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DEFEAT OF THE FEDERAL TROOPS BY LONGSTREET’S CORPS, SECOND MANASSAS.

In the fulness of the battle, General Toombs rode up on his iron-gray under sweat and spur, his hat off, and asked for his command. He was told that a courier was about to start with an order for the division commander, and would guide him. He asked to be the bearer of the order, received it, and with the guide rode to find his post in the battle. The meeting of the brigade and its commander was more than joyful.

Jackson failed to pull up even on the left, which gave opportunity for some of the enemy’s batteries to turn their fire across the right wing in enfilade, as we advanced, and the enemy strongly reinforced against us from troops drawn from Jackson’s front, but we being on the jump, the fire of the batteries was not effective. It was severely threatening upon General Lee, however, who would ride under it, notwithstanding appeals to avoid it, until I thought to ride through a ravine, and thus throw a traverse between him and the fire. He sent orders to Jackson to advance and drive off or capture the batteries standing in his front and firing across our line, but it was not in season to relieve us. Hood’s aggressive force was well spent when his troops approached the Chinn House, but R. H. Anderson was up and put in to reinforce and relieve his battle.

General Pope drew Ricketts’s division from his right to brace his left, then Reno’s command to aid in checking our march, but its progress, furiously resisted, was steady, though much delayed. Piatt’s brigade was also put against us. This made time for Porter to gather his forces. His regulars of Sykes’s division, particularly, made desperate resistance, that could only be overcome by our overreaching lines threatening their rear.

When the last guns were fired the thickening twilight concealed the lines of friend and foe, so that the danger of friend firing against friend became imminent. The hill of the Henry House was reached in good time, but darkness coming on earlier because of thickening clouds hovering over us, and a gentle fall of rain closely following, the plateau was shut off from view, and its ascent only found by groping through the darkening rainfall. As long as the enemy held the plateau, he covered the line of retreat by the turnpike and the bridge at Young’s Branch. As he retired, heavy darkness gave safe-conduct to such of his columns as could find their way through the weird mists.

Captain William H. Powell, of the Fourth Regular Infantry, wrote of his experience,—

“As we filed from the battle-field into the turnpike leading over the stone bridge, we came upon a group of mounted officers, one of whom wore a peculiar style of hat which had been seen on the field that day, and which had been the occasion of a great deal of comment in the ranks. As we passed these officers, the one with the peculiar hat called out in a loud voice,—

“‘What troops are those?’