“You are going in the wrong direction. Fort Hill will be blown up in a few minutes. Better drive to General Logan’s headquarters.”
“Oh, no,” I answered; “I’ll be near enough to see the terrible tragedy. It will be heart-breaking.”
They galloped on; but I lingered along the roadway in sight of Fort Hill.
Suddenly a terrific explosion shook the foundations of the earth, and the heavy timbers of the fort and tons of earth were lifted skyward. The next moment the dust and smoke hid everything from view. General Logan and his men pushed into the breach, hoping to effect an entrance before the Confederates had recovered from the shock; but a glittering wall of bayonets met them, and they were pushed back inch by inch. All that afternoon and evening hand-grenades were tossed back and forth as in a game of baseball; but an entrance could not be made.
A strange incident occurred at the blowing up of Fort Hill, which is perhaps without a parallel. There was at the time of the explosion a slave boy about eighteen years old working with others in the Confederate tunnel. This boy was lifted up with timbers and tons of earth, and thrown into the Union lines. He fell among the men of Williams’s Battery of Ohio. When the men ran to pick him up, he exclaimed with terror, “Is you Yanks goin’ to kill me?”
“Oh, no; we don’t kill colored folks,” was the prompt reply.
“Oh, golly, I went up free miles.”
“Could you see anything?” was asked.
“When I’se goin’ up,” he said, “’most eberything was comin’ down, and when I’se comin’ down ’most eberything was goin’ up.”
“Who commanded Fort Hill?” inquired one of the gunners.