hed the Buschbeck line. He has
lost one-quarter of his four thousand men, and nearly all his superior
officers, in a brief ten minutes.

Schurz's division is roused by the heavy firing on the right, in which
even inexperienced ears detect something more than a mere repetition
of the picket-fight of three hours gone. Its commanding officers are at
once alert. Regimental field and staff are in the saddle, and the men
behind the stacks, leaving canteens, haversacks, cups with the steaming
evening coffee, and rations at the fires. Arms are taken. Regiments
are confusedly marched and counter-marched into the most available
positions, to meet an emergency which some one should have anticipated
and provided for. The absence of Barlow is now fatal.

On comes Jackson, pursuing the wreck of the First division. Some of
Schurz's regiments break before Devens has passed to the rear. Others
stand firm until the victorious Confederates are upon them with
their yell of triumph, then steadily fall back, turning and firing at
intervals; but nowhere a line which can for more than a brief space
retard such an onset.

Down the road towards Chancellorsville, through the woods, up every side
road and forest path, pours a stream of fugitives. Ambulances and oxen,
pack-mules and ammunition-wagons, officers' spare horses mounted by
runaway negro servants, every species of the impedimenta of camp-life,
commissary sergeants on all-too-slow mules, teamsters on still-harnessed
team-horses, quartermasters whose duties are not at the front, riderless
steeds, clerks with armfuls of official papers, non-combatants of all
kinds, mixed with frighted soldiers whom no sense of honor can arrest,
strive to find shelter from the murderous fire.

No organization is left in the Eleventh Corps but one brigade of
Steinwehr's division. Buschbeck has been speedily formed by a change
of front, before Devens and Schurz have left the field, in the line
of intrenchments built across the road at Dowdall's at the edge of the
clearing. No sooner in place than a scattering fire by the men is opened
upon friends and foes alike. Dilger's battery trains some of its guns
down the road. The reserve artillery is already in position at the north
of this line, and uses spherical case with rapidity. Howard and his
staff are in the thickest of the fray, endeavoring to stem the tide. As
well oppose resistance to an avalanche.

Buschbeck's line stubbornly holds on. An occasional s