e scene. (The description can be
met with in Coxe's Three Decades and in Riddle's Life of Wade, a work
that should be more widely published.)

"It seemed as if the very devils of panic and cowardice had seized
every mortal officer, soldier, teamster, and citizen. No officer tried
to rally a soldier or do anything but spring and run toward
Centerville. There was never anything like it for causeless, sheer,
absolute, absurd cowardice--or rather panic--on this miserable earth
before. Off they went, one and all--off down the highway, across the
fields, towards the woods, anywhere, everywhere, to escape. The
further they ran the more frightened they grew, and though we moved as
fast as we could the fugitives passed us by scores. To enable
themselves better to run they threw away their blankets, knapsacks,
canteens, and finally their muskets, cartridge-boxes--everything. We
called to them; told them there was no danger; implored them to stand.
We called them cowards; denounced them in the most offensive terms;
pulled out our heavy revolvers, threatened to kill them--in vain. A
cruel, crazy, hopeless panic possessed them and infected everybody,
front and rear."

The two carriages were blocked up in the awful gorge of Cub's Run and
were for a time separated. When they again met, Mr. Wade shouted,
"Boys, we'll _stop_ this damned runaway!"

They found a good position, where a high wall on one side and a dense
impassable wood secured the other side. The eight gentlemen leaped
from their carriages and put Mr. Wade in command. Mr. Wade, with his
hat well back and his famous rifle in his hand, formed them across the
pikes all armed with heavy revolvers and facing the onflowing torrent
of runaways, who were ghastly sick with panic, and this little band,
worthy of the heroes of Thermopylae, actually kept back the runaway
army, so that "for the fourth of an hour not a man passed save
McDowell's bearer of dispatches, and he only on production of his
papers. The rushing, cowardly, half-armed, demented fugitives stopped,
gathered, crowded, flowed back, hedged in by thick-growing cedars that
a rabbit could scarcely penetrate. The position became serious. A
revolver was discharged, shattering the arm of Major Eaton, from the
hand of a mounted escaping teamster" (who had cut loose from his
wagon).

"At that critical moment the heroic old Senator and his friends were
relieved and probably saved by Colonel Crane and a part of the Second
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