Covered with mud, blackened with powder, with gaunt frames,
and glaring eyes, the old guard of the army of Northern Virginia still
stood to their colors--fighting at every step, despairing, but not
shrinking; and obeying the orders of Lee to the last.
You would not doubt that confidence in, and love for, their commander,
reader, if you had witnessed the scene which I did, near Highbridge.
The enemy had suddenly assailed Ewell and Custis Lee, and broken them
to pieces. The blue horsemen and infantry pressing fiercely on all
sides, and hunting their opponents to the death, seemed, at this
moment, to have delivered a blow from which the Confederates could not
rise. The attack had fallen like a thunderbolt. Ewell, Anderson, and
Custis Lee were swept away by mere weight of numbers; the whole army
seemed threatened with instant destruction.
Lee suddenly appeared, however, and the scene which followed was
indescribable. He had rushed a brigade across, riding in front on his
iron-gray; and at that instant he resembled some nobleman of the old
age on the track of the wild-boar. With head erect, face unmoved, eyes
clear and penetrating, he had reached the scene of danger; and as the
disordered remnants of Ewell's force crowded the hill, hot and panting,
they had suddenly seen, rising between them and the enemy, a wall of
bayonets, flanked by cannon.
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