Read Online Mr Lincoln's Army by Bruce Catton - Free Book Online Page A

was under orders to follow him, fanning his
troops out on the south side of the turnpike just in case there should be a few
Rebels in that area, but now it looked as if Porter might need help, so
Reynolds was called in to lend a hand on the right, and Porter's left was quite
exposed. To give it a little protection, Porter pulled the 5th and 10th New
York out of Sykes's division and sent them, with a battery of regular
artillery, to a little hill south of the highway. His men went on, while Hatch
formed line farther to the right, and the generals on the hill waited in quiet
confidence.
    A few Confederate batteries were in sight
(part of the rear guard, judged Pope; harbingers of coming trouble, thought
Porter) and they opened on Porter's lines, Union batteries replying
immediately. The staccato bursts of fire from the skirmishers came more
frequently as the advance continued, and the artillery fire on both sides
became heavier and heavier. Then suddenly the whole railway embankment sparkled
and glistened as the sunlight was reflected off polished rifle barrels, and
Stonewall Jackson's massed troops came out of the woods to take their places on
the firing line. A gigantic tumult of musketry filled the air, and Federals and
Confederates exchanged long, crashing volleys at close range, and instead of a
rear-guard action there was a full-dress battle. Jackson's men burned the slope
with rifle fire, and on a hill to the southwest new batteries unlimbered, to
rake Porter's battle lines with heavy salvos—a deadly enfilade fire that cut
the support lines to pieces and left the advance isolated and helpless. The
troops in front crumbled and fell back, rallied on the fragments in the rear,
and went forward again, drifted back anew, and then drove ahead a third time.
    It came to hand-to-hand fighting in places,
and at one spot the Confederates ran out of ammunition and threw heavy stones
down the bank on the heads of the Federals who were scrambling up. Everywhere
there was a smother of battle smoke, the yells of the soldiers, and a
tremendous uproar of gunfire. One Northern column came up led by an officer on
horseback who rode two dozen paces in front, in defiance of regulations
(mounted officers were supposed to ride in rear of the troops in all columns
of assault). He rode straight for the embankment, looking neither to the right
nor the left, sword held high, the storm of bullets somehow missing him, and
put his horse up the steep slope and got clear to the top. For one agonizing,
dramatic moment he was poised there, still facing to the front, all alone on
the deadly sky line that his men could not reach, central figure in an
unbelievable tableau. From the hard Southern fighters to the right and left
there went up one spontaneous cry— "Don't kill
him!" Then the smoke-fog covered the bank, and the
crash of the rifles swept along the line, and when the smoke drifted away the
horse and rider were dead at the top of the bank.
    Off to Porter's right Hatch sent in his
brigades in a deep column. The first line got to the embankment, broke, and
came flying back. Gibbon was dashing about on foot, his revolver out, shouting:
"Stop those stragglers—make them fall in—shoot them if they don't!"
while a Wisconsin regiment crouched with fixed bayonets, ready to impale the
fugitives if they went any farther. The rout was stopped, the attack went
ahead again, and a skirmish line, strengthened almost to the weight of a line
of battle, got on the embankment but could not stay there. From the left, Rebel
artillery sent solid shot straight along the front. "A solid shot will
plow into the ground, spitefully scattering the dirt," a survivor
recalled afterward, "and bound a hundred feet into the air, looking as it
flies swiftly like an India-rubber playing ball." 5
    Abner Doubleday brought his brigade into
action. He had heard the first shot of the entire war—indeed, it had been fired
at him personally, in a manner of speaking, since he had been