he
fort rent the air with exultant cheers, and as the boys reached the
house, the people were wild with excitement, shouting and clapping their
hands, leaping and dancing with joy.

But the rebels did not yield without resistance. They met our men
bravely, and though forced to seek safety in flight, turned and poured
their volleys into the ranks of the pursuers.

[Illustration: BATTLE OF FORT STEVENS.]

Lieutenant-Colonel Johnson, commanding the Forty-ninth, a brave man, who
had never shrunk from danger, and who had shared all the varied fortunes
of the brigade since its organization, fell mortally wounded. Colonel
Visscher, of the Forty-third, who had but lately succeeded the beloved
Wilson, was killed. Major Jones, commanding the Seventh Maine, was also
among the slain; and Major Crosby, commanding the Sixty-first
Pennsylvania, who had but just recovered from the bad wound he received
in the Wilderness, was taken to the hospital, where the surgeon removed
his left arm from the shoulder. Colonel French, of the Seventy-seventh,
was injured, but not seriously. The commanding officer of every regiment
in the brigade was either killed or wounded.

The fight had lasted but a few minutes, when the stream of bleeding,
mangled ones, began to come to the rear. Men, leaning upon the shoulders
of comrades, or borne painfully on stretchers, the pallor of their
countenances rendered more ghastly by the thick dust which had settled
upon them, were brought into the hospitals by scores, where the medical
officers, ever active in administering relief to their companions, were
hard at work binding up ghastly wounds, administering stimulants, coffee
and food, or resorting to the hard necessity of amputation.

At the summit of the ascent, the confederates were strengthened by their
second line of battle, and here they made a stout resistance; but even
this position they were forced to abandon in haste, and as darkness
closed in upon the scene, our men were left as victors in possession of
the ground lately occupied by the rebels, having driven their
adversaries more than a mile.

The Vermont brigade now came to the relief of the boys who had so
gallantly won the field, and the Third brigade returned at midnight to
the bivouac it had left in the morning. But not all returned. Many of
those brave fellows who went with such alacrity into the battle, had
fallen to rise no more. In the orchard, in the road, about the frame
house and upo