From Bull Run to Appomattox: A Boy's View

by Luther W. Hopkins

We were then ordered to fall back, and someone more humane than I proposed that we carry his body back with us. I protested that it was impossible, but the others insisted, and, tying a handkerchief around his head, his hair drenched with blood, we picked him up and carried him back about a mile, when to our surprise we got into a road and there found an ambulance. Putting him in it, he was carried to the hospital, in the rear. Strange to say, he lived about ten days, giving his father time to come from Loudoun county to see him before he died. About this same time his younger brother Henry (at home) was blown to pieces by a shell that he had picked up in the field on his father's farm and was trying to open it, to see what was inside.

But to return to the battle. This state of things continued for two whole days, with little intermission. Sometimes, however, there was not a shot fired for an hour.

During one of these intervals I remember sitting down, leaning my back against a large tree, and began writing a letter to my folks at home. Capt. Gibson came up to me and said, "Young man, if you don't want to get shot, you'd better get on the other side of that tree, for somewhere just in front of us, and not a great distance off, is the enemy's skirmish line, and they may open fire at any moment." I moved behind the tree and resumed my writing, but was suddenly stopped by the sound of firing in our front, that caused us to creep farther back into the woods.

On another occasion we had fallen back out of the timber into the open fields, and were firing from behind a fence at the enemy in the woods, whom we could not see for the undergrowth. Our attention was called to a large body of cavalry on our left, apparently the enemy on mischief bent.

There are times in a battle when every private soldier on the firing line becomes a "Commander-in-Chief." It is when orders cannot be given, or would not be heard if they were. Each soldier seems to know intuitively what to do, and the whole line acts in concert.

At this particular time the body of cavalry on our left proved to be the bluecoats, moving toward our rear. It did not take long for the information to spread up and down the line, and at once every man in the ranks, in absence of any orders from headquarters, concluded that the thing to do was to fall back. So each soldier gave the order to himself, and quicker than it takes time to tell it, the line was moving back over the fields.

We had retreated perhaps 200 yards when the movement was noticed by Gen. Fitzhugh Lee. He came galloping toward us on his white horse, and with a voice that could be heard above the shots of the guns, he said, "What does this mean?" In reply, hundreds of hands pointed toward the enemy on our left, and some voices said, "They're getting in our rear." Gen. Lee said, "Tut, tut, tut; go back, go back." And without a word every man wheeled around and started back for the position he had left. Gen. Lee perhaps knew that there were forces enough there to take care of the enemy, who, as we saw it, was getting behind us.

As I said before, this kind of warfare continued for two days, and all the time it was going on we could hear the booming of the artillery on our left, telling us that Grant was doing all he could to beat back or break through Lee's lines, and we knew, too, that he was not accomplishing his purpose. We could always tell which way the battle was going by the direction from which the sound came.

The night of the second day Grant silently and rapidly withdrew the main portion of his army from Lee's front and marched toward Spottsylvania Courthouse, which was some distance to the right of where the cavalry was fighting.

His object was to surprise Gen. Lee, and get between him and Richmond. But Gen. Lee had anticipated that very movement, and when Grant's infantry moved forward at Spottsylvania Courthouse, he found Lee's army there confronting him. Then began the bloodiest battle of all the war, so it is said.