The thickets of the Wilderness were again silent, and the blue and gray
objects in the undergrowth did not move.
The war-dogs had gone to tear each other elsewhere.
XXXIII.
BREATHED AND HIS GUN.
In the din and smoke of that desperate grapple of the infantry, I have
lost sight of the incessant cavalry combats which marked each day with
blood.
And now there is no time to return to them. A great and sombre event
drags the pen. With one scene I shall dismiss those heroic fights--but
that scene will be superb.
Does the reader remember the brave Breathed, commanding a battalion of
the Stuart horse artillery? I first spoke of him on the night preceding
Chancellorsville, when he came to see Stuart, at that time he was
already famous for his "do-or die" fighting. A Marylander by birth, he
had "come over to help us:" had been the right-hand man of Pelham; the
favorite of Stuart; the admiration of the whole army for a courage
which the word "reckless" best describes;--and now, in this May, 1864,
his familiar name of "Old Jim Breathed," bestowed by Stuart, who held
him in high favor, had become the synonym of stubborn nerve and _elan_,
unsurpassed by that of Murat. To fight his guns to the muzzles, or go
in with the sabre, best suited Breathed. A veritable bull-dog in
combat, he shrank at nothing, and led everywhere.
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