The Portland daily press., 1882-05-22
An Artillery Duel.
What It is Like-The Last Day at Gettys-
burg.

Az o'clock, says M. Quad, whiting of the
last day of the battle of Gettysburg, while there
was almost perfect silence over that great bat
tle-feld, the sudden boom of gun was heard
from Lees center. Its echoes were yet rolling
back and forth, from hill to hill, when there
came crash as if the heavens and earth had
met. Lee had opened with nearly 100 pieces
of artillery. Meade had massed eighty or more
guns in the center to reply, and now 300 can
non began their awful din.
An officer standing within thirty feet of three
six-pounders which are being rapidly fred must
shout his orders One standing as near as that
to full battery could not hear thunder-clap
in the sky above. The roar of twenty pieces
will drown ordinary voices half a mile away.
Mcclellan had sixty or seventy guns massed at
Malvern Hill, and dishes were shaken down in
houses six miles away, The cannonade at the
first Bull Run was nothing compared to subse-
quent battles, and yet the reverberations were
distinctly heard in Washington, twenty miles
away. The cannonade at Fredericksburg top
pied down farmhouse chimneys eight miles
distant and was heard twenty-five miles.
Think, then, of $50 pieces of artillery, many of
them Parrot guns, massed on the crest OF bills
and all firing as fast as men could serve them!
An earthquake could not thus have shaken
the earth. Men became giddy and staggered,
and houses S6om6u 10 I'LL Ol tu6iF louuudblOuS
In ten minutes after the first gun was fired,
one could no longer distinguish single reports.
All reports were consolidated into one terrible
roar, which alarmed cattle in the fields fifteen
miles away, and was plainly heard by human
ears forty miles away. Regiments on the
TANKS of that awful cannonade could not be-
lieve that any one would live through it.
In talking with Confederates who were in
the center that day, / have many times asked
for the particulars of the damage done by the
Federal fire. All answered alike. Its effect
was terribly demoralizing but not SO destruc-
tive as one would imagine. Hundreds of shot
and shell flew over their heads and hurt no
one. Others struck into bodies OF men getting
into position for assault, and opened lanes
through whole brigades. Here and there shell
mutilated dozen men, killed three or four
horses, or dismounted captain; but Lees en-
tire loss by the whole cannonade did not
amount to 800 men.
On the Federal side the loss was no greater
the decentralization about the same. The best
troops in the world will not stand in line under
artillery fire. If they are moving it is different,
and the whir of shot and scream of she'll are
part of the programme. The Confederates
planted almost every shot into the Federal po-
sition, and for time every living thing sought
cover. Showers of dirt, flung high in air by
the shells, descended upon men lying in the
ravi.es, and it is singular fact that two OF the
artllerists in Thomas's battery were killed by
stones flung out by shot or SHE'LL A Confeder-
ate shot which struck a breastwork flung
Jagged splinter more than 200 feet at right an
giles and killed one man and broke the arm OF
a second. The Federal guns were short OF
ammunition on the start, and throughout the
cannonade the fire was slower and more regu-
lar than the Confederates. Thomas alone had
four caissons hit and blown up, and some OF
our batteries lost half their horses and fourth
of their men.