, who had come upon the
scene just in time to turn the tide of battle from defeat to victory.
On the right of Hampton was the Eighth and Second South Carolina under
Kershaw. From the Lewis house to the Stone Bridge the dead lay in
every direction. The enemy in their precipitate flight gave the
Confederates ample opportunity to slay at will. The effects of
artillery here were dreadful. Rickett's Battery, the best in the
North, had pushed their guns far in advance of the infantry, and swept
the field with grape and canister. Here was a caisson blown up by
a shell from Kemper's Battery, and the havoc was frightful. Six
beautiful horses, all well caparisoned and still attached to the
caisson, all stretched as they had fallen, without so much as a
struggle. The drivers lay by the side of the horses, one poor fellow
underneath and badly mutilated. To one side and near by lay the
officer in command and his horse, the noble animal lying as he had
died in the beautiful poise he must have been in when the fatal shot
struck him. His hind legs straightened as if in the act of rearing,
his forefeet in the air, one before the other, the whole looking more
like a dismantled statue than the result of a battlefield. Fragments
of shells, broken guns, knapsacks, and baggage were scattered over
the plains. Details were busy gathering up the wounded and burying the
dead. But from the looks of the field the task seemed difficult. In
the little clusters of bushes, behind trees, in gullies, and in every
conceivable place that seemed to offer shelter, lay the dead. What
a shudder thrills the whole frame when you stand and contemplate
the gruesome faces of the battle's dead. In every posture and all
positions, with every conceivable shade of countenance, the glaring,
glassy eyes meet you. Some lay as they fell, stretched full length
on the ground; others show a desperate struggle for the last few
remaining breaths. There lay the beardless youth with a pleasant smile
yet lingering on his face as though waiting for the maternal kiss; the
cold stern features of the middle aged as he lay grasping his trusty
rifle, some drawn up in a perfect knot of agony, others their faces
prone upon the earth, all dead, dead. Great pools of blood here and
there had saturated the earth, the victim perhaps crawling to a nearby
shelter or some little glen, hoping to gain a mouthful of water to
cool his parched lips, or perhaps some friendly hand had carried him
away