Their havelocks were worn out, and
they no longer minded the sun. Gray flannel had replaced the "fancy"
shirt bosoms; they carried tobacco in their pockets; and you saw them,
seated on some log, busy sewing on buttons, the faces once so round and
ruddy, now gaunt and stained with powder.
1863 came, and it was an army of veterans that struck Hooker at
Chancellorsville. It was no longer a company of gay gallants marching
by, amid music, waving scarfs, and showers of nosegays from fairy
hands. It was a stormy wave of gaunt warriors, in ragged clothes and
begrimed faces, who clutched their shining muskets, rushed headlong
over the breastworks, and, rolling through the blazing and crackling
woods, swept the enemy at the point of the bayonet, with the hoarse and
menacing cry, "Remember Jackson!" Gettysburg followed--never was
grapple more fierce than that, as we have seen; and when the veterans
of Lee were hurled back, the soil of the continent seemed to shake.
They were repulsed and retreated, but as the lion retreats before the
huntsman, glaring back, and admonishing him not to follow too closely,
if he would consult his own safety. At Williamsport the wounded lion
halted and turned--his pursuer did not assail him--and he crossed the
Potomac, and descended to the Rapidan, to strike in turn that dangerous
blow in October, when Meade was nearly cut off from Washington.
Pages:
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193