stories about Porter which had beguiled our brothers are repeated to us, but we feel that they are false, and mechanically, without enthusiasm, we move forward. We were within fifty yards of the edge of the slaughter-place, when General Reno ordered a halt, and dictated a hurried message for one of his staff to carry to General Pope, protesting against this reckless sacrifice of an unsupported brigade; but before the officer had gone a dozen steps recalled him and went himself. The sun was just going down as he returned and withdrew the brigade the protest of the true little soldier had changed the hopeless plan of the reckless braggart who commanded the army, and we thanked God that General Reno stood between us and General Pope.

We withdrew about one hundred yards, to rest on our arms for the night. It had got to be quite dark, when we saw a sad but instructive panorama. Some little distance to our left, a battery of six pieces had been left in position on rising ground, quite close to the woods, with a regiment of infantry in support of it; the flashes of a few guns on the edge of the woods showed that the rebels had attacked the Union pickets; the flashes grew thicker, our pickets were driven in, and the artillery opened the rebel force kept crawling up in the grass, firing rapidly, as shown by the long streaks of fire from their guns, the artillery meanwhile belching forth its canister several yards too high. The artillerymen were soon killed or driven from their guns; and the regiment in support moved forward, poured in a splendid volley, and advancing rapidly drove the rebels back to the woods. We were rejoicing at the success of our troops, when we saw a hundred flashes upon their left flank, and the edge of the woods was again lined with fire for a few moments, everything was in confusion; then the firing ceased, and an unmistakable rebel yell showed that the battery was lost. Our men now had had nothing to eat for twenty-four hours, except a half ration of meat issued the night before: fortunately for us, close by was camped General Sigel's miscellaneous train, composed of all sorts of wagons, many of which were drawn by oxen. Sigel had more

wagons than all the rest of the army together; he picked up everything he saw on wheels as he marched, and was a constant nuisance and injury to the efficiency of our army by obstructing or entirely blocking the road with his countless vehicles. His wagons, however, had enabled him to bring along a supply of rations, and his commissary was now the only one who had anything to eat on hand. Sigel could not be got at to give consent, and General Reno, determined that his men should not suffer further for want of food, took the grave responsibility of taking a ration for our brigade from the train, in spite of the wild wrath of the commissary and his threats of Sigel's vengeance.

Our men had incautiously built some small fires on the front line, and were cooking the first coffee which they had had for several days, when a small rebel scouting party crept from the woods round our left flank, and sent their bullets buzzing like bees around our fires; the men sprang for their guns and fell into line without confusion, but the rebels, favored by the darkness, had escaped. We got along without fires at the front for the rest of the night. Poor maimed fellows crawled out of the woods, and told us that the rebels were retreating, and several of our men went in amongst almost those unmentionable horrors, and brought out many a poor sufferer to the temporary hospitals, or placing them tenderly by the generous fires in the rear gave them new life by a draught of coffee.1

Saturday, August 30th. The morning opened calm and still, and we had high hopes for the fortunes of the coming day, for we were generally under the delusion that the rebels were retreating, and that Sumner's and Franklin's corps from the Army of the Potomac were within supporting distance. As it grew light our first glances were turned to the hill-side where the battery had been lost; the guns were gone, and fifty bodies in blue uniforms were lying round the spot. About

1 General Pope's official report gives the loss in our army to the night of the 29th as not less than eight thousand men, killed and wounded. Jackson's loss, as appears by the rebel official reports up to the same time, was between four and five thousand in killed and wounded. - ED.

eight o'clock a column of twelve regiments went into the woods in our front, and found no enemy; a single regiment (the 14th New York-" Brooklyn Zouaves"), which made a reconnoissance at ten o'clock, a mile on our left, were not so fortunate conspicuous by their red pantaloons, they entered the woods in line of battle and disappeared; in a few minutes we heard the same long rebel volley with which yesterday's experience had made us familiar, and the fragments of the 14th came out of the woods. Our troops were now moving in a continuous stream to the left, and about noon our brigade found themselves the only infantry to be seen on the right. A heavy artillery fire was now opened upon the front of our position by a mass of rebel artillery posted along Stony Ridge about a mile and a half distant; and for an hour most of us hugged mother earth, while shot and shell hurtled over us. The firing ceased, and the rebels tried an unsuccessful ruse: two regiments with Union colors and blue uniforms 1 strolled leisurely out of the woods toward the steep hill on which Captain Durell's battery was in position, a few yards in our front. General Reno, having a moral certainty that they were rebels, ordered the captain to let them have a shot; and Captain Durell, with some repugnance against firing on blue uniforms and the Stars and Stripes, burst a case shot amongst them. The rascals started for the battery with a wild yell, and the rebel artillery again opened fiercely. Durell's men sprang to their work, and, firing without sponging their pieces, in a few minutes shattered and routed their treacherous assailants, though a few of them came up to the very base of the hill.

The afternoon was well advanced when the battle opened again with great fierceness on the Union left. Streams of stragglers were soon going from the front, and mixed with spectators from Washington blackened the hills in our rear. The rebel infantry began to threaten us again, though they

1 A large part of Jackson's troops had exchanged their dirty and ragged clothing for new Union uniforms, thousands upon thousands of suits of which they had captured at Manassas Junction. — ED.

were probably making a mere feint in aid of the grand movement on the Union left. Finding that they were enveloping our right, General Reno retired our brigade to a commanding position a few hundred yards in the rear. Encouraged by his presence, as he sat fearless and calm upon his horse, the men coolly faced about under a really terrible fire of artillery, and marched in perfect order to their new position. A disastrous conflict was now raging on the left; we saw the rebel flags advancing as rapidly as if there was no enemy resisting their progress; their masses were swarming over our batteries and turning the guns on our troops, and their shells were pouring into the regiments lying in reserve on the plain between us and the left. The word now passed round that Lee's main army had come up, and that we must be overpowered. We still hoped, for it would soon be night, and the lagging reinforcements must come up before morning; but our hearts sank as the regiments in reserve abandoned the field without a show of resistance, not even having deployed from mass into line. It was now sadly evident that the rebels were carrying everything before them, and that almost nothing was left to face them. The enemy had disappeared from our immediate front, and we were beginning to wonder whether we were destined to leave this frightful field without joining in the last death struggle, when just before sunset General Reno suddenly ordered the brigade to move to the left at the double-quick. I can conscientiously say that the regiment and brigade responded to the order with hearty enthusiasm and a stern determination to show the Army of Virginia how they had learned to fight in North Carolina. As we hurried across the field by the flank, shot, shell, and pieces of railroad iron rained around us from badly served rebel artillery, but we were soon covered by the hill on which we were to take our revenge; the 21st losing in the passage of about half a mile only four men, - Privates Daniel Buckley, Jeremiah Harrington, Albert Knight, and John K. Parker, of Company F, who were all struck by the same piece of railroad iron. As we came to the hill, General McDowell, known to us all by

his peculiar white hat, came up to General Reno and shook hands; the last Union troops withdrew from our front, and we moved into position on the crest of the hill, drowning the rebel yells with cheers for ten thousand men. The whitehaired General Milroy, who stood alone on the crest as we came up, was frantic with joy as he welcomed us; and, as we dressed our lines, rode along our front, shouting like a crazy

LAST FIGHT AT SECOND MANASSAS, BY RENO'S OLD BRIGADE AND GRAHAM'S BATTERY, 7 TO 9 P. M., AUGUST 30, 1862.

man. The rebels waited to re-form their disordered lines before essaying an attack, which gave General Reno time to get up a battery, and us an opportunity to observe the situation. We covered the crossing of the Centreville Pike over Young's Branch, and held a magnificent position for defense: the brigade was formed on a curved ridge,1 refusing the flanks a little; on the left was the 51st New York, with their left rest

1 The Henry House Hill.