"A great, magnificent passion"—thus in his youthful emotion he describes it—came upon the young man. Danger had seemed to him throughout a word without meaning. Now, drawing his sword, laying about with it, waving it in the air, shouting, he rushed upon this fear-stricken flock, commanded it, reproached it, cheered it, urged it back. Already the red flags had begun to thicken and to flaunt over the deserted spot; they were to him, he wrote afterwards, like red to a maddened bull. That portion of the wall was lost; he groaned for the presence of Gibbon, of Hays, of Hancock, of Doubleday, but they were engaged, or they were too far away. He rushed hither and yon, still beseeching, commanding, praying that troops be sent to that imperiled spot.
Then, in joy which was almost insanity, he saw that gray line begin to waver and to break. Tauntingly he shouted, fiercely his men roared; than their mad yells no Confederate "Hi-yi" was ever more ferocious. This repelling host was a new army, sprung Phœnix-like from the body of the old; to him its eyes seemed to stream lightning, it seemed to shake its wings over the yet glowing ashes of its progenitor. He watched the jostling, swaying lines, he saw them boil and roar, saw them dash their flamy spray above the crest like two hostile billows of a fiery ocean.
Once more commands are few, men do not heed them. Clearly once more they see their duty, magnificently they obey. This is war at the height of its passion, war at the summit of its glory. A color-sergeant rushed to the stone wall, there he fell; eagerly at once his comrades plunged forward. There was an instant of fierce conflict, of maddening, indistinguishable confusion. Men wrestled with one another, opposed one another with muskets used as clubs, tore at each other like wolves, until spent, exhausted, among heaps of dead, the conquered began to give themselves up. Back and forth over twenty-five square miles they had fought, for three interminable days. Here on this little crest, by this little wall, the fight was ended. Here the high-water mark was reached, here the flood began its ebb. Laughing, shouting, "so that the deaf could have seen it in their faces, the blind have heard it in their voices," the conquerors proclaimed the victory. Thank God, the crest is safe!
