ane
of shot and shell.

What did it avail to hurl a few thousand troops against those
impregnable works? The men were not iron, and were they, it would have
been impossible for them to have kept erect, where trees three feet in
diameter were crashed down upon them by the enemy's shot; they would
have been but as so many ten-pins set up before skillful players to be
knocked down.

The troops entered an enfilading fire from a masked battery which opened
upon them as they neared the fort, causing the column first to halt,
then to waver and stagger; but it recovered and again pressed forward,
closing up the ranks as fast as the enemy's shells thinned them. On the
left the confederates had planted a six-gun battery upon an eminence,
which enabled them to sweep the field over which the advancing column
moved. In front was the large fort, while the right of the line was
raked by a redoubt of six pieces of artillery. One after another of the
works had been charged, but in vain. The Michigan, New York and
Massachusetts troops--braver than whom none ever fought a battle--had
been hurled back from the place, leaving the field strewn with their
dead and wounded. The works must be taken. General Nelson was ordered
by General Dwight to take the battery on the left. The 1st and 3rd
Regiments went forward at double quick time, and they were soon within
the line of the enemy's fire. Louder than the thunder of Heaven was the
artillery rending the air shaking the earth itself; cannons, mortars and
musketry alike opened a fiery storm upon the advancing regiments; an
iron shower of grape and round shot, shells and rockets, with a perfect
tempest of rifle bullets fell upon them. On they went and down, scores
falling on right and left. "The flag, the flag!" shouted the black
soldiers, as the standard-bearer's body was scattered by a shell. Two
file-closers struggled for its possession; a ball decided the struggle.
They fell faster and faster; shrieks, prayers and curses came up from
the fallen and ascended to Heaven. The ranks closed up while the column
turned obliquely toward the point of fire, seeming to forget they were
but men. Then the cross-fire of grape shot swept through their ranks,
causing the glittering bayonets to go down rapidly. "Steady men,
steady," cried bold Cailloux; his sword uplifted, his face the color of
the sulphureous smoke that enveloped him and his followers, as they felt
the deadly hail which came apparently from