the railroad from Fredericksburg to within half a mile of our extreme right. His light batteries were posted over the southern extremity of the valley, at from a quarter of a mile to a mile from the railroad, while the hills on the northern banks of the river from Falmouth to Fitzhugh's farm, five miles below Fredericksburg, were studded at intervals of half a mile with his batteries of heavy guns.

At noon the fog had cleared away, but there was a thick haze in the atmosphere. About this time the enemy's infantry moved forward from the river towards our batteries on the hills. As they pressed forward across the valley, Stuart's horse artillery from our extreme right opened upon them a destructive enfilading fire of round-shot. This fire, which annoyed them sorely, was kept up in spite of six batteries which were directed against the horse artillery as soon as it was unmasked. By one o'clock the Yankee columns had crossed the valley and entered the woods south of the railroad. The batteries on both sides slackened their fire, and musketry, at first scattering, but quickly increasing to a crash and roar, sounded through the woods. Dense volumes of smoke rose above the trees, and volley succeeded volley, sometimes so rapidly as to blend into a prolonged and continuous roar. A. P. Hill's di vision sustained the first shock of battle. The rest of Jack son's corps were in different lines of reserves. D. H. Hill's division was drawn up in J. L. Marye's field, under a long hill, in rear of our line of battle. Here they remained during the most of the day, being moved from time to time to the right or left, as the exigencies of battle dictated. Shortly after the infantry fight began, a brigade of this division was moved at a double-quick a mile and a half to the right, and posted in a dense clump of pines, in supporting distance of Stuart's horse artillery. In ten minutes they were brought back to their original position. The celerity of this movement made a sin gular and exciting spectacle. A long black line shoots from the position of the reserves, crosses the railroad at Hamilton's station, skims across the valley, and in a few moments is lost in the pines nearly two miles away. After scarcely a breathing spell, the same line emerges from the pines and retraces its steps to its original position. As this brigade resumed its position in reserve, the fire of musketry directly in its front

slackened.

A few crackling shots were heard to our eft, along Longstreet's division, and then a succession of volleys, which were kept up at intervals during the remainder of the evening. The musketry fire on our right was soon renewed, and the battle raged with increased fury. Our batteries along our whole front again reopened, and Col. Walker's artillery regiment, composed of Latham's, Letcher's, Braxton's, Pegram's, Crenshaw's, Johnson's and McIntosh's batteries, stationed in the open low grounds, to the east of the railroad at Hamilton's station, moved forward several hundred yards in the direction of Fredericksburg. Hill's and Early's troops had driven the enemy from the woods and across the railroad in the direction of their pontoon bridges near Deep Run. Our men pursued them a mile and a half across the bottom land, and fell back only when they had gotten under the shelter of their batteries. Again the enemy rallied and returned to renew the contest, but were again driven back. All the batteries of Jackson's corps were at this time in full play, and in the approaching twilight the blaze of the guns and the quick flashes of the shells more distinctly visible, constituted a scene at once splendid and terrific.

On the right wing the enemy had been driven back with great loss. Gen. Stuart had well redeemed his grim dispatchthat he was "going to crowd 'em with artillery." The enormous strength of this military arm had been used with desperation on one side and devoted courage on the other. The enemy had twenty thousand men engaged on this wing, while, altogether, from first to last, we had not more than ten thou sand in the line of fire.

But while the battle was dashing furiously against the lines of Jackson, the enemy was crossing troops over his bridges at Fredericksburg and massing them in front of Longstreet, in the immediate neighborhood of the town.

On reference to the positions of the battle-field, it will be apparent that the left of the Confederate army-a portion of it stationed not more than four hundred yards from Fredericksburg-occupied a much stronger position than the centre and right. There was not sufficient room for the Yankee troops destined for the attack of the nearest Confederate batteries to deploy and form, except under a deadly Confederate fire,

whereas, the Yankee troops who attacked the Confederate centre and right, had a large plain on which to deploy, and had much fewer disadvantages of ground to contend with, inasmuch as they advanced against lower hills and had the long spurs of copse to assist them as points of attack, calculated to protect and serve as points d'appui to the Yankees if they could once have succeeded in carrying and holding them..

In this part of the field the enemy displayed a devotion that is remarkable in history. This display does not adorn the Yankees; it was made by a race that has left testimonies of Its courage in such stories as Waterloo and Fontenoy. To the Irish division, commanded by Gen. Meagher, was principally committed the desperate task of bursting out of the town of Fredericksburg, and forming under the withering fire of the Confederate batteries, to attack Marye's Heights, towering immediately in their front. The troops were harangued in impassioned language by their commander, who pointed to the heights as the contested prize of victory.

The heights were occupied by the Washington Artillery and a portion of McLaws' division. As the enemy advanced, the artillery reserved their fire until he arrived within two hundred and fifty yards, when they opened on the heavy masses with grape and canister. At the first broadside of the sixteen guns of the battalion, hundreds of the enemy went down, and at every successive discharge, great furrows were plowed through their ranks. They staggered repeatedly, but were as often rallied and brought forward. Again and again they made frantic dashes upon our steady line of fire, and as often were the hill-sides strewn for acres with their corpses. At last, no longer able to withstand the withering fire, they broke and fled in confusion. They were pressed into town by our infantry. Our victory was complete all along the line. When the voices of our officers in the darkness ordered the last advance, the combat had terminated in the silence of the foe.

The enemy left behind him a ghastly field. Some portions of it were literally packed with his dead. At the foct of Marye's Heights was a frightal spectacle of carnage. The bodies which had fallen in dense masses within forty yards of the muzzles of Col. Walton's guns, testified to the gallantry

of the Irish division, and showed what manner of men they were who pressed on to death with the dauntlessness of a race whose courage history has made indisputable. The loss of the enemy was out of all comparison in numbers with our own; the evidences of its extent do not permit us to doubt that it was at least ten thousand; while our own killed and wounded, during the operations since the movements of the enemy began at Fredericksburg, amounted to about eighteen hundred.

We

At the thrilling tidings of Fredericksburg the hopes of the South rose high that we were at last to realize some important and practical consequences from the prowess of our arms. had obtained a victory in which the best troops of the North -including Sumner's grand division-had been beaten; in which defeat had left the shattered foe cowering beneath the houses of Fredericksburg; and in which he had been forced into a position which left him no reasonable hope of escape, with a river in his rear, which, though threaded by pontoon bridges, would have been impassable under the pressure of attack. It is remarkable that, so far as the war had progressed, although fought on an almost unparalleled scale in numbers, it was yet not illustrated by the event so common in the military history of Europe, of the decisive annihilation of any single army. But it was thought that Fredericksburg, at least, would give an illustration of a decisive victory in this war. The Southern public waited with impatience for the completion of the success that had already been announced, and the newspapers were eagerly scanned for the hoped-for intelligence that Gen. Lee had, by the vigor of a fresh assault, dispatched his crippled enemy on the banks of the river. But no such assault was made. While the public watched with keen impatience for the blow, the announcement came that the enemy, after having remained entirely at his leisure one day in Fredericksburg, had the next night crossed the Rappahannock without accident or a single effort at interruption on our part, and that the army of Burnside, which was a short while ago thought to be in the jaws of destruction, was quietly reorgan izing in perfect security on the north bank of the river. It was the old lesson to the South of a barren victory. The story of Fredericksburg was incomplete and unsatisfactory; and

there appeared no prospect but that a war waged at awfu. sacrifices was yet indefinitely to linger in the trail of bloody skirmishes.

The victory, which had only the negative advantage of having checked the enemy without destroying him, and the vulgar glory of our having killed and wounded several thousand men more than we had lost, had been purchased by us with lives, though comparatively small in numbers, yet infinitely more precious than those of mercenary hordes arrayed against us. Two of our brigadier-generals-Gen. Thomas R. R. Cobb of Georgia and Gen. Maxcy Gregg of South Carolina-had fallen on the field. The loss of each was more conspicuous from extraordinary personal worth than from mere distinctions of rank. Gen. Cobb was the brother of Gen. Howell Cobb, and was an able and eloquent member of the Provisional Congress, in which body he had served in the important capacity of chairman of the committee on military affairs.

Of the virtues and services of Gen. Maxcy Gregg it is not necessary to remind any portion of the people of the South by a detailed review of incidents in his career. His name was familiarly coupled with the first movements of the war, he having been appointed to the command of the 1st South Carolina regiment, the first force from the State which arrived in Virginia, and whose advent at Richmond had been hailed with extraordinary demonstrations of honor and welcome. The term of the service of this regiment having expired, it returned to South Carolina, but its commander, Col. Gregg, remained in Virginia, and subsequently reorganized the regiment, which had since been constantly and conspicuously in service. Its commander was subsequently made a brigadier-general.

Gen. Gregg, although the occupations of his life were principally professional, had a large and brilliant political reputation in his State. He was a leading member of the bar, and practised his profession with distinction and success for a period of more than twenty years in Columbia. In politics he was an extreme State Rights man, and stood, with others, at the head of that party in South Carolina. He took a promi nent part in favor of the policy of reopening the slave-trade which had been the subject of some excited and untimely dis cussion in the South some years ago; he and ex-Governor