Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1882-04-28

CCdoeu uuuuIOUS VI Ueu UTOppcu uoWu
and lay painting like dogs after long
chase. For nearly an hour Federal and
q Confederate regiment lay within 200
feet of each other without firing shot,
and Federal corporal who had stripped
off his coat and jacket and lost his cap.
called out to q Confederate sergeant whom
he could have hit with peach-stone
s'Hello, Johnny Whose command is
that p,
s'Longstreet' was the reply.
''Bully for Longstreet !"
who's your General! asked the Con-
federate.
Hancock"
Then bully for him but you 'uns have
got to git out of here.'
From noon until O'Clock Sedewick and
Ewell hammered away and piled up the
dead without driving each ether a hun
dred feet, but Hancock and Lopgstreet
were preparing for the bloodiest graphic
which war ever saw between the wings Of
an army.
FIGHTING FOR HIS LIFE.
Grant could not drive Lee. Could Lee
drive Grants If Longstreet could push
Hancock back over the Brock road, Grant
! was shut up in the Wilderness. If Han
cock could hold the Brock road, Grant had
an open route across Lees front to Spott-
| sylvania. In holding that road Grant was,
therefore, fighting for his life. Gibbons
division was pushed forward to support
! Hancock batteries hauled through
swamps and thickets, the stragglers driven
into line, and then, for quarter of an
hour there was an ominous silence. Han
cock was drawing a full breath-Long-
street was bracing his nerves. There had
been such fighting in those tangled woods
| as war had never seen beforc Desperate
| fighting would not save the Brock road
desperate fig hting would not carry it.
| Longstreet attacked. That murderous
silence was broken by the yells and shouts
vt four lines of battle rushing forward up
striking wall. The wall stood firm, then
| began to groan and labor and lose its line,
and it was being swept away, when Glib
| hOns' division rushed in. The Confeder-
| ates did not halt to fire, but came charg-
| ing on with the bayonet right up to the
lines of blue, so that blue and gray fought
| hand to hand on front more than a mile
long.
| In the fiercest of the struggle, when it
seemed that the giving away of a single
company might turn the scale, Longstreet
J was struck by a bullet and disabled. and
before his successor could come forward
and grasp the situation, the moment was
passed, and the Brock road was saved. It
is dark and lonely highway as you rids
over it to day, and every foot of it has
story of blood. The burial parties found
hundreds who had crawled into the thick
cts and swanps and died, and years after
| the government contractors, who were re-
moving the dead to the national ceme-
teries, found scores of skeletons which
had never been buried at all.
WHEN NIGHT FELL
Lee WAS still attacking, but he was strik-
ing an iron plate from which every blow
rebeunded. He had halted Grant g march
but he had not defeated him. Grant had
not driven Lee but he had saved his road
out of that horrible slaughter pen. Meth
or had secured an advantage, but under
the pines were thousands of dead-thou-
sands manned and crippled; and as tw1-
light faded into darkness along that front
of seven miles, stretching over swamp
and thicket, there arose a direful sound.
It was murmur at first. Then it swell
led to a steady cry-not one shout, or grsan,
or shrek, but thousands of them mingled
together and quavering over thicket and
rising over the pines like the wall Of
gathering tempest. 1t was the cry of tho
wounded and helpless as added to the
lonely horrors of that sombre wilder
ness.