The Scouts of Stonewall: The Story of the Great Valley Campaign, Altsheler [best non fiction books of all time txt] 📗

But at the very moment that hope departed he heard a great cheer, followed a moment later by a terrific crash of rifles and cannon. Then he saw those blessed Acadians charging in the smoke along the slope. They had come through the woods, and they rushed directly upon the great Northern battery posted there. But so well were those guns handled and so fierce was their fire that the Acadians were driven back. They returned to the charge, were driven back again, but coming on a third time took all the battery except one gun. Then with triumphant shouts they turned them on their late owners.

The whole Southern line seemed to recover itself at once. The remainder of Ewell's troops reached the field and enabled their comrades to turn and attack. The Stonewall Brigade in the center, where Jackson was, returned to the charge. In a few minutes fickle fortune had faced about completely. The Union men saw victory once more snatched from their hands. Their columns in the plain were being raked by powerful batteries on the flank, many of the guns having recently been theirs. They must retreat or be destroyed.

The brave and skillful Tyler reluctantly gave the order to retreat, and when Harry saw the blue line go back he shouted with joy. Then the rebel yell, thrilling, vast and triumphant, swelled along the whole line, which lifted up itself and rushed at the enemy, the cavalry charging fiercely on the flanks.

Shields got up fresh troops, but it was too late. The men in gray were pouring forward, victorious at every point, and sweeping everything before them, while the army of Fremont, arriving at the river at noon, saw burned bridges, the terrible battlefield on the other side strewn with the fallen, and the Southern legions thundering northward in pursuit of the second army, superior in numbers to their own, that they had defeated in two days.

Every pulse in Harry beat with excitement. His soul sprang up at once from the depths to the stars. This, when hope seemed wholly gone, was the crowning and culminating victory. The achievement of Jackson equaled anything of which he had ever heard. While the army of Fremont was held fast on the other side of the river, the second army under Shields, beaten in its turn, was retreating at a headlong rate down the valley. The veterans of Kernstown had fought magnificently, but they had been outgeneralled, and, like all others, had gone down in defeat before Jackson.

Jackson, merciless alike in battle and pursuit, pushed hard after the men in blue for nine or ten miles down the river, capturing cannon and prisoners. The Ohio and West Virginia men began at last to reform again, and night coming on, Jackson stopped the pursuit. He still could not afford to go too far down the valley, lest the remains of Fremont's army appear in his rear.

As they went back in the night, Harry and Dalton talked together in low tones. Jackson was just ahead of them, riding Little Sorrel, silent, his shoulders stooped a little, his mind apparently having passed on from the problems of the day, which were solved, to those of the morrow, which were to be solved. He replied only with a smile to the members of his staff who congratulated him now upon his extraordinary achievement, surpassing everything that he had done hitherto in the valley. For Harry and Dalton, young hero-worshippers, he had assumed a stature yet greater. In their boyish eyes he was the man who did the impossible over and over again.

The great martial brain was still at work. Having won two fresh victories in two days and having paralyzed the operations of his enemies, Jackson was preparing for other bewildering movements. Harry and Dalton and all the other members of the staff were riding forth presently in the dusk with the orders for the different brigades and regiments to concentrate at Brown's Gap in the mountains, from which point Jackson could march to the attack of McClellan before Richmond, or return to deal blows at his opponents in the valley, as he pleased. But whichever he chose, McDowell and sixty thousand men would not be present at the fight for Richmond. Jackson with his little army had hurled back the Union right, and the two Union armies could not be united in time.

The whole Southern army was gathered at midnight in Brown's Gap, and the men who had eaten but little and slept but little in forty-eight hours and who had fought two fierce and victorious battles in that time, throwing themselves upon the ground slept like dead men.

While they slept consternation was spreading in the North. Lincoln, ever hopeful and never yielding, had believed that Jackson was in disorderly flight up the valley, and so had his Secretary of War, Stanton. The fact that this fleeing force had turned suddenly and beaten both Fremont and Shields, each of whom had superior forces, was unbelievable, but it was true.

But Lincoln and the North recalled their courage and turned hopeful eyes toward McClellan.