dead, wounded fighters, and skulkers.  We were told that if we would hold the place till dark, we would be relieved.  Dark came, but no relief.  The water became a deeper crimson, the corpses grew more numerous.  Every tree about us, for thirty feet from the ground, was barked by balls.  Just before night a tree six or eight inches in diameter, just behind the works, was cut down by the bullets of the enemy.  We noticed at the same time a large oak hacked and torn in such a manner never before seen.  Some predicted its fall before morning, but the most of us considered that out of the question.  But about 10 o’clock it did fall forward on our works, wounding some men and startling a great many more.  An officer, who afterwards measured this tree, informed me that it was twenty-two inches in diameter.  This was entirely the work of rifle balls.  Midnight came, still no relief; no cessation of the firing.  Numbers of the troops sank, overpowered, into the muddy trenches and slept soundly.  The rain continued.  Just before daylight we were ordered, in a whisper, which was passed along the line, to slowly and noiselessly retire from the works....  Day dawned, and the evacuation was complete.

Thus ended one of the most stubbornly contested battles of the war, if not of the century.  The whole army, from one end to the other, sung the praises of the gallant South Carolinians, who, by their deeds of valor, made immortal the “Bloody Angle.”

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CHAPTER XXXI

From North Anna to Cold Harbor—­Joined by the Twentieth South Carolina.

It was while entrenched south of North Anna that our troops heard of the death of our great cavalry leader, General J.E.B.  Stuart, who fell mortally wounded at Yellow Tavern, on May the 18th.  If the death of Jackson was a blow to the army and the South, the death of Stuart was equally so.  He was the Murat of the Southern Army, equally admired and beloved by the infantry as the cavalry.  The body of the army always felt safe when the bugle of Stuart could be heard on the flank or front, and universal sadness was thrown around the Army of Northern Virginia, as well as the whole South, by his death.  It was conceded by the North, as well as the South, that Stuart was the finest type of cavalry leader in either army, Longstreet badly wounded, Stuart and Jenkins dead, certainly gave the prospects of the campaign just opening anything but an assuring outlook.

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TWENTIETH SOUTH CAROLINA REGIMENT.