The
deportment of the enemy was chivalric and courteous. No bands played;
no cheers were heard; and General Grant was the first to salute
profoundly his gray-haired adversary, who came, with a single officer,
to arrange, in a house near the field, the terms of surrender.
They are known. On the tenth they were carried out.
The men stacked the old muskets, which they had carried in a hundred
fights, surrendered the bullet-torn colors, which had waved over
victorious fields, and silently returned, like mourners, to their
desolate homes.
Two days after the surrender, Mohun was still alive.
Three months afterward, the welcome intelligence reached me that he was
rapidly recovering.
He had made a narrow escape. Ten minutes after the death of the
faithful Nighthawk, the Federal line had swept over him; and such was
the agony of his wound, that he exclaimed to one of the
enemy:--
"Take your pistol, and shoot me!"
The man cocked his weapon, and aimed at his heart. Then he turned the
muzzle aside, and uncocking the pistol, replaced it in its holster.
"No," he said, "Johnny Reb, you might get well!"
[Footnote: These details are all real.]
And glancing at the paper on Mohun's breast, he passed on,
muttering--
"It's a general!"
The paper saved Mohun's life.
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