ly wounded soldiers went limping to the rear,
seeking surgical aid; while badly wounded men were eagerly caught up and
borne off the field by their "comrades in battle" or by white-livered
recreants, anxious to desert their braver companions and place
themselves in safety. A certain percentage of such craven-hearted libels
on humanity--let it be said here--are always to be found in every army
and on every battle-field, dusky backgrounds against which brave men
show the brighter, and ever ready to take advantage of any circumstance
that will help them to the rear. In the armies of the older and more
warlike nations of Europe, where the reins of discipline are much more
tightly drawn than in our own, such skulking is prevented by
regularly-organized ambulance-parties and by the prompt shooting down of
any officer or soldier, not wounded, who dares to leave the ranks
without orders. Even in our own service, a Taylor is occasionally found,
fighting such a desperate battle as that of the Bad Axe against the
Indians, and posting a line of his most reliable troops in the rear,
with orders to make short work of the skulkers. Such discipline as
this--an enemy in front and an equally dangerous body of friends behind,
is generally found efficacious even for the weakest knees; and but few
hours of such experience are necessary to produce a marked-change in the
steadiness of any corps under fire.

Noon now approached, and the battle had raged for more than two hours,
without any intermission except the occasional lulls when batteries were
limbered up and dragged off at a gallop to new positions, and when
regiments deployed in line or closed in column, making evolutions to the
flanks or movements to the front. Attacks had been fiercely made on
every portion of the Union lines by the maddened rebels--maddened, as
was afterwards discovered, by the gunpowdered whiskey in their canteens;
and they had been quite as fiercely repulsed by the loyal troops, who
neither needed nor received any such stimulus. This defence had been
materially assisted, and the Federal troops enabled to gain ground at
every repulse of the rebels, by the arrival of several regiments of
infantry and two of his best batteries, sent in haste by McClellan from
his main position at Malvern Hill, so soon as the roar of artillery
announced that the fight had fairly begun with the rear-guard.

A little before meridian, the musket fire of the enemy slackened
perceptibly,