Jackson, the grim soldier, whose habit was to pray all night before battle, wrote with the fervor of the religious enthusiast.
"Undying gratitude is due to God for this great victory—by which despondency increases in the North, hope brightens in the South and the Capital of Virginia and the Confederacy is saved."
A wave of exultation swept the South—while Death stalked through the streets of Richmond.
Instead of the tramp of victorious hosts, their bayonets glittering in the sunlight, which Socola had confidently expected, he watched from the windows of the Department of State the interminable lines of ambulances bearing the wounded from the fields of McClellan's seven-days' battle.
The darkened room on Church Hill was opened. Miss Van Lew had watched the glass rattle under the thunder of McClellan's guns, and then with sinking heart heard their roar fade in the distance until only the rumble of the ambulances through the streets told that he had been there. She burned the flag. It was too dangerous a piece of bunting to risk in her house now. It would be many weary months before she would need another.
Through every hour of the day and night since Lee sprang on McClellan, those never-ending lines of ambulances had wound their way through the streets. Every store and every home and every public building had been converted into a hospital. The counters of trade were moved aside and through the plate glass along the crowded streets could be seen the long rows of pallets on which the mangled bodies of the wounded lay. Every home set aside at least one room for the wounded boys of the South.
The heart-rending cries of the men from the wagons as they jolted over the cobble stones rose day and night—a sad, weird requiem of agony, half-groan, half-chant, to which the ear of pity could never grow indifferent.
Death was the one figure now with which every man, woman and child was familiar. The rattle of the dead-wagons could be heard at every turn. They piled them high, these uncoffined bodies of the brave, and hurried them under the burning sun to the trenches outside the city. They piled them in long heaps to await the slow work of the tired grave-diggers. The frail board coffins in which they were placed at last would often burst from the swelling corpse. The air was filled with poisonous odors.
The hospitals were jammed with swollen, disfigured bodies of the wounded and the dying. Gangrene and erysipelas did their work each hour in the weltering heat of mid-summer.