Waterbury evening Democrat., 1904-11-05

try. they do, manfully, lOyally-but heavens, what can human valor win against iron resolution? Two of Doub- leday's battalions, one a mere skeleton like most of those of ,Bay1or's and Taliaferros, have ranged up in the, gaps of the union brigade, shadowy fabric now, visible only in the flash of the guns, but as Paul Ladue trots through the groups where surgeons and stretchermen are trying to care for the vast numbers of wounded, he looks in vain for a division commander to whom to deliver Jackson's last order and the news that Ewe1l is down Taliaferro, too, has been borne to the rear, and Ladue rides on after Starke to bid him take command. Gods, what sight, what 8 shambles, he finds at the rear of that line!-dead, dying and crippled by scores of the sStonewalls." Three colonels, Neff, Grisby and Bolts have been shot from their steeds, two of them straight to their graves: four majors are down of the Virginia com mand, and Walker, colonel of Talia- ferro's Tenth. Full half the fighting force of the Second and Fourth Vir- ginia are stretched on the field, as,
 
 center in front of the now almost i'm visible line of their foes, and with strength. cartridges. hope all spent and gone, they drop their useless rife butts to earth and lean exhausted on the hot, black muzzles. At least they hold the ground.
 So, too, does that stern, silent, iron command across those 50 yards of smoking void, with obstinate deter mfnation.'' writes Old Jack, in rueful admission of the stubborn valor of his foe. And after all what has he ac- complished? What has he not done this night but blunder? All he had to do was to remain there in concea1ment beyond that unfinished railway grade, resting in the shady woods, and, all unconscious of his presence, the union brigades would have passed him by, leaving Ricketts far in the rear to be cut off, crushed or captured But the sight of 5000 Yankees marching along almost parallel to his front, all unsup- ported, was too much for even such piety as Jackson's. Ordinarily he had done wonders with a dozen regiments i nearly as small as these. Tonight he sends in twice that number to assail a smaller force, and is fought to a stand within an hour. He has gained nothing. He has lost one-third of his best and bravest-his Virginians. He has betrayed his position to the ene- my, for Sigel, away to the southeast, has heard the sound of battle, and Me- Lean, brave leader of one of his few American brigades, watches the des- l perate struggle from Ladue's old look 1 out at the Henry house, and Pope, l skillfully directing his diverging col umn to trap Jackson at Centreville, 1 hears over the left shoulder, far over Bull Run, the furious cannonade long league behind him, the storm of a battle that only dies out at nine, but that tells him the tale of one more l trick of Jackson's-the time honored | tale of the ,Irishman's flea.
 l But it opens Popes otherwise blinded eyes, changes in toto his plans for the morrow, and bids him turn his col- umns on Groveton Jackson's b1under has taken much from his own fame, added much to those of another, and l given the Badgers and ,Hoosiers the 1 title they rejoice in ever thereafter 1 the name of the Iron Brigade.
 Sore times are these, this black, moonless night, as, within hailing dis tahce of each other, officers and men of the opposing forces go groping about with glimmering lights, looking for l friends among the slain. Sad hearts are these beating in the bosoms of the 1 group of union generals in the fence corner back of the moaning wood, for l 1t is full of wounded. The regimental commanders are slowly withdrawing their wearied men to the line of the pike,s leaving strong pickets to protect the surgeons and their stretcher-bear- CTS at the front. It is a dramatic scene when that dark-eyed soldier, com l mander of the Seventh, rides in to re- l port to his brigade chief concerning 1 the regiment that caustic regular has sometimes misjudged. What do I you think of the Seventh now?" Is the trrepressib1e question just before the colonel slips, fainting, from his saddle, and then and not until then permits l 1t to be known that all the time as he ! held his men to their desperate work, he sat his horse, pierced through both I thighs by Enfield bullet, his boots run ming over with blood. Old Graybeard of the Sixth, too, is shot through the leg, and Gibbon has borrowed his right-hand man, the tall, brainy ad- jutant, and the Sixth feels bereft, though it, too, falls into soldier hands. But the Black Hats and the Hoosiers have lost more than all.
 At nine o'clock, as the last scattering shots are fired out to the northwest, where some of Stuart's fellows have stumbled on the Hoosier pickets in the darkness, the division general sends an aide with brief note to Ricketts, telling him of the battle, and saying he means to hold the ground despite the fact that prisoners report old Stonewall 60,Ooo strong. He sends other staff officers in. search of Mo l Dowell, his corps commander with