er Chantilly, remember Loudoun and Maryland Heights.
Harper's Ferry was yesterday. Remember and strike them again!
Come on, 65th! Come on, the Stonewall!"
Back through the cornfield before the Dunkard church fell the blue. Dead
and dying choked the cornfield as the dead and dying had choked the cane
brake. Blade and stalks were beaten down, the shells tore up the earth.
The blue reformed and came again, a resistless mass. Heavier and
heavier, Fighting Joe Hooker, with Meade and Doubleday and Ricketts and
Sumner, struck against Stonewall Jackson! Back came the grey to the
little Dunkard church. All around it, wood and open filled with
clangour. The blue pressed in--the grey were giving way, were giving
way! An out-worn company raised a cry, "They're flanking us!" Something
like a shiver passed over the thinning lines, then, grey and haggard,
they tore another cartridge. Stonewall Jackson's voice came from behind
a reef of smoke. "Stand fast, men! Stand fast. There are troops on the
road from Harper's Ferry. It is General McLaws. Stand fast!"
It was McLaws, with his black bullet head, his air of a Roman Consul! In
he thundered with his twenty-five hundred men, tawny with the dust of
the seventeen miles from Harper's Ferry. He struck Sedgwick full. For
five minutes there was brazen clangour and shouting and an agony of
effort, then the blue streamed back, past the Dunkard wood and church,
back into the dreadful cornfield.
Maury Stafford, sent with a statement to the commander-in-chief, crossed
in one prolonged risk of life from the wild left to the only less
stormed-against centre. Here a strong blue current, French and
Richardson, strove against a staunch grey ledge--a part of D. H. Hill's
line, with Anderson to support. Here was a sunken road, that, later, was
given a descriptive name. Here was the Bloody Lane. Lee was found
standing upon a knoll, calm and grand. "I yet look for A. P. Hill," he
said. "He has a talent for appearing at identically the right moment."
Stafford gave his statement. All over the field the staff had suffered
heavily. Some were dead, many were wounded. Those who were left did
treble duty. Lee sent this officer on to Longstreet, holding the long
ridge on the right.
Stafford rode through the withering storm across that withered field.
There seemed no light from the sky; the light was the glare from the
guns. He marked, through a rift in the smoke, a battery where it stood
upon a h
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