fog showed us the story of yesterday’s repeated assaults and repeatedfailures. When our pipes were exhausted we got up to inspect and criticise the situation. Just here was the wreck of a fence, which seemed to have been the high-tide mark of our advance-wave of battle. The fence was a barrier which, slight as it was, had turned back the already wavering and mutilated lines of assault. Almost an army lay about us and scattered back over the plain toward the town. Not only corpses, but many of the badly wounded, hardly distinguishable from the dead, were here too. To die, groveling on the ground or fallen in the mire, is dreadful indeed. The pallid faces, and the clammy hands clenching their muskets, looked ghastly by the fog-light. The new, bright blue overcoats only made the sight the ghastlier.
About eighty yards in front the plowed field was bounded by a stone wall, and behind the wall were men in gray uniforms moving carelessly about. This picture is one of my most distinctmemories of the war — the men in gray behind this wall, talking, laughing, cooking, cleaning muskets, clicking locks — there they were! — Lee’s soldiers!— the Army of Northern Virginia! We were so absurdly near this host of yesterday’s victors that we seemed wholly in their hands and a part of their great mass ; cut off and remote from the Federal army, and almost within the lines of the enemy — prisoners, of course. That was the immediate impression, as we stupidly gazed in the first moment of the awkward discovery.
But the sharp whistle of a bullet sounded in our ears, and a rebel’s face peered through the puff of smoke, as he removed the rifle from his shoulder; then rapidly half a dozen more bullets whistled by us, and the warning sent us all to earth. . . .
The enemy riddled every moving thing in sight; horses tied to the ־wheels of a broken gun-carriage behind us; pigs that incautiously came grunting from across the road ; even chickens were brought down with an accuracy of aim that told of a fatally short range, and of a better practice than it would have been wise for our numbers to face. They applauded their own success with a hilarity we could hardly share in, as their chicken-shooting was across our backs, leaving us no extra room for turning. But this was mere wantonness of slaughter, not indulged in when the higher game in blue uniform was in sight. The men who had left our
COBB’S AND KERSHAW’S TROOPS BEHIND THE STONE WALL.
We formed in two lines,—the right of each resting near and in front of this small brick house, and the left extending into the field at right angles with the highway. Here we again bivouacked, finding room for our beds with no little difficulty, because of the shattered forms of those who were here taking their last long sleep. We rose early. The heavy fog was penetrating and chilly, and the damp turf was no warm mattress to tempt us to a morning nap. So we shook off sloth from our moistened bodies willingly, and rolling up the gray blankets set about breakfast. The bivouac breakfast is a nearer approach to its civilized congener than the bivouac bed. Coffee can be made hot and good in blackened tins ; pork can be properly frizzled only on a stick over an open fire; hard tack is a better, sweeter morsel than the average American housewife has yet achieved with her saleratus, sour milk, “ empt’ins, ” and what-not; and a pipe — who can estimate what that little implement has done for mankind 1 Certainly none better than those who have sought its solace after the bivouac breakfast that succeeds a bivouac bed, in December.
We now began to take note through the misty veil of the wreck of men and horses cumbering the ground about us, and a slight lifting of the gray
Experience had taught us that when the silent line of fire from the shells had flashed across the sky and disappeared behind us the scream and explosion that followed were harmless, but still it required some effort to overcome the discomfort of the damp ground, and the flash and report of bursting shells, and to drop quietly asleep at an order. We finally slept, but we were roused before midnight, and formed into line with whispered commands, and then filed to the right, and reaching the highway, marched away from the town. There were many dead horses at exposed points of our turning and many more dead men. Here stood a low brick house, with an open door in its gable end, from which shone alight, and into which we peered when passing. Inside sa t a woman, gaunt and hard-featured, with crazy hair and a Meg Merrilies face, still sitting by a smoking candle, though it was nearly two hours past midnight. But what woman could sleep, though never so masculine and tough of fiber, alone in a house between two hostile armies— two corpses lying across her door-steps, and within, almost at her feet, four more! So, with wild eyes and face lighted by her smoky candle, she stared across the dead barrier into the darkness outside with the look of one who heard and saw not, and to whom all sounds were a terror.
IN FRONT OF THE STONE WALL.
BY JOHN W. AMES, BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL, U. S. V.
Captain llth t:. S. Infantry, Second Brigade of Regulars, at tlie battle of Fredericksburg.
ON Saturday, December 13th, our brigade had been held in reserve, but late in the day we were hurried to the battle only to see a field full of flying men and the sun low in the west shining red through columns of smoke—six deserted field-pieces on a slight rise of ground in front of us, and a cheering column of troops in regular march disappearing on our left. But the day was then over and the battle lost, and our line felt hardly bullets enough to draw blood before darkness put an end to the uproar of all hostile sounds, save desultory shell-firing. For an hour or two afterward shells from Marye’s Heights traced bright lines across the black sky with their burning fuses. Then, by command, we sank down in our lines, to get what sleep the soggy ground and the danger might allow us.
Falconer in passing in rear of the guns was struck behind the ear and fell dead.
We were now so short-handed that every one was in tb e work, officers and men putting their shoulders to the wheels and running up the guns after each recoil.
The frozen ground had given way and was all slush and mud. We were compelled to call upon the infantry to help us at the guns.
Eshleman crossed over from the right to report his guns nearly out of ammunition; the other officers reported the same. They were reduced to a few solid shot only. It was now 5 o’clock P. M., and there was a lull in the storm. The enemy did not seem inclined to renew his efforts, so our guns were withdrawn, and the batteries of Woolf oik and Moody were substituted.
The little whitewashed brick-house to the right of the redoubt we were in was so battered with bullets during the four hours and a half engagement that at the close it was transformed to a bright brick-dust red. An old cast-iron stove lay against the house, and as the bullets would strike it, it would give f orththe sound of ‘1 bing! bing! ״ with different tones and variations. . . .
At 5:30 another attack was made by the enemy, but it was easily repulsed, and the battle of Fredericksburg was over, and Burnside was baffled and defeated.
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