There are as many different kinds of courage as there are different kinds of men. Some men are brave because they were born so. They are no more to be praised for their bravery than a bulldog deserves credit because it is a natural born fighter or a hare deserves blame because it specializes in running away. Some men belong to the bulldog class. They are brave because it is natural for them to be brave. Others belong to the hare-family and they show far more real courage in overcoming their natural instincts than does the other for whom it is natural to do brave deeds. Much also depends on the circumstances. We all know from our own experience of athletes who can play a good winning game, and who perform well against inferior competitors. The rarer type, however, is the boy or man who can play a good up-hill game and who with all the odds against him, is able to fight it out and never to let up or give up until the last point is scored or the last yard is run and who often is able to win against better, but less dogged, less courageous competitors. It is so in battles. It is easy for any commander to be courageous and to take unusual chances when he is winning. The thrill of approaching victory is a stimulant which makes even a coward act like a brave man. Even General Gates, the weak, vacillating, clerkly, self-seeking, cowardly general of the Revolutionary War, whose selfishness and timidity were in such contrast to Washington's self-sacrifice and courage, was energetic and decisive at the battle of Saratoga after Benedict Arnold, who was there only as a volunteer, had made his brave, successful charge on the British column in spite of Gates' orders. After attacking and dispersing the reserved line of the British army, Arnold called his men together again and attacked the Canadians who covered the British left wing. Just as he had cut through their ranks, a wounded German soldier lying on the ground took deliberate aim at Arnold and killed his horse and shattered his leg with the same bullet. As he went down, one of his men tried to bayonet the wounded soldier who had fired, but even while disentangling himself from his dead horse and suffering under the pain of his broken leg, Arnold called out, "For God's sake, don't hurt him, he's a fine fellow," and saved the life of the man who had done his best to take his. That was the hour when Benedict Arnold should have died, at the moment of a magnificent victory while saving the life of a man who had injured him. Gates went on with the battle, closed in on the British and in spite of their stubborn defense, attacked them fiercely for almost the only time in his career as a general and completely routed them. There is no doubt that on that occasion after Arnold's charge Gates displayed a considerable amount of bravery, yet such bravery cannot really be termed courage of the high order which was so often displayed by Washington, by William of Orange and later by his grandson, William of England, by Fabius the conqueror of Hannibal and by many other generals who were greatest in defeat.

Napoleon once said that the highest kind of courage was the two-o'clock-in-the-morning courage. He meant that at that gray hour, when the tide of life is at its ebb before the dawn, a man who is brave is brave indeed. The best test of this kind of courage is in defeat. Fabius showed that in the long, wasting campaign which he fought against Hannibal, one of the greatest generals of his or any other age. Following, retreating, harassing, Fabius always refused a pitched battle until his enemies at Rome forced the appointment of Minucius as joint dictator with him. In spite of the protests of Fabius, the army was divided and the younger and rasher Minucius offered battle with his army. He was like a child before the crafty Hannibal who concealed a great force of men in ravines around an apparently bare hill and then inveigled Minucius into attacking a small force which he sent up to the top of this hill as a bait to draw him on. Once there the ambuscade of Hannibal attacked the Roman army on all sides and almost in a moment it was in disorder and a retreat was commenced which was about to become a rout when Fabius hurried up and by his exhortations and steadfast courage rallied the men, re-formed them, drove through Hannibal's lighter-armed troops and finally occupied the hill in safety. The grateful Minucius refused to act as commander any further, but at once insisted upon thereafter serving under Fabius.

At the Battle of Boyne, that great battle between William of England and his uncle, James II, which was to decide whether England should be a free or a slave nation, William showed the same kind of courage. In spite of chronic asthma, approaching age and a frail body, King William was a great general. He never appeared to such advantage as at the head of his troops. Usually of reserved and saturnine disposition, danger changed him into another man. On this day, while breakfasting before the battle, two field-pieces were trained on him and a six-pound ball tore his coat and grazed his shoulder drawing blood, and dashing him from his horse. He was up in an instant, however, and on that day in spite of his feeble health and wounded shoulder, was nineteen hours in the saddle. The crisis came when the English soldiers charged across the ford of the Boyne River. General Schomberg, William's right-hand and personal friend, was killed while rallying his troops. Bishop Walker, the hero of the siege of Londonderry, had been struck by a chance shot and the English, who had hardly obtained a firm foothold on the opposite bank, commenced to waver. At this moment King William forced his horse to swim across, carrying his sword in his left hand, for his right arm was stiff with his wound, and dashed up to rally the troops. As he rode up, the disorganized regiment recognized their king.

"What will you do for me?" he cried, and almost in an instant he had rallied the men and persuaded them to stand firm against the attacks of the ferocious Irish horsemen.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I have heard much of you. Let me see something of you," and charging at their head, this middle-aged, wounded invalid by sheer courage shattered the Irish and French troops and saved his kingdom.

Our own Washington was never greater than in defeat and not once but many times rallied a defeated and disheartened army and saved the day. At the Battle of Monmouth, the traitorous Charles Lee had turned what should have been a great victory into a disorderly retreat. After outflanking Cornwallis, instead of pressing his advantage, he ordered his men to retreat into a near-by ravine. Lafayette's suspicions were aroused and he sent in hot haste to Washington who arrived on the field of battle just as the whole army in tremendous disorder was pouring out of the marsh and back over the neighboring ravine before the British advance. At that moment Washington rode up pale with anger and for once lost control of a temper which cowed all men when once aroused.

"What is the meaning of all this?" he shouted to Lee and when he received no answer, repeated the question with a tremendous oath. Then immediately realizing the situation, he sent Lee back to the rear and wheeled about to stop the retreat and form a new front. Riding down the whole line of retreating soldiers, the very sight of him steadied and rallied them and in less than half an hour the line was reformed and Washington drove back the British across the marsh and the ravine until night put an end to the battle. Before morning the whole British force had retreated, leaving their wounded behind and the Battle of Monmouth had been changed by the courage and fortitude of one man from defeat into a victory for the American forces.

The most striking instance in the Civil War of what the courage of one brave, enduring, unfaltering man can do was at the Battle of Cedar Creek. In the year 1864, General Sheridan, the great cavalry leader, took command of the Army of the Shenandoah. Sheridan was an ideal cavalry leader. Brave, dashing, brilliant, he had commanded more horsemen than had any general since the days of the Tartar hordes of Tamerlane and Genghis Khan. There was no watchful waiting with Sheridan. This he had shown at the great mountain battle of Chattanooga. At that battle, Missionary Ridge was the keystone of the Confederate position. It was occupied by Confederate batteries and swarming with Confederate troops. A storming party was sent from the main body of the Union forces to drive out the Confederates who held the woods on the flanks of the Ridge. The orders were to attack the Confederates and hold the captured positions until the main body could come up. Grant was watching the battle through his field-glasses and saw the attacking party gain possession of the slopes of the Ridge. Suddenly, to his surprise and horror, the whole regiment charged directly up the Ridge. It was a mad thing to do for the top was held by a tremendous force of Confederates and guarded by massed batteries. General Grant called General Granger up to him and said angrily:

"Did you order those men up, Granger?"

"No," said the general, "they started up without orders. When those fellows get started, all hell can't stop 'em."

General Grant then sent word to General Sheridan to either stop the men or take the Ridge.

"I guess it will be easier to take the Ridge than it will be to stop them," said Sheridan.

Before starting, he borrowed a flask and waved it toward the group of Confederate officers who were standing on top of the Ridge in front of the headquarters of Bragg, the Confederate general.

"Here's at you," he shouted, drinking to them. They could plainly see his action through their field-glasses and immediately two field-guns, which were known as Lady Breckenridge and Lady Buckner, were trained at Sheridan and his group of officers and fired. One shell struck so near Sheridan as to splash dirt all over him.

"I'll take those guns just for that," was all he said and, followed by his officers, he dashed up the Ridge after the climbing, attacking-party. The way was so steep that the men had to climb up on their hands and knees while the solid shot and shell tore great furrows in their ranks. Sheridan was off his horse as soon as the slope became steep, and, although he had started after the charge, was soon at the front of the men. They recognized him with a tremendous cheer.

"I'm not much used to this charging on foot, boys," he said, "but I'll do the best I can," and he set a pace which soon brought his men so far up that the guns above could not be depressed enough to hit them. Behind him came the whole storming party clambering up on their hands and knees with their regimental flags flying everywhere, sometimes dropping as the bearers were shot, but never reaching the ground because they would be caught up again and again by others. At last they were so near that the Confederate artillerymen, in order to save time, lighted the fuses of their shells and bowled them down by hand against the storming party. Just before they reached the summit, Sheridan formed them into a battle-line and then with a tremendous cheer, they dashed forward and attacked the Ridge at six different points. The Confederates had watched their approach with amazement and amusement. When they found, however, that nothing seemed to stop them, they were seized with a panic and as the six desperate storming parties dashed upon them from different angles, after a few minutes' fast fighting, they broke and retreated in a hopeless rout down the other side of the Ridge. Sheridan stopped long enough to claim Lady Breckenridge and Lady Buckner as his personal spoils of war and forming his men again, led them on to a splendid victory.

As soon as he took command of the Army of the Shenandoah, aggressive fighting at once began. Twice he defeated Jubal Early, once at Winchester and again at Fisher's Hill, while one of his generals routed the Rebels so completely in a brilliant engagement at Woodstock that the battle was always known as the Woodstock Races, the Confederate soldiers being well in front in this competition. Finally, General Sheridan had massed his whole army at Cedar Creek. From there he rode back to Washington to have a conference with General Halleck and the Secretary of War. When that was finished with his escort he rode back to Winchester, some twelve miles from Cedar Creek, two days later. There he received word that all was well at his headquarters and he turned in and went to bed intending to join the army the next day. Six o'clock the next morning an aide aroused him with the news that artillery firing could be heard in the direction of Cedar Creek. Sheridan was out of bed in a moment and though it was reported that it sounded more like a skirmish than a battle, he at once ordered breakfast and started for Cedar Creek. As he came to the edge of Winchester he could hear the unceasing roar of the artillery and was convinced at once that a battle was in progress and from the increase of the sound judged that the Union Army must be falling back. The delighted faces of the Confederate citizens of Winchester, who showed themselves at the windows, also convinced him that they had secret information from the battlefield and were in raptures over some good news. With twenty men he started to cover the twelve miles to Cedar Creek as fast as their horses could gallop. Sheridan was riding that day a magnificent black, thoroughbred horse, Rienzi, which had been presented to him by some of his admirers. Like Lee's gray horse "Traveler" and the horse Wellington rode at Waterloo, "Copenhagen," Rienzi was to become famous. Before Sheridan had gone far and just after crossing Mill Creek outside of Winchester, he commenced to meet hundreds of men, some wounded, all demoralized, who with their baggage were all rushing to the rear in hopeless confusion. Just north of Newtown he met an army chaplain digging his heels into the sides of his jaded horse and making for the rear with all possible speed. Sheridan stopped him and inquired how things were going at the front.

"Everything is lost," replied the chaplain, "but it will be all right when you get there."

The parson, however, in spite of this expression of confidence, kept on going. Sheridan sent back word to Colonel Edwards, who commanded a brigade at Winchester, to stretch his troops across the valley and stop all fugitives. To most men this would have been the only plan of action possible, to stop the fugitives and rally at Winchester. Sheridan, however, was not accustomed to defensive fighting and instantly made up his mind that he would rally his men at the front and if possible, turn this defeat into a victory. The roads were too crowded to be used and so he jumped the fence into the fields and rode straight across country toward the drumming guns at Cedar Creek, which showed where the main battle was raging. From the fugitives, as he rode, Sheridan obtained a clear idea of what had happened. His great rival, Early, had taken advantage of his absence to obtain revenge for his previous defeats. Just after dawn he had made an attack in two different directions on the Union forces and had started a panic which had seized all the soldiers except one division under Getty and the cavalry under Lowell. The army which Sheridan met was a defeated army in full rout. As he dashed along, the men everywhere recognized him, stopped running, threw up their hats with a cheer and shouldering their muskets, turned around and followed him as fast as they could. He directed his escort to ride in all directions and announce that General Sheridan was coming. From all through the fields and roads could be heard the sound of faint cheering and everywhere men were seen turning, rallying and marching forward instead of back. Even the wounded who had fallen by the roadside waved their hands and hats to him as he passed. As he rode, Sheridan took off his hat so as to be more easily recognized and thundered along sometimes in the road and sometimes across country. As he met the retreating troops, he said:

"Boys, if I had been with you this morning this wouldn't have happened. The thing to do now is to face about and win this battle after all. Come on after me as fast as you can."

Sheridan Hurrying to Rally His Men

So he galloped the whole twelve miles with the men everywhere rallying behind him and following him at full speed. At last he came to the forefront of the battle where Getty's division and the cavalry were holding their own and resisting the rapid approach of the whole Confederate Army. Sheridan called upon his horse for a last effort and jumped the rail fence at the crest of the hill. By this time the black horse was white with foam, but he carried his master bravely up and down in front of the line and the whole brigade of men rose to their feet with a tremendous cheer and poured in a fierce fire upon the approaching Confederate troops. Sheridan rode along the whole front of the line and aroused a wild enthusiasm which showed itself in the way that the first Rebel charge was driven back. Telling Getty's and Lowell's men to hold on, he rode back to meet the approaching troops. By half-past three in the afternoon, Sheridan had brought back all the routed troops, reformed his whole battle line and waving his hat, led a charge riding his same gallant black horse. As they attacked the Confederate front, Generals Merritt and Custer made a fresh attack and the whole Confederate Army fell back routed and broken and was driven up the valley in the same way that earlier in the day they had driven the Union soldiers. Once again the presence of one brave man had turned a defeat into a victory.

Sheridan took no credit to himself in his report to Lincoln, simply telegraphing, "By the gallantry of our brave officers and men, disaster has been converted into a splendid victory."

"My personal admiration and gratitude for your splendid work of October 19th," Lincoln telegraphed back and the whole country rang with praises of Phil Sheridan and his wonderful ride. The day after the news of the battle reached the North, Thomas Buchanan Read wrote a poem entitled "Sheridan's Ride," with a stirring chorus.

The last verse sang the praise both of the rider and the horse:

"What was done? what to do? A glance told him both,
Then striking his spurs with a terrible oath,
He dashed down the line, mid a storm of huzzas,
And the wave of retreat checked its course there because,
The sight of the master compelled it to pause.
With foam and with dust the black charger was gray;
By the flash of his eye, and the red nostrils' play,
He seemed to the whole great army to say,
'I have brought you Sheridan all the way
From Winchester, down to save the day.'"

CHAPTER VIII
THE BLOODY ANGLE

It takes courage to charge, to rush over a space swept by shot and shell and attack a body of men grimly waiting to beat back the onset with murderous volleys and cold steel. Sometimes, though, it takes more courage to stand than to charge, to endure than to attack. The six hundred gallant horsemen of that Light Brigade who charged an army at Balaclava were brave men. The six hundred Knights of St. John who at the siege of Malta by Solyman the Magnificent defended the tiny fortress of St. Elmo against thirty thousand Turks until every man lay dead back of the broken ramparts and the power and might of the Turkish Empire had been wasted and shattered against their indomitable defense were braver. The burghers of Leyden who lived through the siege of their city on shoe-leather, rats and bark, who baked their last loaves and threw them down to the besiegers in magnificent defiance, who shouted down to the Spaniards that they would eat their left arms and fight with their right, and who slept on the ramparts night and day until they drove back the greatest army in all Europe were braver.

"It's dogged that does it," said the grim Duke of Wellington when his thin red line of English fighters endured through that long summer day against attack after attack until at twilight the Old Guard were repulsed for the last time and the great battle of Waterloo won.

Many men are brave in flashes. They are good for a dash. Few are those who can go the distance.

This is the story of a Union general who could endure and whose courage flared highest when defeat and death seemed certain. It is the story of a little band of men who were brave enough to stand against an army and whose endurance won a seven-day battle and opened the way for the capture of the Confederate capital.

It was the fourth year of the War of the Rebellion, and the end was not yet in sight. The Confederate cause had fewer men, but better officers. Robert E. Lee was undoubtedly the most able general in the world at that time. Stonewall Jackson had been his right arm, while Longstreet, Johnston, Early and a host of other fighting leaders helped him to defeat one Union army after another. The trouble with the Union leaders was that they didn't know how to attack. There had been McClellan, a wonderful organizer, but who preferred to dig entrenchments rather than fight and who never believed that he had enough men to risk a battle.

Then came Meade who won the great battle of Gettysburg and beat back the only invasion of the North, but who failed to follow up his advantage and had settled down to the old policy that the North knew so well of watchful waiting. At last came the Man. He had been fighting in the West and he had won, – not important battles, but more important, the confidence of the people and of Abraham Lincoln, the people's president. For this new man had a new system of generalship. His tactics were simple enough. He believed that armies were made to use, not to save. He believed in finding the enemy and hammering and hammering and hammering away until something broke – and that something was usually the enemy. His name was Ulysses S. Grant.

"He fights," was all that President Lincoln said about him when a party of politicians came to ask that he be removed. That was enough. What the North wanted was a fighter. Other generals would fight when they had to and were satisfied to stop if they defeated the enemy or broke even, but Grant was like old Charles Martel, Charles the Hammerer, who won his name when he saved all Europe from the Saracens on the plains of Tours by a seven-day battle. The great host of horsemen which had swept victorious through Asia, Africa and half the circle of the Mediterranean whirled down on the solid mass of grim Northmen. For six long days Charles Martel hammered away at that flashing horde of wild warriors. On the seventh his hammer strokes shattered the might of the Moslems and they broke and fled, never to cross the Pyrenees again. Now like Charles, the Hammerer of the Union Army was facing his great test, the terrible Seven Days in the Wilderness. Between him and the Confederate capital lay Lee's veteran army entrenched in that wild stretch of Virginia territory which was well named the Wilderness. Every foot of the puzzling woods, ravines, thickets and trails were known to the Confederates and well they ought to know it since they had already won a great battle on nearly the same field. In this tangled waste an army that knew the ground had a tremendous advantage. Lee chose his battle-field, but did not believe that Grant would join battle. He was to learn to know his great opponent better. Grant would always fight.

On May 4, 1864, the head of Grant's army met Lee's forces on one of the few roads of the Wilderness, known as the Orange Plank Road. The battle was joined. At first the Union forces drove the Confederates back into the thick woods. There they were reinforced and the knowledge of the field began to tell. Everywhere Confederate soldiers were sent by short cuts to attack the entangled Union forces and before long the Union line was shattered and driven back only to form again and fight once more for six long days. And what a battle that was! As in the fierce forest-fight between David and Absalom the wood devoured more people that day than the sword devoured. The men fought at close quarters and in the tangled thickets of stunted Virginia pine and scrub-oak they could scarcely see ten yards ahead. Every thicket was alive with men and flashed with musketry while the roar and rattle of guns on all sides frightened the deer and rabbits and wildcats that before that day had been the only dwellers in those masses of underbrush. The men fought blindly and desperately in both armies. Artillery could not be used to much advantage in the brush. It was largely a battle of musket and bayonet and wild hand-to-hand fights in the tangle of trees. The second day the Confederate lines were rolled back to the spot where Lee himself stood. Just as they were breaking, down the plank road at a steady trot came a double column of splendid troops paying no attention to the rabble and rout around them. Straight to the front they moved. It was the brigade of Longstreet, Lee's great "left hand." At once the Union advance was stopped and the Confederates began to reform their lines. At this moment from the pines streamed another Federal brigade with apparently resistless force down upon the still confused line. Then it was that a little force of Texans did a brave deed. They saw that if the Union advance was not checked, their men would not have time to form. Although only eight hundred strong, they never hesitated, but with a wild Rebel yell and without any supports or reinforcements, charged directly into the flank of the marching Union column of many times their number. There was a crash, and a tumult of shouts and yells which settled down into a steady roar of musketry. In less than ten minutes half of the devoted band lay dead or wounded. But they had broken the force of the Federal advance and had given the Confederate line time to rally.

Back and forth, day after day the human tide ebbed and flowed until the lonely Wilderness was crowded with men, echoing with the roar and rattle of guns and stained red with brave blood. At times in the confusion scattered troops fired upon their own men, and Longstreet was wounded by such an accident.

At one place the Federal forces had erected log breastworks. These caught fire during the battle and both forces fought each other over a line of fire through which neither could pass. From every thicket different flags waved. The forces were so mixed that men going back for water would find themselves in the hands of the enemy. In places the woods caught fire and men fought through the rolling smoke until driven back by the flames that spared neither the Blue nor the Gray. Both sides would then crawl out to rescue the wounded lying in the path of the fire. In some places where the men had fought through the brush, bushes, saplings and even large trees were cut off by bullets four or five feet from the ground as clean and regularly as if by machinery. For the first few days the Confederates had the advantage. They knew the paths and the Union men were driven back and forth among the woods in a way that would have made any ordinary general retreat. But Grant was not an ordinary general. The more he was beaten the harder he fought. The more men he lost the more he called into action from the reserves.

"It's no use fighting that fellow," said one old Confederate veteran; "the fool never knows when he's beaten. And it's no use shooting at those Yanks," he went on; "half-a-dozen more come to take the place of every one we hit."

At last the Union soldiers got the lay of the land. They couldn't be surprised or ambushed any more. Then they began to throw up breastworks and to cut down trees to hold every foot that they had taken. The Confederates did the same and the two long, irregular lines of earthworks and log fortifications faced each other all the way through the Wilderness. Yet still the lines of gray lay between Richmond and the men in blue. For six days the men had fought locked together in hand-to-hand fights over miles and miles of wilderness, marsh and thicket. The Union losses had been terrific. All along the line the Confederates had won and again and again had dashed back the attempts of the Union forces to pass through or around their lines. The Union Army had lost eleven officers and twenty thousand men and had fought for six days without accomplishing anything. Yet on that day Grant sent to Washington a dispatch in which he wrote: "I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer."

Through all this tumult of defeats and losses he sat under a tree whittling and directing every movement as coolly as if safe at home. Finally the great Hammerer chose a spot at which to batter and smash with those tremendous strokes of his. The Confederates had built a long irregular line of earthworks and timber breastworks running for miles through the tangled woods. At one point near the center of the lines a half-moon of defenses jutted out high above the rest of the works. At the chord of this half-circle was an angle of breastworks back of which the Confederates could retreat if driven out of the semicircle. Grant saw that this half-moon was the key of the Confederate position. If it could be captured and held, their whole battle line could be broken and crumpled back and the Union Army pass on to Richmond. If taken at all, it must be by some sudden irresistible attack. He chose General Hancock, a daring, dashing fighter, to make the attempt for the morning of May 12th. It rained hard on the night of May 11th and came off bitter cold. The men gathered for the attack about ten o'clock and huddled together in little groups wet and half-frozen. All that long night they waited. Just at dawn the word was passed around. Crouching in the darkness, a division pressed forward and rushed like tigers at the half-circle and began to climb the breastworks from two sides. The sleepy sentries saw the rush too late. The first man over was a young sergeant named Brown. With a tremendous jump he caught a projecting bough, swung himself over like a cat and landed right in the midst of a crowd of startled soldiers. Finding himself entirely alone with a score of guns pointed at him, he lost his nerve for a minute.