parative uncertainty as to the number and situation of the enemy, and with the disheartening consciousness that he was fighting merely to secure a road for retreat. Nightfall found us unquestioned victors. But with barely time for reorganizing our forces in line of march, we stole away again in the darkness, leaving the rebels busily engaged in burying their own dead and rifling the bodies of ours. Our retreat was so hurried that the wounded were left behind, to meet a fate worse than death under any form -lingering, torturing life in rebel hands. The heart turns away speechless from the story of their sufferings.

Many of our men also were taken prisoners before morning, in consequence of their having fallen asleep upon the ground immediately upon the cessation of the battle at midnight; sleeping undisturbed through the indescribable noise and confusion of the commencement of the march, waking at daylight to find confronting their astonished gaze the unfamiliar and unfriendly faces of rebel guards, strongly posted at every point, rendering their escape impossible. Gloomily they gave themselves up, and turned their faces toward the Richmond they had hoped to enter in triumph, but which would give to them now only a loathsome dungeon. Bitter as was their fate, however, we forget them as we turn to the hundreds of wounded left helpless in their agonies, to be picked up by merciless foes or to die alone.

Before nine o'clock on Tuesday morning, July 1, the entire army had reached Malvern Hill in safety. The five protecting gun-boats lay full in view in the sparkling water to the southeast. Our siege guns were on the heights. The daring retreat was accomplished. Malvern Hill is about two miles to the northwest from James River, sloping gently to the north and east, but difficult of ascent on the south and west. The fine old country seat called Crow House stands on the summit, bowered in the vines and foliage of a century's growth. General M'Clellan himself superintended the planting on this hill of three hundred and fifty pieces of artillery, which, with indomitable energy and wise provision, had been brought out of and through the swamps and the battles of the previous six days.

To this artillery and to the gun-boats we owed our victory in the great battle which soon ensued. Without these our exhausted men, broken down by alternate marchings and battles for six days and nights, and broken-spirited at the humiliation of the abandonment of their campaign, could never have borne the furious onsets of the rebels on this seventh, last, and desperate day. The batteries were protected by rifle-pits, dug during the night, and covered with straw, so that no token was discernible of the ten thousand muskets lying in wait there to flash out upon charging foes.

Early in the forenoon the rebel forces slowly advanced, feeling their way by shelling the woods to the right and left, uncertain at what precise points we were posted. General Magruder was VOL. XXXI.-No. 181.-C

in command, assisted by Generals Jackson, Longstreet, Hill, and Huger. Our lines were drawn up in still readiness for the attack. General Keyes held the right flank, supported by General Smith in the rear. On his left was General Sumner's corps; and still farther to the left were Hooker and Kearney. The lines were three miles in length; and no road by which the rebels could advance was left unguarded.

General Magruder's first movement, after discovering our position, was to advance a few batteries into a field in our front. In the twinkling of an eye they were dismantled and shattered to fragments by the rain of our shot, and nothing could be seen in the clearing smoke and dust but a few gunners escaping into the woods. His next effort was made against General Sumner's corps. Upon this part of our line he threw his entire left wing, composed of the finest troops in the Southern army-the brigades of Toombs, Cobb, Wright, Armistead, and others.

Unflinchingly the first column advanced toward the smoking hill, from which such death had come to their comrades. But before they had crossed half-way they were mown down. Only a few crept back on their faces with no guns. A new column stepped forward over the same strewn road. Our gunners groaned with pity and admiration for brave men as they dealt the same death again. Once the thin column rallied, pressed a little nearer the cannon, and then they too melted away. The open plain lay piled with dead. When the air had cleared still a third column came on, swifter and more resolved than the others, closing up over its dead, and rushing at last, little more than a handful of men, into the reserved musket fire, which swept all the cannon had spared.

General Slocum's division was hurried up to support General Sumner, and until six o'clock the battle raged in this part of our lines. But the great struggle was on the extreme left, where Generals Heintzelman, Kearney, and Hooker found themselves in the centre of the sorest fight. Only their veteran valor and the heroic endurance of their tried troops could have resisted the fierce persistence of the rebels. Late in the afternoon a large body of the rebels was thrown boldly forward from Magruder's centre, with orders to press on in the face of every obstacle, and not to fall back while a man was left alive. It has been said that these men had been drugged by whisky and gunpowder. Their reckless self-sacrifice is hardly explainable upon any other supposition. They were no longer men; they were maddened fiends.

As the plowing balls struck them down dead by hundreds the living rushed on with yells that seemed exultant. Again and again and again they closed up and neared the mouths of the guns on the top of the hill till the shot flew over their heads, leaving them unharmed. Then, just as the gunners quailed before their approach, the rifle-pits blazed, and a thousand

close, deadly musket-shots clicked through the air. The rebels wavered and fell back, but still fought bravely down the hill, and left its base thick with their dead. At six o'clock in the evening the rebels made another furious charge, which bore back our left. General M'Call's exhausted and reduced division was the last reserve which could come to its aid; but in a few moments it was routed, slaughtered, its General taken prisoner, and Biddle and Kuhn mortally wounded.

General Sedgwick's division was then sent from the centre to aid the left, and Generals

Hooker and Kearney rallied their divisions for a grand charge. Four batteries of artillery were hurried forward and opened with effect. The gun-boats Aroostook and Galena, having taken their position about a mile above Turkey Bend, opened fire with their gigantic guns, when suddenly, in one tremendous panic, the entire rebel army turned and fled. The shells from the unseen gun-boats, crashing through the forests and dropping from high into the air in their midst, struck such terror to the foe that they ran in abject fright, seeking blindly for shelter in swamps and caves. The day was ours! The foe was in

BATTLE OF MALVERN HILL.

men as we.

"If at this moment," writes an eye-witness, "we could have brought ten thousand reserves into the field, we might have marched back again, retaken all we had lost, and, without difficulty, have reached Richmond."

Others, upon the ground, felt and dared to say that our army was as strong to follow as the rebel army to flee, and General M'Clellan's order to retreat to Harrison's Landing was received with a storm of incredulous indignation by many of his generals. Dr. Marks writes:

"General Martindale shed tears of shame. The brave and chivalrous Kearney said, in the presence of many officers, 'I, Philip Kearney,

this order to retreat. We ought, instead of retreating, to follow up the enemy and take Richmond. And in full view of all the responsibility of such a declaration, I say to you all, such an order can only be prompted by cowardice or treason.""

It is probable that General M'Clellan was not fully aware of the extent to which the rebel army was shattered and demoralized. He had been so depressed through the day with the most melancholy forebodings, that the final repulse of the enemy possibly appeared to him more as a temporary escape than the positive victory which it really was. He had not been alone in these forebodings. The Prince of Joinville had left