven went down with his ship.

The great moments which are given to men in which to decide whether they are to be heroes or cowards may come at any time, but they always flash through every battle. Danger, suffering and death are the stern tests by which men's real selves are discovered. A man can't do much pretending when he is under fire, and he can't make believe he is brave or unselfish, or chivalric when he is sick, or wounded, or dying. We can be proud that the man who went before us made good and that we can remember all the great battles of the greatest of our wars by the brave deeds of brave men.

The battle of Gettysburg was the most important of the Civil War. Lee with seventy thousand men was pouring into the North. If he defeated Meade and the Union Army, Washington, the capital, would fall. Even Philadelphia and New York would be threatened. In three days of terrible fighting, thirty thousand men were killed. In one of the charges one regiment, the 1st Minnesota, lost eighty-two per cent. of its men—more than twice as many as the famous Light Brigade lost at Balaclava. Pickett's charge of fifteen thousand men over nearly a mile and a half against the hill which marked the center of the Union lines was one of the greatest charges in history. When the Confederates were driven back, two-thirds of the charging party had been killed or wounded. It was the crisis of the war. If that charge went home Gettysburg was lost, the Union Army would become a rabble and the whole strength of the Confederate forces would pass on into the North. On the Union batteries depended the whole fate of the army. If they could keep up a fire to the last moment, the charge must fail. Otherwise the picked thousands of the Confederate Army would break the center of the Union forces and the battle would be lost. Lee gathered together one hundred and fifteen guns and directed a storm of shot and shell against the Union batteries as his regiments charged up the hill. On the very crest was a battery commanded by young Cushing, a brother of Lieutenant W. B. Cushing, who drove a tiny torpedo launch over a boom of logs under the fire of forts, troops and iron-clads and destroyed the great Confederate iron-cladAlbemarle. This Cushing was of the same fighting breed. During the battle he was shot through both thighs but would not leave his post though suffering agonies from the wounds. When the charge began he fought his battery as fast as the guns could be loaded and fired and his grape-shot and canister mowed down the charging Confederates by the hundred. In spite of tremendous losses the Rebels rushed up the hill firing as they came and so fierce was their fire and that of the Confederate batteries that of the Union officers in command of the batteries just in front of the charge, all but two were struck. But the men kept up the fire to the very last. As what was left of the Confederates topped the hill, a shell struck the wounded Cushing tearing him almost in two. He held together his mangled body with one hand and with the other fired his last gun and fell dead just as the Confederates reached the stone wall on the crest. They were so shattered by his fire that they were unable to hold the hill and were driven back and the battle won for the Union.

Old John Burns was another one of the many heroes of Gettysburg. John was over seventy years old when the battle was fought and lived in a little house in the town of Gettysburg with his wife who was nearly as old as he. Burns had fought in the war of 1812 and began to get more and more uneasy every day as the battle was joined at different points near where he was living. The night before the last day of the battle the old man went out to get his cow and found that a foraging band of Confederates had driven her off. This was the last straw. The next day regiment after regiment of the Confederate forces marched past his house and the old man took down his flintlock musket which had done good service against the British in 1812 and began to melt lead and run bullets through his little old bullet mould. Mrs. Burns had been watching him uneasily for some time.

"John, what in the world are you doing there?" she finally asked.

"Oh," he said, "I thought I would fix up the old gun and get some bullets ready in case any of the boys might want to use it. There's goin' to be some fightin' and it's just as well to get ready. There ain't a piece in the army that will shoot straighter than Betsy here," and the old man patted the long stock of the musket affectionately.

"Well," said his wife, "you see that you keep out of it. You know if the Rebs catch you fightin' in citizens' clothes, they'll hang you sure."

"Don't you worry about me," said John. "I helped to lick the British and I ain't afraid of a lot of Rebels."

Finally the long procession of Confederate forces passed and for an hour or so the road was empty and silent. At last in the distance sounded the roll and rattle of drums and through a great cloud of dust flamed the stars and stripes and in a moment the road was filled with solid masses of blue-clad troops hurrying to their positions on what was to be one of the great battle-fields of the world. As regiment after regiment filed past, old John could stand it no longer. He grabbed his musket and started out the door.

"John! John! Where are you going?" screamed his wife, running after him. "Ain't you old enough to know better?"

"I'm just goin' out to get a little fresh air," said John, pulling away from her and hurrying down the street. "I'll be back before night sure."

It was the afternoon of the last day when the men of a Wisconsin regiment near the front saw a little old man approaching, dressed in a blue swallow-tail coat with brass buttons and carrying a long flintlock rifle with a big powder-horn strapped about him.

"Hi, there!" he piped, when he saw the men. "I want to jine in. Where'll I go?"

The men laughed at the sight.

"Anywhere," shouted back one of them; "there's good fightin' all along the line."

"Well," said John, "I guess I'll stop here," and in spite of their attempts to keep him back, he crept up until he was at the very front of the skirmish line. There was a lull in the fighting just then and there was a good deal of joking up and down the line between the men and John.

"Say, grandpa," called out one, "did you fight in the Revolution?"

"Have you ever hit anything with that old gun of yours?" said another.

But John was able to hold his own.

"Sure I fought in the Revolution," he piped loudly, "and as for hittin' anything, say, boys, do you know that at the Battle of Bunker Hill I had sixty-two bullets in my pocket. I had been loadin' and firin' fifty times and I had shot forty-nine British officers when suddenly I heard some one yellin' to me from behind our lines and he says to me, 'Hi, there, old dead-shot, don't you know that this is a battle and not a massacre?' I turns around and right behind me was General George Washington, so I saluted and I says, 'What is it, General?' and he says, 'You stop firin' right away.' 'Well,' I said, 'General, I have only got twelve more bullets; can't I shoot those?' 'No,' he says to me, 'you go home. You've done enough,' and he says, 'don't call me General, call me George.'"

This truthful anecdote was repeated along the whole line and instantly made John's reputation as a raconteur. He was allowed to establish himself at the front of the line and in a minute, as the firing commenced, he was fighting with the best of them. They tried to persuade him to take a musket from one of the many dead men who were lying around, but like David, John would not use any weapon which he had not proved. He stuck to old Betsy and although he did not make quite so good a record as at the Battle of Bunker Hill, according to his comrades he accounted for no less than three Confederates, one of whom was an officer. Before the day was over he received three wounds. Toward evening there was an overwhelming rush of the Confederates which drove back the Union soldiers and the Wisconsin regiment fell back leaving poor old John lying there among the other wounded. He was in a dilemma. Although his cuts were only flesh-wounds, yet he would bleed to death unless they were properly dressed. On the other hand if he was found by the Rebels in civilian clothes with his rifle, he would undoubtedly be shot according to military law. The old man could not, however, bear the thought of parting with old Betsy, so he crawled groaningly toward a hollow tree where he managed to hide the old flint-lock and the powder-horn and soon afterward attracted the attention of the Confederate patrol which was going about the field attending to the wounded. At first they were suspicious of him.

"What are you doing, old man, wounded on a battle-field in citizens' clothes?" one of the officers asked.

"Well," said John, "I was out lookin' for a cow which some of you fellows carried off and first thing I knew I was hit in three places. So long as you got my cow, the least you can do is to carry me home."

The Battle of Gettysburg

This seemed fair to the officer and a stretcher was brought and the old man was carried back to the house. His next fear was that his wife would unconsciously betray him to the patrol that were bringing him into the house. Sure enough as they reached the door, old Mrs. Burns came rushing out.

"John," she screamed, "I told you not to go out."

"Shut up, Molly," bellowed John at the top of his voice. "I didn't find the old cow, but I did the best I could and I want you to tell these gentlemen that I am as peaceable an old chap that ever lived, for they found me out there wounded with a lot of soldiers and think I may have been doin' some fightin'."

Mrs. Burns was no fool.

"Gentlemen," she cried out, "I can't thank you enough for bringing back this poor silly husband of mine. I told him that if he went hunting to-day for cows or anything else, he would most likely find nothing but trouble, and I guess he has. He's old enough to know better, but you leave him here and I'll nurse him and try to get some sense into his head."

So the patrol left Burns at his own house, not without some suspicions, for the next day an officer came around and put him through a severe cross-examination which John for the most part escaped by pretending to be too weak to answer any particularly searching question. Mrs. Burns nursed the old man back to health again and never let a day go by without a number of impressive remarks about his foolhardiness. The old man hadn't much to say, but the first day after he got well he disappeared and came back an hour or so later with old Betsy and the powder-horn which he found safe and sound in the tree where he left them. These he hung again over the mantelpiece in readiness for the next war, "for," said John, "a man's never too old to fight for his country."

Another hero in that battle was Lieutenant Bayard Wilkeson. Only nineteen years old he commanded a battery in an exposed position on the Union right. His two guns did so much damage that Gordon, the Confederate general, could not advance his troops in the face of their deadly fire. Wilkeson could be seen on the far-away hilltop riding back and forth encouraging and directing his gunners.

General Gordon sent for the captains of two of his largest batteries.

"Train every gun you've got," he said, "on that man and horse. He's doing more damage than a whole Yankee regiment."

Quietly the guns of the two far-apart positions were swung around until they all pointed directly at that horseman against the sky. A white handkerchief was waved from the farthest battery and with a crash every gun went off. When the smoke cleared away, man and horse were down, the guns dismounted and the gunners killed. The Confederate forces swept on their way unchecked across the field that had been swept and winnowed by Wilkeson's deadly guns. As they went over the crest, they found him under his dead horse and surrounded by his dead gunners still alive but desperately wounded. He was carried in to the Allen House along with their own wounded and given what attention was possible, which was little enough. It was plain to be seen that he was dying. Suffering from that choking, desperate thirst which attacks every wounded man who has lost much blood he faintly asked for water. There was no water to be had, but finally one of the Confederate officers in charge managed to get a full canteen off a passing soldier. Wilkeson stretched out his hands for what meant more to him than anything else in the world. Just then a wounded Confederate soldier next to him cried out, "For God's sake give me some."

Wilkeson stopped with the canteen half to his mouth and then by sheer force of will passed it over to the other. In his agonizing thirst the wounded Confederate drank every drop before he could stop himself. Horror-stricken he turned to apologize. The young lieutenant smiled at him, turned slightly—and was gone. It took more courage to give up that flask of cold water than to fight his battery against the whole Confederate Army.

The hero-folk on that great day were not all men and boys. Among the many, many monuments that crowd the field of Gettysburg there is one of a young girl carved from pure translucent Italian marble. It is the statue of Jennie Wade, the water-carrier for many a wounded and dying soldier during two of those days of doom. Although she knew it not, Jennie was following in the footsteps of another woman, that unknown wife of a British soldier at the Battle of Saratoga in the far-away Revolutionary days. When Burgoyne's army was surrounded at Saratoga, some of the women and wounded men were sent for safety to a large house in the neighborhood where they took refuge in the cellar. There they crouched for six long days and nights while the cannon-balls crashed through the house overhead. The cellar became crowded with wounded and dying men who were suffering agonies from thirst. It was only a few steps to the river, but the house was surrounded by Morgan's sharp-shooters and every man who ventured out with a bucket was shot dead. At last the wife of one of the soldiers offered to go and in spite of the protests of the men ventured out. The American riflemen would not fire upon a woman and again and again she went down to the river and brought back water to the wounded in safety.

Jennie Wade was a girl of twenty who lived in a red-brick house right in the path of the battle. They could not move to a safer place, for her married sister was there with a day-old baby, so the imprisoned family was in the thick of the battle. Recently when the old roof was taken off to be repaired, over two quarts of bullets were taken from it. During the first day, Jennie's mother moved her daughter and her baby so that her head rested against the foot of the bed. She had no more been moved than a bullet crashed through the window and struck the pillow where her head had lain an instant before. While her mother watched her daughter and the baby, Jennie carried water to the soldiers on the firing-line. At the end of the first day fifteen soldiers lay dead in the little front yard and all through that weary day and late into the night Jennie was going back and forth filling the canteens of the wounded and dying soldiers as they lay scattered on that stricken field. Throughout the second day she kept on with this work and many and many a wounded soldier choking with thirst lived to bless her memory. On this day a long procession of blue-clad men knocked at the door of the house asking for bread until the whole supply was gone. After dark on the second day, Jennie mixed up a pan of dough and set it out to rise. She got up at daybreak and as she was lighting a fire, a hungry soldier-boy knocked at the door and asked for something to eat. Jennie started to mix up some biscuit and as she stood with her sleeves rolled up and her hands in the dough, a minie ball cut through the door and she fell over dead without a word. Her statue stands as she must have appeared during those first two days of battle. In one hand she carries a pitcher and over her left arm are two army-canteens hung by their straps. Not the least of the heroic ones of that battle was Jennie Wade who died while thus engaged in homely, helpful services for her country.

These are the stories of but a few who fought at Gettysburg that men might be free and that their country might stand for righteousness. The spirit of that battle has been best expressed in a great poem by Will H. Thompson with which we end these stories of some of the brave deeds of the greatest battle of the Civil War.

HIGH TIDE AT GETTYSBURGA cloud possessed the hollow field,The gathering battle's smoky shield;Athwart the gloom the lightning flashed,And through the cloud some horsemen dashed,And from the heights the thunder pealed.Then, at the brief command of Lee,Moved out that matchless infantry,With Pickett leading grandly downTo rush against the roaring crownOf those dread heights of destiny.Far heard above the angry guns,A cry across the tumult runs,The voice that rang through Shiloh's woodsAnd Chickamauga's solitudes,The fierce South cheering on her sons.Ah, how the withering tempest blewAgainst the front of Pettigrew!A khamsin wind that scorched and singed,Like that infernal flame that fringedThe British squares at Waterloo!"Once more in Glory's van with me!"Virginia cries to Tennessee,"We two together, come what may,Shall stand upon those works to-day."(The reddest day in history.)But who shall break the guards that waitBefore the awful face of Fate?The tattered standards of the SouthWere shriveled at the cannon's mouth,And all her hopes were desolate.In vain the Tennesseean setHis breast against the bayonet;In vain Virginia charged and raged,A tigress in her wrath uncaged,Till all the hill was red and wet!Above the bayonets mixed and crossed,Men saw a gray, gigantic ghostReceding through the battle-cloud,And heard across the tempest loudThe death-cry of a nation lost!The brave went down! Without disgraceThey leaped to Ruin's red embrace;They only heard Fame's thunder wake,And saw the dazzling sun-burst breakIn smiles on Glory's bloody face!They fell, who lifted up a handAnd bade the sun in heaven to stand!They smote and fell, who set the barsAgainst the progress of the stars,And stayed the march of Motherland.They stood, who saw the future comeOn through the fight's delirium!They smote and stood, who held the hopeOf nations on that slippery slopeAmid the cheers of Christendom!God lives! He forged the iron willThat clutched and held that trembling hill.God lives and reigns! He built and lentThose heights for Freedom's battlement,Where floats her flag in triumph still!Love rules; her gentler purpose runs.A mighty mother turns in tearsThe pages of her battle years,Lamenting all her fallen sons!

HIGH TIDE AT GETTYSBURG

A cloud possessed the hollow field,The gathering battle's smoky shield;Athwart the gloom the lightning flashed,And through the cloud some horsemen dashed,And from the heights the thunder pealed.

A cloud possessed the hollow field,

The gathering battle's smoky shield;

Athwart the gloom the lightning flashed,

And through the cloud some horsemen dashed,

And from the heights the thunder pealed.

Then, at the brief command of Lee,Moved out that matchless infantry,With Pickett leading grandly downTo rush against the roaring crownOf those dread heights of destiny.

Then, at the brief command of Lee,

Moved out that matchless infantry,

With Pickett leading grandly down

To rush against the roaring crown

Of those dread heights of destiny.

Far heard above the angry guns,A cry across the tumult runs,The voice that rang through Shiloh's woodsAnd Chickamauga's solitudes,The fierce South cheering on her sons.

Far heard above the angry guns,

A cry across the tumult runs,

The voice that rang through Shiloh's woods

And Chickamauga's solitudes,

The fierce South cheering on her sons.

Ah, how the withering tempest blewAgainst the front of Pettigrew!A khamsin wind that scorched and singed,Like that infernal flame that fringedThe British squares at Waterloo!

Ah, how the withering tempest blew

Against the front of Pettigrew!

A khamsin wind that scorched and singed,

Like that infernal flame that fringed

The British squares at Waterloo!

"Once more in Glory's van with me!"Virginia cries to Tennessee,"We two together, come what may,Shall stand upon those works to-day."(The reddest day in history.)

"Once more in Glory's van with me!"

Virginia cries to Tennessee,

"We two together, come what may,

Shall stand upon those works to-day."

(The reddest day in history.)

But who shall break the guards that waitBefore the awful face of Fate?The tattered standards of the SouthWere shriveled at the cannon's mouth,And all her hopes were desolate.

But who shall break the guards that wait

Before the awful face of Fate?

The tattered standards of the South

Were shriveled at the cannon's mouth,

And all her hopes were desolate.

In vain the Tennesseean setHis breast against the bayonet;In vain Virginia charged and raged,A tigress in her wrath uncaged,Till all the hill was red and wet!

In vain the Tennesseean set

His breast against the bayonet;

In vain Virginia charged and raged,

A tigress in her wrath uncaged,

Till all the hill was red and wet!

Above the bayonets mixed and crossed,Men saw a gray, gigantic ghostReceding through the battle-cloud,And heard across the tempest loudThe death-cry of a nation lost!

Above the bayonets mixed and crossed,

Men saw a gray, gigantic ghost

Receding through the battle-cloud,

And heard across the tempest loud

The death-cry of a nation lost!

The brave went down! Without disgraceThey leaped to Ruin's red embrace;They only heard Fame's thunder wake,And saw the dazzling sun-burst breakIn smiles on Glory's bloody face!

The brave went down! Without disgrace

They leaped to Ruin's red embrace;

They only heard Fame's thunder wake,

And saw the dazzling sun-burst break

In smiles on Glory's bloody face!

They fell, who lifted up a handAnd bade the sun in heaven to stand!They smote and fell, who set the barsAgainst the progress of the stars,And stayed the march of Motherland.

They fell, who lifted up a hand

And bade the sun in heaven to stand!

They smote and fell, who set the bars

Against the progress of the stars,

And stayed the march of Motherland.

They stood, who saw the future comeOn through the fight's delirium!They smote and stood, who held the hopeOf nations on that slippery slopeAmid the cheers of Christendom!

They stood, who saw the future come

On through the fight's delirium!

They smote and stood, who held the hope

Of nations on that slippery slope

Amid the cheers of Christendom!

God lives! He forged the iron willThat clutched and held that trembling hill.God lives and reigns! He built and lentThose heights for Freedom's battlement,Where floats her flag in triumph still!

God lives! He forged the iron will

That clutched and held that trembling hill.

God lives and reigns! He built and lent

Those heights for Freedom's battlement,

Where floats her flag in triumph still!

Love rules; her gentler purpose runs.A mighty mother turns in tearsThe pages of her battle years,Lamenting all her fallen sons!

Love rules; her gentler purpose runs.

A mighty mother turns in tears

The pages of her battle years,

Lamenting all her fallen sons!

CHAPTER X

THE LONE SCOUT

Single-handed exploits, where a man must depend upon his own strength and daring and coolness, rank high among brave deeds. Occasionally a man has confidence enough in himself to penetrate alone into the enemy's country and to protect his life and do his endeavor by his own craft and courage. Of such was Hereward, the Last of the English, who, like Robin Hood, many centuries later, led his little band of free men through fen and forest and refused to yield even to the vast resources of William the Conqueror. Once disguised as a swineherd he entered the very court of the king and sat with the other strangers and wanderers at the foot of the table in the great banquet-hall and saw in the distance the man who was first to conquer and then to make unconquerable all England. To this day we love to read of his adventures on that scouting trip. How the servants who sat at meat with him played rough jokes on him until, forgetful of his enormous strength, he dealt one of them a buffet which laid him lifeless across the table with a broken neck. How he was taken up to the head of the table and stood before William on an instant trial for his life. His loose jerkin had been torn during the struggle and showed his vast chest and arms covered with scars of old wounds which no swineherd would ever have received. The old chronicle goes on to tell how they imprisoned him for the night and when his jailer came to fetter his legs with heavy irons, he stunned him with a kick, unlocked the doors and gates, broke open the stable door, selected the best horse in the king's stable and, armed with an old scythe blade which he had picked up in the barn, cut his way through the guard and rode all night by the stars back to his band.

In 1862 Corporal Pike of the Fourth Ohio Regiment led an expedition for a hundred miles through the enemy's country, which was worthy of Hereward himself. The expedition consisted of Corporal James Pike, who held all positions from general to private and who also had charge of the commissary department and was head of the board of strategy. The corporal was a descendant of Captain Zebulon Pike the great Indian fighter and inherited his ancestor's coolness and daring. Old Zebulon used to say that he never really knew what happiness was until he was in danger of his life and that when he started into a fight, it was as if all the music in the world was playing in his ears and that a battle to him was like a good dinner, a game of ball and a picnic all rolled into one. The corporal was very much this way. He had taken such particular pleasure in foolhardy exploits that his officers decided to try him on scout duty. There he did so well that General Mitchel's attention was attracted to him.

In April, 1862, it was of great importance for the general's plans to obtain information in regard to the strength of the Confederates in Alabama, and to have a certain railroad bridge destroyed so as to cut off the line of communications with the forces farther south. Out of the whole regiment the general picked Corporal Pike. The corporal's plan of procedure was characteristic of the man. He wore his regular full blue uniform and throughout the first part of his trip made no attempt at disguise or concealment. This was not as reckless as it sounds. The country was filled with Confederate spies and messengers who almost invariably adopted the Union uniform and it had this advantage—if captured, he could claim that he was in his regular uniform and was entitled to be treated as a soldier captured on the field of battle and not hung as a spy. The corporal, however, did not attach any very great weight to the protection of this uniform, as he figured out that if he were caught burning bridges and obtaining reports of Confederate forces, they would hang him whatever the color of his uniform. He had no adventures until he drew near Fayetteville in Tennessee. He spent the night in the woods and bright and early the next morning rode into the village and up to the hotel and ordered breakfast for himself and a similar attention for his horse. The sight of a Union soldier assembled all the unoccupied part of the population and in a few minutes there were three hundred men on the sidewalk in front of the hotel. As the corporal came back from looking after his horse, for he would never eat until he had seen that old Bill was properly cared for, a man stepped up and inquired his name.

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