History of Kershaw's Brigade eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 884 pages of information about History of Kershaw's Brigade.

History of Kershaw's Brigade eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 884 pages of information about History of Kershaw's Brigade.

During the time that all these stirring events were taking place and just before Magruder, with McLaw’s and Walker’s divisions, was either quietly lying in front of Richmond watching the army of McClellan dwindle away, leaving by transports down the James and up the Potomac, or was marching at a killing gait to overtake their comrades under Lee to share with them their trials, their battles and their victories in Maryland.  Lee could not leave the Capital with all his force so long as there was a semblance of an army threatening it.

As soon as it was discovered that Manassas was to be the real battle ground of the campaign, and Washington instead of Richmond the objective point, Lee lost no time in concentrating his army north of the Rappahannock.  About the middle of August McLaws, with Kershaw’s, Semmes’s, Cobb’s, and Barksdale’s Brigades, with two brigades under Walker and the Hampton Legion Cavalry, turned their footsteps Northward, and bent all their energies to reach the scene of action before the culminating events above mentioned.

At Orange C.H., on the 26th, we hastened our march, as news began to reach us of Jackson’s extraordinary movements and the excitement in the Federal Army, occasioned by their ludicrous hunt for the “lost Confederate.”  Jackson’s name had reached its meridian in the minds of the troops, and they were ever expecting to hear of some new achievement or brilliant victory by this strange, silent, and mysterious man.  The very mystery of his movements, his unexplainable absence and sudden reappearance at unexpected points, his audacity in the face of the enemy, his seeming recklessness, gave unbounded confidence to the army.  The men began to feel safe at the very idea of his disappearance and absence.  While the thunder of his guns and those of Longstreet’s were sounding along the valleys of Bull Run, and reverberating down to the Potomac or up to Washington, McLaws with his South Carolinians, Georgians, and Mississippians was swinging along with an elastic step between Orange C.H. and Manassas.

McClellan himself had already reached Alexandria with the last of his troops, but by the acts of the ubiquitous Jackson his lines of communication were cut and the Federal commander had to grope his way in the dark for fear of running foul of his erratic enemy.

When we began nearing Manassas, we learned of the awful effect of the two preceding days’ battle by meeting the wounded.  They came singly and in groups, men marching with arms in slings, heads bandaged, or hopping along on improvised crutches, while the wagons and ambulances were laden with the severely wounded.  In that barren country no hospital could be established, for it was as destitute of sustenance as the arid plains of the Arabian Desert when the great Napoleon undertook to cross it with his beaten army.  All, with the exception of water; we had plenty of that.  Passing over a part of the battlefield about the 5th of September, the harrowing sights that

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History of Kershaw's Brigade from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.