m the left, the
right, the centre. There had been orders for a general advance. Perhaps
the aides carrying them were among the slain, perhaps this, perhaps
that. The event was that brigades charged singly--sometimes even
regiments crossed, with a cry, the twilight, groaning plain and charged
Malvern Hill unsupported. The place flamed death and destruction. Hill's
ten thousand men pressed forward with the order of a review. The shot
and shell met them like a tornado. The men fell by hundreds. The lines
closed, rushed on. The Federal infantry joined the artillery. Musketry
and cannon, the din became a prolonged and fearful roar of battle.

The sun disappeared. There sprang out in the western sky three long red
bands of clouds. On the darkening slope and plain Hill was crushed back,
before and among his lines a horror of exploding shells. Jackson threw
forward Lawton and Whiting, Winder and the Louisiana troops, while on
the right, brigade after brigade, Magruder hurled across the plain nine
brigades. After Hill, Magruder's troops bore the brunt of the last
fearful fighting.

They stormed across the plain in twilight that was lit by the red
flashes from the guns. The clouds of smoke were red-bosomed; the red
bars stayed in the west. The guns never ceased their thundering, the
musketry to roll. Death swung a wide scythe in the twilight of that
first day of July. Anderson and Armistead, Barksdale, Semmes and
Kershaw, Wright and Toombs and Mahone, rushed along the slope of
Malvern Hill, as Ripley and Garland and Gordon and all the brigadiers of
D. H. Hill had rushed before them. Death, issuing from that great power
of artillery, laid the soldiers in swathes. The ranks closed, again and
again the ranks closed; with diminished numbers but no slackening of
courage, the grey soldiers again dashed themselves against Malvern Hill.
The red bars in the west faded slowly to a deep purple; above them, in a
clear space of sky, showed the silver Venus. Upon her cooling globe, in
a day to come, intelligent life might rend itself as here--the old
horror, the old tragedy, the old stained sublimity over again! All the
drifting smoke was now red lit, and beneath it lay in their blood
elderly men, and men in their prime, and young men--very many, oh, very
many young men! As the night deepened there sprang, beneath the thunder,
over all the field a sound like wind in reeds. It was a sighing sound, a
low and grievous sound. The blue lost heavil