The Providence news. (Providence [R.I.]) 1891-1906, 1893-08-16

toms, fought both On the cost front and on
the north.
The Twelfth Union corps under tho pa
triarchal Mansfield meanwhile marched to
Hooker's aid, Williams division following
In Meade's tracks and its left brigade un-
der Gordon striking the angle of the corn
tield and woods where the line Of dead lay.
Mansfield was mortally wounded while
jumping his horse over pile Of rails into
the cornfleld. His horse wheeled and car
ried him back within the Union lines or
his body might have helped TO swell the
ghastly pile. ~w
When Gordon's brigade marched up to
the angle, Meade's right brigade Ander-
son's-and Hooker's troops on the right OF
Meade had crossed the fence into the corn
i'm pursuit of Lawton's and Jackson's men,
Hoods division, that had been lying In re-
serve in the west wood. then took the field
and showed its gaudy banners and glitter
ing bayonets above the tall corn nearest to
the pike. Next Meade's men drew back
and halted at the fence, and the Confederate
batteries on the pike at the west end swept
it with canister and shell, while the men Of
Lawton and jackson who had any fight
left In them, and Hoods fresh soldiers,
poured In their bullets from the whole front.
In this way the growing regiment of dead
was REINFORCED by many squad OF boysin
blue who fell among the men In gray.
The leading brigade Of Hoods division.
when it rushed into the corn to succor Law
tons and Jackson's men, was Wofford's
Texans. Those troops had been in the east
woods the day previous, and believing that
they were expected to regain them pressed
on recklessly without support, regardless
of the fact that the open field beyond the
fence north of them was filled with Union
regiments and batteries. Meade's men had
fallen back behind the fence, but the fresh
regiments of the Twelfth corps. led by Gen
erals Williams and Crawford, were close
behind. moving to pierce the cornfield mid
way between the east wood and the pike.
The leading regiments, facing southwark,
enveloped the left flank of Wofford's line
as it moved eastward. Wofford faced his
left regiments to the north and engaged
the new enemy. while the right of his line
dashed on its blind course toward the cast
wood tt
Gordon's men still lay at the angle of the
cornfield adjoining tho east wood and lei
surely peppered away at the enemy stealing
among the tall stalks of corn. When Hood
entered the corn from the west, another
fresh Union division under General Greene
wood directly from the east, drove Law
tons and Jackson's belated stragglers be-
fore 1t and met Hoods dauntless soldiers
almost at arms length. The Confederate
line facing north was buffeted back by
Williams aud Meade and the batteries, and
that facing east was broken into detach-
ments by Greene's resistless masses.
Though it was hopeless fight, the men
f..xx x.aI f,-of I'D +kas
wherever Union flag waving in the corn
or shower Of grape moving IA swath Of
stalks gave a sign OF the enemy's presence
The Union artillerists. having clear sweep
of the field, held their fire until the awful
harvest was ripe to the deadly sickle.
Slaughter so sudden and terrible was new
er known. The cornfield was trap to both
sides alike, but chiefly to the Confederates
when the Union columns once became firm
ly planted in the east and north borders, as
they were when Wofford's Texans entered
the struggle. The Texans gave the first quota
to that portion Of the line of dead which
curves from the north to the southwest, as
shown on the accompanying sketch map
As they turned from Greene's invulnerable
wall of bayonets advancing through the
corn on the east they confronted the ranks
of Williams on the north and the biting
fire of Hookers batteries still hammer
ing away from the ridge. Gallant but vain
was the contest as they charged forward to
the fence, sometimes reaching it and falling
dead on the straight line with those of Law
ton, jackson, Jones, Meade, Williams and
Gordon-the blue and the gray intermingled
who made up the mournful phalanx, some
times dropping back q few yards to gain
force for another dash.
The second time they did not go 30 far
north, and their dead struck out a new lineon
the now reddened soil, which receded more
and more from the direct westerly course
until it reached the pike, where it came to
an end. So the margin of the field of strife
that counted its thousands dead in their
blood and tens Of thousands wounded was
outlined by the ranks of the corpses that
seemed like wrecks cast upon the shore by
angry seas, as though the gods Of battle, now
on this side and then on that, had said to the
onrushing hosts, "Thus far and no fartherT'
and sealed the decree with a shifting blast
OF death. The fates obeyed that decreee,
and the seethinR floods of southern pride
and northern will come to sudden halt at
the dead line.
Hooker's columns under Doubleday and
Gibbon, Meade and Anderson, Williams,
Crawford and Gordon swept across it only
to be hurled back as by the arms Of Titans.
The men Of jackson and Lawton, Of Starke
and Hays, of Hood and Wofford, of D. r
Jones and d. II. Hill tore through the tenn
pest of canister and bullets and the ragged
wall Of bayonets. strewing the line with
victims as markers of high tide, then re-
coiled in a panic Of dismay. At 10 o'clock it
was all ended, the" Dead Regiment" was pa
faded, and the armies of both sides stood
afar off. Not a regiment or q battery, Union
or Confederate, had been left within hun
dreds of yards of it, front or rear, and the
cornfield and the grassfield remained neu-
tral ground. All that day and the next the
thousands of soldiers under arms within
sight of that prostrate column beheld it
with wonder and awe, for it was the most
startling reminder of wars awful carnage
ever found on any battlefield.
GEORGE l. KILMEn.