Petersburg July 17th 1864.
The soldiers were worn with hard marching and constant fighting, and had but just arrived from City Point, yet they took their positions without flinching. The officers gazed at the hands of their watches in the moonlight, and saw them move on to the appointed time,—fifteen minutes past three. Twenty paces,—a spring up the steep bank would carry the men to the Rebel pickets; fifty paces to the muzzles of the enemy's guns.
"All ready!" was whispered from man to man. They rose from the ground erect. Not a gun-lock clicked. The bayonet was to do the work.
"Hurrah!" The lines rise like waves of the sea. There are straggling shots from the Rebel pickets, four flashes of light from the Rebel cannon by the house, two more from the redan, one volley from the infantry, wildly aimed, doing little damage. On,—up to the breastworks! Over them, seizing the guns! A minute has passed. Four guns, six hundred and fifty prisoners, fifteen hundred muskets, and four stands of colors are the trophies. The Rebel line is broken. The great point is gained, compelling Lee to abandon the ground which he has held so tenaciously.
In the Fifty-Seventh Massachusetts was a soldier named Edward M. Schneider. When the regiment was formed he was a student in Phillips Academy, Andover. From motives of patriotism, against the wishes of friends, he left the literature of the ancients and the history of the past, to become an actor in the present and to do what he could for future good. His father is the well-known missionary of the American Board at Aintab, Turkey.
On the march from Annapolis, though but seventeen years old, and unaccustomed to hardship, he kept his place in the ranks, from the encampment by the waters of the Chesapeake to the North Anna, where he was slightly wounded. The surgeons sent him to Port Royal for transportation to Washington, but of his own accord he returned to his regiment, joining it at Cold Harbor. While preparing for the charge upon the enemy's works, on the 17th instant, he said to the chaplain,—
"I intend to be the first one to enter their breastworks."
The brave young soldier tried to make good his words, leading the charge.
He was almost there,—not quite: almost near enough to feel the hot flash of the Rebel musketry in his face; near enough to be covered with sulphurous clouds from the cannon, when he fell, shot through the body.