pines, on the ground red-breeched Zouaves and United States Marines,
above us a noisy shell, the voice of the general coming dry and far like
a grasshopper's through the din--we are here in a trampled flower
garden, beside the stumps of locust trees, in the midst of yells and
trampling, hands again upon the guns! There was no time between. The men
who were left of Ricketts and Griffin fought well; they were brave
fighters. The 2d Wisconsin came up the hill, then the 79th and 69th New
York. An impact followed that seemed to rock the globe. Wisconsin and
New York retired whence they came, and it was all done in a moment.
Other regiments took their places. McDowell was making a frontal attack
and sending in his brigades piecemeal. The plateau was uneven; low
ridges, shallow hollows, with clumps of pine and oak; one saw at a time
but a segment of the field. The nature of the ground split the troops as
with wedges; over all the Henry Hill the fighting now became from hand
to hand, in the woods and in the open, small squad against small squad.
That night a man insisted that this phase had lasted twelve hours. He
said that he remembered how the sun rose over the Henry House, and how,
when it went down, it left a red wall behind a gun on the Mathews
Hill--and he had seen both events from a ring of pines out of which he,
with two others, was keeping twenty Rhode Islanders.

Ricketts and Griffin, forty men upon the ground, twice that number of
horses dead or disabled, tried to drag away the guns. Down upon them
roared the 65th, no alignment, broken and fierce as a mountain torrent,
as Thunder Run when the rains were out and the snows had melted. It took
again the guns; it met a regiment from the Northwest, also stark
fighters and hunters, and turned it back; it seized the guns and drew
them toward the pine wood. On the other side Howard's Brigade came into
action, rising, a cloud of stinging bees, over the ridge. Maine and
Vermont fell into line, fired, each man, twenty rounds. The First
Brigade answered at close range. All the Henry plateau blazed and
thundered.

From headquarters at the Lewis House a most able mind had directed the
several points of entrance into battle of the troops drawn from the
lower fords. The 8th, the 18th, and 28th Virginia, Cash and Kershaw of
Bonham's, Fisher's North Carolina--each had come at a happy moment and
had given support where support was most needed. Out of the southeast
arose a cloud of dus