General Longstreet says of the morale of his army at this time:  “The men were brave, steady, patient.  Occasionally they called pretty loudly for parched corn, but always in a bright, merry mood.  There was never a time we did not have corn enough, and plenty of wood with which to keep us warm and parch our corn.  At this distance it seems as almost incredible that we got along as we did, but all were then so healthy and strong that we did not feel severely our really great hardship.  Our serious trouble was in the matter of shoes and clothing.”

Early on the morning of the 14th the troops were put in motion and marched rapidly down the almost impassable thoroughfare.  Bushrod Johnston’s Division being in the front, followed by McLaws’—­Kershaw’s Brigade in the lead.  Part of Jenkins’ Division was acting as escort for supply trains in the surrounding country, and that Division did not join the army for several days.  Late in the day of the 15th we came in sight of the enemy’s breastworks.  The Federal artillery opened a furious fusilade upon the troops, coming down the road with their rifled guns and field mortars.  Bushrod Johnston had filed to the left of the road and gotten out of range, but the screaming shells kept up a continual whiz through the ranks of Kershaw.  The men hurried along the road to seek shelter under a bluff in our front, along the base of which ran a small streamlet.  The greater portion of the brigade was here huddled together in a jam, to avoid the shells flying overhead.  The enemy must have had presage of our position, for they began throwing shells up in the air from their mortars and dropping them down upon us, but most fell beyond, while a great many exploded in the air.  We could see the shells on their downward flight, and the men pushed still closer together and nearer the cliff.  Here the soldier witnessed one of those incidents so often seen in army life that makes him feel that at times his life is protected by a hand of some hidden, unseen power.  His escape from death so often appears miraculous that the soldier feels from first to last that he is but “in the hollow of His hand,” and learns to trust all to chance and Providence.

As a shell from a mortar came tumbling over and over, just above the heads of this mass of humanity, a shout went up from those farther back, “Look out!  Look out!  There comes a shell.”  Lower and lower it came, all feeling their hopelessness of escape, should the shell explode in their midst.  Some tried to push backwards; others, forward, while a great many crowded around and under an ambulance, to which was hitched an old broken down horse, standing perfectly still and indifferent, and all oblivious to his surroundings.  The men gritted their teeth, shrugged their shoulders, and waited in death-like suspense the falling of the fatal messenger—­that peculiar, whirling, hissing sound growing nearer and more distinct every second.  But instead of falling among the men, it fell directly upon the head of the old horse, severing it almost from the body, but failed to explode.  The jam was so great that some had difficulty in clearing themselves from the falling horse.  Who of us are prepared to say whether this was mere chance, or that the bolt was guided and directed by an invisible hand?