SPECTACULAR SCENE
This battle scene was a grand spectacle—more like some great panoramic picture of a battle than anything I saw during the war. Ordinarily, very little of a battle is seen by the troops engaged or in reserve, the reserve forces being generally concealed as much as possible from the enemy, and the troops engaged too busy to pay any attention to what is going on except in their immediate front. Most of the fighting is done in the woods.
Three times with triple lines of battle the Yankees advanced across the open field to within musket range of Jackson's men, the artillery on each side belching forth shot and shell, grape and canister the while, and each time upon receiving a deadly fire, halted and then began to waiver, give back, scatter and finally disappear over the rise in the ground, out of sight and out of range, leaving many dead and wounded behind.
The Yankee officers on horseback could be seen riding hither and thither among the men. One fellow on an iron-gray horse was particularly active and conspicuous, seeming to be doing his utmost to urge his men forward, but all to no purpose. They had run up against "Stonewall," and they had no better success than their comrades, who about the same time were butting up against a rock wall at the foot of Marye's Hill, on the Confederate left. We could see the Yankee ambulances busy hauling the wounded across the river and up the hills beyond, to the hospitals.
All the time we could hear the roar of the battle-tide to the left, as well as see and hear it on the right. The booming of the cannon, the bursting of the shells, and the long, deep, continuous roar of the musketry, made a noise as if all nature was in convulsion.
"Then shook the hills with thunder riven,
Then rushed the steed to battle driven,
And louder than the bolts of heaven,
Far flashed the red artillery."
The big Yankee guns over the river punctuating the noise with frequent loud and long sounding booms, followed by the screams of the big shells, as they sped across the river, the reply of the Confederates' heavy guns—all sounded like "pandemonium broke loose"—whatever that is—or like the crash of worlds in the coming clash of the spheres, if ever God Almighty lets loose the reins that hold them in their orbits. It has been said that during this battle, General Lee remarked to some one, "This is grand; it is well that it does not come often. We would become too fond of such things."