(Map of the approximate positions in the attack on Jackson, August 30th, 1862.)

Morell’s attack was directed against Jackson’s right.  In the centre of the Federal line a mounted officer, whose gallant bearing lived long in the memories of the Stonewall division, rode out in front of the column, and, drawing his sabre, led the advance over the rolling grass-land.  The Confederate batteries, with a terrible cross-fire, swept the Northern ranks from end to end.  The volley of the infantry, lying behind their parapet, struck them full in face.  But the horse and his rider lived through it all.  The men followed close, charging swiftly up the slope, and then the leader, putting his horse straight at the embankment, stood for a moment on the top.  The daring feat was seen by the whole Confederate line, and a yell went up from the men along the railroad, “Don’t kill him! don’t kill him!” But while the cry went up horse and rider fell in one limp mass across the earthwork, and the gallant Northerner was dragged under shelter by his generous foes.

With such men as this to show the way what soldiers would be backward?  As the Russians followed Skobeleff’s grey up the bloody slopes of Plevna, so the Federals followed the bright chestnut of this unknown hero, and not till the colours waved within thirty paces of the parapet did the charge falter.  But, despite the supports that came thronging up, Jackson’s soldiers, covered by the earthwork, opposed a resistance which no mere frontal attack could break.  Three times, as the lines in rear merged with the first, the Federal officers brought their men forward to the assault, and three times were they hurled back, leaving hundreds of their number dead and wounded on the blood-soaked turf.  One regiment of the Stonewall division, posted in a copse beyond the railroad, was driven in; but others, when cartridges failed them, had recourse, like the Guards at Inkermann, to the stones which lay along the railway-bed; and with these strange weapons, backed up by the bayonet, more than one desperate effort was repulsed.  In arresting Garnett after Kernstown, because when his ammunition was exhausted he had abandoned his position, Jackson had lost a good general, but he had taught his soldiers a useful lesson.  So long as the cold steel was left to them, and their flanks were safe, they knew that their indomitable leader expected them to hold their ground, and right gallantly they responded.  For over thirty minutes the battle raged along the front at the closest range.  Opposite a deep cutting the colours of a Federal regiment, for nearly half an hour, rose and fell, as bearer after bearer was shot down, within ten yards of the muzzles of the Confederate rifles, and after the fight a hundred dead Northerners were found where the flag had been so gallantly upheld.