The Federal troops were not allowed to follow them to the woods, night falling and the commander being indisposed to allow his exhausted troops any further exertion. The rebels left, in this last attack, several dismounted pieces of artillery, many blown-up caissons, and thousands of small arms, besides a thousand unhurt prisoners and a field literally covered with dead and wounded. The battle of Malvern Hill was over, though the rebel artillery continued to belch at intervals until after ten o'clock at night, the Federal advanced batteries replying to every fire. At length, and when the still summer night had thus far fallen on the late scene of conflict, the last rebel shot was sullenly fired, the last response was made by the Federal gunners, and the long conflict ceased. The baffled and beaten rebels, who had certainly fought with bravery and determination worthy of a better cause, fell back behind the sheltering woods and commenced their final retreat towards Richmond, having received at last a satisfactory taste of the quality yet remaining in the outnumbered, harrassed, but never-discouraged and ever-dangerous Army of the Potomac.
Owing to the fact that this battle was so largely an artillery-duel, as has before been remarked, the opportunities for the display or observation of personal bravery were comparatively limited, and mostly confined to a short period towards the close of the battle. That the Union troops would have shown the same personal dash and daring throughout, had the plan of the General in command made hand-to-hand fighting advisable—was fully proved by the short conflict which closed the day. In that short period occupied by the advance of the two wings and afterwards of the main body, two or three incidents occurred, which some of the combatants will yet remember when their attention is thus called to them, and without which this battle-picture, necessarily very defective, and aiming much more at truth than sensation, would be found almost destitute of details.
In the first advance, no less than three color-bearers, carrying the same flag of one of the regiments of Meagher's Irish brigade, were shot down within less than five minutes. When the third fell, a Lieutenant in the color-company of the same regiment, who had not many months before deserted the mock combats of the stage for the sanguinary fights of actual warfare, concluded to try his success at carrying the dangerous bunting. He seized the staff and held it, himself untouched, for several minutes, while bullets were actually riddling the flag. At the end of that time a stalwart Irishman, finding his rifle-barrel heated and the ramrod jammed in attempting to load, made two or three ineffectual jerks at the rod, found that it was impossible to remove it; then grasped the weapon by the muzzle, whirled it half a dozen times around his head, bringing the butt down in each instance with crushing force, on the head of a foe; and finally, giving it another and longer whirl, with a wild "Whooruh!" that might have originated among the bogs of Connaught, sent it whirling among the enemy with such force that it literally plowed its way through them and left a perceptible track of fallen foemen. "Be the Hill of Howth!" roared Paddy, when he had completed this exploit. "It's meself hasn't the bit of a muskit left to fight wid at all at all! Here, Captain!" to the Lieutenant holding the flag, "it's meself should be houldin' that, and not you!" and at the word he grasped the staff out of the officer's hands and plunged still farther forward among the enemy with it, than it had before been carried by either of the bearers, coming out of the fight at last without a scratch.
At very nearly the same time, and at the point in the rebel front assailed by Meagher's brigade, another scene was presented, perhaps unexampled in the history of war. A Georgia regiment (Georgia has sent out some of the very best and most determined fighters of the whole rebel army) was in the front and immediately opposed to the jolly New York Irishmen. The evening being a hot one, most of the Irish boys had prepared themselves for the charge by throwing off knapsacks, coats, and even hats, so as to "fight asier." Their habit of doing this, by the way, in hot weather and in the excitement of battle, has not only cost the government a round sum for new clothing and equipments, but given many opportunities to the Confederates for boasting of a victory when they had won nothing of the kind. They have regarded the thrown-away coats and knapsacks as evidence of a panic and a rout, when the fact is that they have only evidenced Paddy's desire, quoted above, to "fight asy."
In the present instance, Capt. S——, a young Irishman, of Meagher's Brigade, a fire-boy and a gymnast, was surrounded by a knot of his fellows, and they were making good progress in driving back the Georgia regiment, when the Captain encountered the Major of the Georgians. Whether something in the eye of each defied the other, will perhaps never be known; but certain it is that Captain S—— sprung for a single combat with the Major, and that the Major, quite as willing, sprung forward with a corresponding intention. A few passes were made with the sword by each, and then both seemed to forget the use of the weapon. In half a minute swords were dropped, and the two combatants were clenched, pounding away with their fists! Something after the manner of the armies of old time when two great warriors met single-handed, the combatants on both sides seemed to stand still for the moment and look on at this singular struggle—this novelty in deadly war. Captain S—— was the heavier man, but the Georgia Major the nimbler, and they seemed very well matched. The Confederates were giving way on either side, and the Georgia regiment must necessarily retreat decidedly in a moment. The effort of Captain S—— accordingly seemed to be directed to first "knocking" the Major "out of time," and then making a captive of him; while probably the Major had no fancy for that termination of the affair. At length the rush came from behind and on either side, and the whole group were irresistibly borne backward. Some of the Georgia soldiers grasped the Major from behind, and attempted to drag him off. Some of the Irishmen rushed forward to assist in holding him. In a minute more, not two men, but dozens, were engaged in a fist-fight, not a weapon being used. Directly Captain S—— managed to get in a blow under the chin of the Major, and in the neighborhood of the gullet, which sent him backwards nearly insensible. As he fell he kicked with mechanical force, and the kick striking the Captain in the lower abdomen, "doubled him up" effectually. The Georgians were still laboring to save their commander from capture, and Captain S—— and his men to take him, or as much as they could of him. The finale was that the Georgia Major was lugged off and rescued by his men, and that Captain S——, clinging to him with the proverbial Kilkenny tenacity, succeeded in dragging off him his coat, sword and belts, and revolver,—leaving the foe very much in the condition of his own men—that of shirt and trowsers.
It is a somewhat pitiful conclusion to this little reminiscence of S——'s odd adventure, that the next morning, in his tent, showing the captured weapons to one of his comrades, the revolver went off accidentally and blew the Captain's left arm to fragments! Such are the chances of war—a soldier escaping unhurt amid a very rain of destroying missiles, and meeting wounds and disablement from a trifling accident in a moment of fancied security!
The third incident of that day, and still more notable than either of the others, occurred on the left while the incidents previously recorded were taking place on the right and in the centre. When Couch's division were just advancing to the attack and at the very moment when the conflict began to grow close and deadly, some of the men in the front, and the rebels as well, witnessed a spectacle equally startling and unexplainable. A figure in white burst suddenly through from the Union rear to the front, prostrating a dozen men with the irresistible rapidity of the movement; and then it sprung into the very thick of the rebels and commenced its most singular and primitive warfare. Of the hundreds who unavoidably saw the apparition (for apparition it certainly seemed) not one will ever forget it or remember it without a shudder. The figure was that of a very tall man, evidently of immense natural strength, with a face shrunk to skeleton thinness and terrible staring eyes rendered more fearful by the heavy red beard and long matted hair. It was dressed in what appeared to be white trousers, but barefoot; and its upper clothing seemed to be a shirt beneath and a loose flowing white robe hanging from the shoulders. In its hand this terrible figure carried a club of green sapling oak, heavily knotted at the end, about five feet in length, two inches in diameter at the butt and tapering to where it was grasped at the lower end. A more effective weapon in close combat could not be devised; and with this weapon, and with fierce yells that seemed like those emanating from the throat of an infuriate madman, this strange combatant began laying about him in the rebel ranks, crushing heads, breaking arms, and killing and disabling scores of armed men. No sword could reach him, and no bullet appeared to strike him, though dozens of the rebels discharged muskets and even revolvers at him, at close range, when it began to be apparent on which side he was fighting. Up went that mighty flail, and down it came again on the heads of the human tares of rebeldom who so needed threshing out in the very garner of wrath. More than one of the Union men in the vicinity of the strange spectacle, who happened to have been classic readers in other days, gazing at the white figure and its terrible prowess, thought of Castor and Pollux and the apparitions in white which decided the battle on the shore of Lake Regilius, when the Thirty Cities warred against Rome. But there was nothing of the supernatural in this figure; for after a few moments of wonderful immunity in the midst of that plunging fire, and after a destruction of life which seemed really wonderful to be accomplished by one single man,—fate withdrew the shield which had been interposed before him. The great club was full uplifted in the air, when the combatants saw him suddenly waver and stagger, then saw the deadly weapon drop, a stream of spouting blood from the wounded breast gush over the white garment, and that tall figure and ghastly face sink downward to the earth, one last long yell, wilder and more fearful than any that had preceded it, sounding the signal of his death, and the battle again going on over the trampled body.
It was not until hours after that the mystery of the white figure was fully explained. The poor fellow had been a soldier of one of the Western regiments, ill with fever, and sent on to Harrison's Landing with the first of the troops who reached the James. In his delirium he had no doubt heard the booming of the cannon in the morning attack, and gathered the impression that a battle must be going on and that he should not be absent. He had managed, by some means, to elude the guards and the few hospital nurses yet spared to the army; had escaped from the temporary hospital, barefoot and clothed only in his white drawers, shirt, and a sheet thrown around his shoulders; had made his way, unseen, through the woods and over the marshes lying between Harrison's Landing and Malvern; had provided himself probably by means of his still remaining jack-knife, with that singular but fatal weapon of offence; and then, nerved with fictitious strength by his fever and the sights and sounds of battle raging before him, he had rushed into the conflict as before described, dying a death more noble than the lingering decay of fever, after working such destruction among the rebel ranks as he might never have been able to do in the pride of his health and manhood.
And here this extended picture of one of the most important battles ever yet fought on this continent, must close, except so far as in side-issues connected with it may happen to be involved some of the persons more intimately concerned in the progress of this relation.