"I take it all back," shouted Brown, now brave again, and to make up for the break in his courage he rushed into the very midst of the defenders and, single-handed, captured the colors. The Confederates were taken entirely by surprise. In the dim light they fought desperately, but they were attacked from two sides with bullets, bayonets and smashing blows from the butt-ends of muskets used like clubs. Almost in a moment the entrenchments were in the hands of the Union soldiers and over three thousand prisoners, two generals and twenty cannon were captured. Those who were left took refuge back of the angle-breastworks which guarded the approach to the half-moon. There they fought back the charging troops until Lee, who had heard of the disaster, could pour in reinforcements. He knew full well that this center must be retaken at any cost. Every man and gun that could be spared was hurried to the spot. Lee started then to take command in person. Only when the soldiers refused to fight unless he took a safe place did he consent to stay back.

With all his available forces Grant lapped the half-circle on every side and began to hammer away at this break in the Confederate line. The Confederate reinforcements came up first and Hancock's men were driven back from the angle until they met the reinforcements pouring in from the troops outside. For a moment they could not face the concentrated fire that came from the rear breastworks. Flat on their faces officers and men lay in a little marsh while the canister swished against the tall marsh-grass and the minie balls moaned horribly as they picked out exposed men here and there. Soon another regiment came up and with a yell the men sprang to their feet and dashed at the breastworks which loomed up through the little patch of woods through which they had retreated. In a minute they had rushed through the trees with men dropping on every side under the murderous fire. Before them was the grim angle of works to be known forever as the Bloody Angle.

As they came nearer they found themselves in front of a deep ditch. Scrambling through this they became entangled in an abattis, a kind of latticework of limbs and branches. As they plunged into this many a man was caught in the footlocks formed by the interwoven branches and held until he was shot down by the fire back of the breastworks. These were made of heavy timber banked with earth to a height of about four feet. Above this was what was called a "head-log" raised just high enough to allow a musket to be inserted between it and the lower work. Inside were shelves covered with piles of buck and ball and minie cartridges. Through the ditch and the snares, up and over the breastworks charged a Pennsylvania regiment, losing nearly one hundred men as they went.

Once again there was the same confused hand-to-hand fighting as had taken place at the outer fortifications. This time the result was different. The crafty Lee had hurried a dense mass of troops through the mist. These men crawled forward in the smoke, reserving their fire until they got to the very inside edge of the Angle. Then with the terrible long-drawn Rebel yell, they sprang to their feet and dashed into the breastworks with a volley that killed every Union soldier who had crossed over. Down too went the men in front, still tangled in the abattis. Every artillery horse was shot and Colonel Upton of the 95th Pennsylvania Volunteers was the only mounted officer in sight.

"Stick to it, boys," he shouted, riding back and forth and waving his hat. "We've got to hold this point!"

In a dense mass the Confederates poured into the breastworks and for a moment it seemed as if they would sweep the Union forces back and retake the half-moon salient. At this moment the Pennsylvanians were reinforced by the 5th Maine and the 121st New York, but the Confederates had the advantage of the breastworks and the Union men began to waver. Then a little two-gun battery of the Second Corps did a very brave thing. They were located at the foot of a hill back of a pine-grove. As the news came that the Union men were giving way, they limbered the guns, the drivers and cannoneers mounted the horses and up the hill at full gallop they charged through the Union infantry and right up to the breastworks, the only case of a charge by a battery in history. Then in a second they unlimbered their guns and poured in a fire of the tin cans filled with bullets called canister which was deadly on the close-packed ranks of the Confederates hurrying up to the Angle. The Union gunners were exposed to the full fire of the men back of the breastworks, but they never flinched. The left gun fired nine rounds and the right fourteen double charges. These cannonades simply mowed the men down in groups. Captain Fish of General Upton's staff left his men and rushed to help this little battery. Back and forth he rode before the guns and the caissons carrying stands of canister under his rubber coat.

"Give it to 'em, boys," he shouted. "I'll bring you canister if you'll only use it."

Again and again he rode until, just as he turned to cheer the gunners once more, he fell mortally wounded. The guns were fired until all of the horses were killed, the guns, carriages and buckets cut to pieces by the bullets and only two of the twenty-three men of the battery were left on their feet. Leaving their two brass pieces which had done such terrible execution still on the breastworks cut and hacked by the bullets from both sides, the lone two marched back through the cheering infantry.

"That's the way to do it," shouted Colonel Upton. "Hold 'em, men! Hold 'em!" And his men held.

The soft mud came up half-way to their knees. Under the continued tramping back and forth, the dead and wounded were almost buried at their feet. The shattered ranks backed off a few yards, then closed up and started to hold their place out in the open against the constantly increasing masses of the enemy back of the breastworks of the Angle. The space was so narrow that only a certain number of men on each side could get into action at once. A New Jersey and Vermont brigade hurried in to help while on the other side General Lee sent all the men that could find a place to fight back of the breastworks. Into the mêlée came an orderly who shouted in Colonel Upton's ear so as to be heard over the rattle of musketry and the roar of yells and cheers:

"General Grant says, 'Hold on!'"

"Tell General Grant we are holding on," shouted back Colonel Upton.

The men in the mud now directed all their fire at the top of the breastworks and picked off every head and hand that showed above. The Confederates then fired through the loopholes, or placed their rifles on the top log and holding by the trigger and the small of the stock lifted the breach high enough to fire at the attacking forces. The losses on both sides were frightful. A gun and a mortar battery took position half a mile back of the Union forces and began to gracefully curve shells and bombs just over the heads of their comrades so as to drop within the ramparts. Sometimes the enemy's fire would slacken. Then some reckless Union soldier would seize a fence-rail or a piece of the abattis and creep close to the breastworks and thrust it over as if he was stirring up a hornet's nest, dropping on the ground to avoid the volley that was sure to follow. One daring lieutenant leaped upon the breastworks and took a rifle that was handed up to him and fired it into the masses of the Confederate soldiers behind. Another one was handed up and he fired that and was about aiming with a third when he was riddled with a volley and pitched headlong among the enemy.

A little later a party of discouraged Confederates raised a piece of a white shelter tent above the works as a flag of truce and offered to surrender. The Union soldiers called on them to jump over. They sprang on the breastworks and hesitated a moment at the sight of so many leveled guns. That moment was fatal to them for their comrades in the rear poured a volley into them, killing nearly every one.

All day long the battle raged. Different breastworks in the same fortifications flaunted different flags. Gradually, however, all along the line the firing and the fighting concentrated at the Angle. The head logs there were so cut and torn that they looked like brooms. So heavy was the fire that several large oak trees twenty-two inches in diameter back of the works were gnawed down by the bullets and fell, injuring some of the South Carolina troops. Toward dusk the Union troops were nearly exhausted. Each man had fired between three and four hundred rounds. Their lips were black and bleeding from biting cartridge. Their shoulders and hands were coated and black with grime and powder-dust. As soon as it became dark they dropped in the knee-deep mud from utter exhaustion. But they held. Grimly, sternly they held. All the long night through they fired away at the breastworks. The trenches on the right of the Angle ran red with Union blood and had to be cleared many a time of the piles of dead bodies which choked them. At last, a little after midnight, sullenly and slowly the Confederate forces drew back and the half-moon and the Bloody Angle were left in possession of the Union forces. The seven days' hammering and the twenty hours of holding had won the fierce and bloody Battle of the Wilderness.

CHAPTER IX
HEROES OF GETTYSBURG

Heroes are not made of different stuff from ordinary men. God made us all heroes at heart. Satan lied when he said "all that a man hath will he give for his life." The call comes and commonplace men and workaday women give their lives as a very little thing for a cause, for an ideal, or for others. When the great moment comes, the love and courage and unselfishness that lie deep in the souls of all of us can flash forth into beacon-lights of brave deeds which will stand throughout the years pointing the path of high endeavor for those who come after.

Women the world over will never forget how Mrs. Strauss came back from the life-boat and went down on the Titanic with her husband rather than have him die alone.

Boys have been braver and tenderer their lives long because of the unknown hero at Niagara. With his mother he was trapped on a floe when the ice-jam broke. Slowly and sternly it moved toward the roaring edge of the cataract. From the Suspension Bridge a rope was let down to them. Twice he tried to fix it around his mother, but she was too old and weak to hold on. The floe was passing beyond the bridge and there was just time for him to knot the rope around himself. Young, active and strong, he would be safe in a moment, but his mother would go to death deserted and alone. He tossed the rope away, put his arm around his old mother and they went over the Falls together.

Every American sailor has been braver and gentler from the memory of Captain Craven who commanded the monitor Tecumseh when Fighting Farragut destroyed the forts and captured the Rebel fleet at Mobile Bay. The Tecumseh was about to grapple with the Tennessee, the great Rebel ram, when she struck a torpedo, turned over and went down bow foremost. Captain Craven was in the pilot-house with the pilot. As the vessel sank they both rushed for the narrow door. Craven reached it first, but stood aside saying, "After you, pilot." The latter leaped through as the water rushed in and was saved. Craven went down with his ship.

The great moments which are given to men in which to decide whether they are to be heroes or cowards may come at any time, but they always flash through every battle. Danger, suffering and death are the stern tests by which men's real selves are discovered. A man can't do much pretending when he is under fire, and he can't make believe he is brave or unselfish, or chivalric when he is sick, or wounded, or dying. We can be proud that the man who went before us made good and that we can remember all the great battles of the greatest of our wars by the brave deeds of brave men.

The battle of Gettysburg was the most important of the Civil War. Lee with seventy thousand men was pouring into the North. If he defeated Meade and the Union Army, Washington, the capital, would fall. Even Philadelphia and New York would be threatened. In three days of terrible fighting, thirty thousand men were killed. In one of the charges one regiment, the 1st Minnesota, lost eighty-two per cent. of its men – more than twice as many as the famous Light Brigade lost at Balaclava. Pickett's charge of fifteen thousand men over nearly a mile and a half against the hill which marked the center of the Union lines was one of the greatest charges in history. When the Confederates were driven back, two-thirds of the charging party had been killed or wounded. It was the crisis of the war. If that charge went home Gettysburg was lost, the Union Army would become a rabble and the whole strength of the Confederate forces would pass on into the North. On the Union batteries depended the whole fate of the army. If they could keep up a fire to the last moment, the charge must fail. Otherwise the picked thousands of the Confederate Army would break the center of the Union forces and the battle would be lost. Lee gathered together one hundred and fifteen guns and directed a storm of shot and shell against the Union batteries as his regiments charged up the hill. On the very crest was a battery commanded by young Cushing, a brother of Lieutenant W. B. Cushing, who drove a tiny torpedo launch over a boom of logs under the fire of forts, troops and iron-clads and destroyed the great Confederate iron-clad Albemarle. This Cushing was of the same fighting breed. During the battle he was shot through both thighs but would not leave his post though suffering agonies from the wounds. When the charge began he fought his battery as fast as the guns could be loaded and fired and his grape-shot and canister mowed down the charging Confederates by the hundred. In spite of tremendous losses the Rebels rushed up the hill firing as they came and so fierce was their fire and that of the Confederate batteries that of the Union officers in command of the batteries just in front of the charge, all but two were struck. But the men kept up the fire to the very last. As what was left of the Confederates topped the hill, a shell struck the wounded Cushing tearing him almost in two. He held together his mangled body with one hand and with the other fired his last gun and fell dead just as the Confederates reached the stone wall on the crest. They were so shattered by his fire that they were unable to hold the hill and were driven back and the battle won for the Union.

Old John Burns was another one of the many heroes of Gettysburg. John was over seventy years old when the battle was fought and lived in a little house in the town of Gettysburg with his wife who was nearly as old as he. Burns had fought in the war of 1812 and began to get more and more uneasy every day as the battle was joined at different points near where he was living. The night before the last day of the battle the old man went out to get his cow and found that a foraging band of Confederates had driven her off. This was the last straw. The next day regiment after regiment of the Confederate forces marched past his house and the old man took down his flintlock musket which had done good service against the British in 1812 and began to melt lead and run bullets through his little old bullet mould. Mrs. Burns had been watching him uneasily for some time.

"John, what in the world are you doing there?" she finally asked.

"Oh," he said, "I thought I would fix up the old gun and get some bullets ready in case any of the boys might want to use it. There's goin' to be some fightin' and it's just as well to get ready. There ain't a piece in the army that will shoot straighter than Betsy here," and the old man patted the long stock of the musket affectionately.

"Well," said his wife, "you see that you keep out of it. You know if the Rebs catch you fightin' in citizens' clothes, they'll hang you sure."

"Don't you worry about me," said John. "I helped to lick the British and I ain't afraid of a lot of Rebels."

Finally the long procession of Confederate forces passed and for an hour or so the road was empty and silent. At last in the distance sounded the roll and rattle of drums and through a great cloud of dust flamed the stars and stripes and in a moment the road was filled with solid masses of blue-clad troops hurrying to their positions on what was to be one of the great battle-fields of the world. As regiment after regiment filed past, old John could stand it no longer. He grabbed his musket and started out the door.

"John! John! Where are you going?" screamed his wife, running after him. "Ain't you old enough to know better?"

"I'm just goin' out to get a little fresh air," said John, pulling away from her and hurrying down the street. "I'll be back before night sure."

It was the afternoon of the last day when the men of a Wisconsin regiment near the front saw a little old man approaching, dressed in a blue swallow-tail coat with brass buttons and carrying a long flintlock rifle with a big powder-horn strapped about him.

"Hi, there!" he piped, when he saw the men. "I want to jine in. Where'll I go?"

The men laughed at the sight.

"Anywhere," shouted back one of them; "there's good fightin' all along the line."

"Well," said John, "I guess I'll stop here," and in spite of their attempts to keep him back, he crept up until he was at the very front of the skirmish line. There was a lull in the fighting just then and there was a good deal of joking up and down the line between the men and John.

"Say, grandpa," called out one, "did you fight in the Revolution?"

"Have you ever hit anything with that old gun of yours?" said another.

But John was able to hold his own.

"Sure I fought in the Revolution," he piped loudly, "and as for hittin' anything, say, boys, do you know that at the Battle of Bunker Hill I had sixty-two bullets in my pocket. I had been loadin' and firin' fifty times and I had shot forty-nine British officers when suddenly I heard some one yellin' to me from behind our lines and he says to me, 'Hi, there, old dead-shot, don't you know that this is a battle and not a massacre?' I turns around and right behind me was General George Washington, so I saluted and I says, 'What is it, General?' and he says, 'You stop firin' right away.' 'Well,' I said, 'General, I have only got twelve more bullets; can't I shoot those?' 'No,' he says to me, 'you go home. You've done enough,' and he says, 'don't call me General, call me George.'"

This truthful anecdote was repeated along the whole line and instantly made John's reputation as a raconteur. He was allowed to establish himself at the front of the line and in a minute, as the firing commenced, he was fighting with the best of them. They tried to persuade him to take a musket from one of the many dead men who were lying around, but like David, John would not use any weapon which he had not proved. He stuck to old Betsy and although he did not make quite so good a record as at the Battle of Bunker Hill, according to his comrades he accounted for no less than three Confederates, one of whom was an officer. Before the day was over he received three wounds. Toward evening there was an overwhelming rush of the Confederates which drove back the Union soldiers and the Wisconsin regiment fell back leaving poor old John lying there among the other wounded. He was in a dilemma. Although his cuts were only flesh-wounds, yet he would bleed to death unless they were properly dressed. On the other hand if he was found by the Rebels in civilian clothes with his rifle, he would undoubtedly be shot according to military law. The old man could not, however, bear the thought of parting with old Betsy, so he crawled groaningly toward a hollow tree where he managed to hide the old flint-lock and the powder-horn and soon afterward attracted the attention of the Confederate patrol which was going about the field attending to the wounded. At first they were suspicious of him.

"What are you doing, old man, wounded on a battle-field in citizens' clothes?" one of the officers asked.

"Well," said John, "I was out lookin' for a cow which some of you fellows carried off and first thing I knew I was hit in three places. So long as you got my cow, the least you can do is to carry me home."

This seemed fair to the officer and a stretcher was brought and the old man was carried back to the house. His next fear was that his wife would unconsciously betray him to the patrol that were bringing him into the house. Sure enough as they reached the door, old Mrs. Burns came rushing out.

"John," she screamed, "I told you not to go out."

"Shut up, Molly," bellowed John at the top of his voice. "I didn't find the old cow, but I did the best I could and I want you to tell these gentlemen that I am as peaceable an old chap that ever lived, for they found me out there wounded with a lot of soldiers and think I may have been doin' some fightin'."

Mrs. Burns was no fool.

"Gentlemen," she cried out, "I can't thank you enough for bringing back this poor silly husband of mine. I told him that if he went hunting to-day for cows or anything else, he would most likely find nothing but trouble, and I guess he has. He's old enough to know better, but you leave him here and I'll nurse him and try to get some sense into his head."

So the patrol left Burns at his own house, not without some suspicions, for the next day an officer came around and put him through a severe cross-examination which John for the most part escaped by pretending to be too weak to answer any particularly searching question. Mrs. Burns nursed the old man back to health again and never let a day go by without a number of impressive remarks about his foolhardiness. The old man hadn't much to say, but the first day after he got well he disappeared and came back an hour or so later with old Betsy and the powder-horn which he found safe and sound in the tree where he left them. These he hung again over the mantelpiece in readiness for the next war, "for," said John, "a man's never too old to fight for his country."

Another hero in that battle was Lieutenant Bayard Wilkeson. Only nineteen years old he commanded a battery in an exposed position on the Union right. His two guns did so much damage that Gordon, the Confederate general, could not advance his troops in the face of their deadly fire. Wilkeson could be seen on the far-away hilltop riding back and forth encouraging and directing his gunners.

General Gordon sent for the captains of two of his largest batteries.

"Train every gun you've got," he said, "on that man and horse. He's doing more damage than a whole Yankee regiment."

Quietly the guns of the two far-apart positions were swung around until they all pointed directly at that horseman against the sky. A white handkerchief was waved from the farthest battery and with a crash every gun went off. When the smoke cleared away, man and horse were down, the guns dismounted and the gunners killed. The Confederate forces swept on their way unchecked across the field that had been swept and winnowed by Wilkeson's deadly guns. As they went over the crest, they found him under his dead horse and surrounded by his dead gunners still alive but desperately wounded. He was carried in to the Allen House along with their own wounded and given what attention was possible, which was little enough. It was plain to be seen that he was dying. Suffering from that choking, desperate thirst which attacks every wounded man who has lost much blood he faintly asked for water. There was no water to be had, but finally one of the Confederate officers in charge managed to get a full canteen off a passing soldier. Wilkeson stretched out his hands for what meant more to him than anything else in the world. Just then a wounded Confederate soldier next to him cried out, "For God's sake give me some."

Wilkeson stopped with the canteen half to his mouth and then by sheer force of will passed it over to the other. In his agonizing thirst the wounded Confederate drank every drop before he could stop himself. Horror-stricken he turned to apologize. The young lieutenant smiled at him, turned slightly – and was gone. It took more courage to give up that flask of cold water than to fight his battery against the whole Confederate Army.

The hero-folk on that great day were not all men and boys. Among the many, many monuments that crowd the field of Gettysburg there is one of a young girl carved from pure translucent Italian marble. It is the statue of Jennie Wade, the water-carrier for many a wounded and dying soldier during two of those days of doom. Although she knew it not, Jennie was following in the footsteps of another woman, that unknown wife of a British soldier at the Battle of Saratoga in the far-away Revolutionary days. When Burgoyne's army was surrounded at Saratoga, some of the women and wounded men were sent for safety to a large house in the neighborhood where they took refuge in the cellar. There they crouched for six long days and nights while the cannon-balls crashed through the house overhead. The cellar became crowded with wounded and dying men who were suffering agonies from thirst. It was only a few steps to the river, but the house was surrounded by Morgan's sharp-shooters and every man who ventured out with a bucket was shot dead. At last the wife of one of the soldiers offered to go and in spite of the protests of the men ventured out. The American riflemen would not fire upon a woman and again and again she went down to the river and brought back water to the wounded in safety.

Jennie Wade was a girl of twenty who lived in a red-brick house right in the path of the battle. They could not move to a safer place, for her married sister was there with a day-old baby, so the imprisoned family was in the thick of the battle. Recently when the old roof was taken off to be repaired, over two quarts of bullets were taken from it. During the first day, Jennie's mother moved her daughter and her baby so that her head rested against the foot of the bed. She had no more been moved than a bullet crashed through the window and struck the pillow where her head had lain an instant before. While her mother watched her daughter and the baby, Jennie carried water to the soldiers on the firing-line. At the end of the first day fifteen soldiers lay dead in the little front yard and all through that weary day and late into the night Jennie was going back and forth filling the canteens of the wounded and dying soldiers as they lay scattered on that stricken field. Throughout the second day she kept on with this work and many and many a wounded soldier choking with thirst lived to bless her memory. On this day a long procession of blue-clad men knocked at the door of the house asking for bread until the whole supply was gone. After dark on the second day, Jennie mixed up a pan of dough and set it out to rise. She got up at daybreak and as she was lighting a fire, a hungry soldier-boy knocked at the door and asked for something to eat. Jennie started to mix up some biscuit and as she stood with her sleeves rolled up and her hands in the dough, a minie ball cut through the door and she fell over dead without a word. Her statue stands as she must have appeared during those first two days of battle. In one hand she carries a pitcher and over her left arm are two army-canteens hung by their straps. Not the least of the heroic ones of that battle was Jennie Wade who died while thus engaged in homely, helpful services for her country.

These are the stories of but a few who fought at Gettysburg that men might be free and that their country might stand for righteousness. The spirit of that battle has been best expressed in a great poem by Will H. Thompson with which we end these stories of some of the brave deeds of the greatest battle of the Civil War.

HIGH TIDE AT GETTYSBURG

A cloud possessed the hollow field,
The gathering battle's smoky shield;
Athwart the gloom the lightning flashed,
And through the cloud some horsemen dashed,
And from the heights the thunder pealed.

Then, at the brief command of Lee,
Moved out that matchless infantry,
With Pickett leading grandly down
To rush against the roaring crown
Of those dread heights of destiny.

Far heard above the angry guns,
A cry across the tumult runs,
The voice that rang through Shiloh's woods
And Chickamauga's solitudes,
The fierce South cheering on her sons.

Ah, how the withering tempest blew
Against the front of Pettigrew!
A khamsin wind that scorched and singed,
Like that infernal flame that fringed
The British squares at Waterloo!

"Once more in Glory's van with me!"
Virginia cries to Tennessee,
"We two together, come what may,
Shall stand upon those works to-day."
(The reddest day in history.)

But who shall break the guards that wait
Before the awful face of Fate?
The tattered standards of the South
Were shriveled at the cannon's mouth,
And all her hopes were desolate.

In vain the Tennesseean set
His breast against the bayonet;
In vain Virginia charged and raged,
A tigress in her wrath uncaged,
Till all the hill was red and wet!

Above the bayonets mixed and crossed,
Men saw a gray, gigantic ghost
Receding through the battle-cloud,
And heard across the tempest loud
The death-cry of a nation lost!

The brave went down! Without disgrace
They leaped to Ruin's red embrace;
They only heard Fame's thunder wake,
And saw the dazzling sun-burst break
In smiles on Glory's bloody face!

They fell, who lifted up a hand
And bade the sun in heaven to stand!
They smote and fell, who set the bars
Against the progress of the stars,
And stayed the march of Motherland.

They stood, who saw the future come
On through the fight's delirium!
They smote and stood, who held the hope
Of nations on that slippery slope
Amid the cheers of Christendom!

God lives! He forged the iron will
That clutched and held that trembling hill.
God lives and reigns! He built and lent
Those heights for Freedom's battlement,
Where floats her flag in triumph still!

Love rules; her gentler purpose runs.
A mighty mother turns in tears
The pages of her battle years,
Lamenting all her fallen sons!