Now the men saw, too. “Do you mean—No, no! that won’t do! General Lee to the rear!”
“But, men—”
There rose a cry. “We won’t go on unless you go back! General Lee to the rear!”
A man took hold of Traveller’s bridle and turned him.
On dashed the Texans—eight hundred of them. They went now through open field, now through pines. They struck Webb’s brigade of Hancock’s corps. Blue and grey, there sprang a roar of musketry. Four hundred of the eight hundred fell, lay dead or wounded; then with a loud and long cry there swept to the aid of Gregg, Benning’s Texans, Georgia, and Alabama. Law and Benning and Gregg pushed back the blue.
For hours it was the tug of war. Blue and grey they swayed and swung and the Wilderness howled with the conflict. Smoke mounted. The firing waxed until sound was no more discrete but continuous. Although it was not night the Wilderness grew dark. And beneath the solid roof of smoke and sound men lay gasping on mother earth, dyeing the grass with their blood, plucking with their fingers at strengthless stems, putting out their tongues where there was no moisture, biting the dust. In the sick brain, to and fro, went the words “This is the end,” and “Why? O God, why?”
The blue left rested south of the Plank Road. With four brigades under Mahone, Longstreet began a turning movement. It succeeded. Mahone struck the blue, flank and rear, while Longstreet hurled other troops against their front. The blue line crumpled up, surged in confusion back upon the Brock Road. The noise grew heavier, the Wilderness darker.
And then occurred one of those things called coincidences. One year ago a very great general had been given death in the Wilderness by a mistaken volley from his own men. Now on this day in the Wilderness a general, not so great, but able, and necessary that day to the grey fortunes, rode with a brigade which he was about to place in line, through the wood alongside the Plank Road. The wood was thick and the road wound. Longstreet, with him Generals Jenkins and Kershaw, pressed forward through the oak scrub, torn and veiled with smoke, and now in many places afire. All the air was now so thick, it was hard in that wild place to tell friend from foe. As had done Lane’s North Carolinians last year, so this year did Mahone’s men. They saw or felt the approach of a column, whose colour they could not see; some command parallel with the moving troops chanced just then to deliver fire; Mahone’s men thought that the shots came from the approaching body, hardly outlined as it was in the murk. They answered with a volley. Jenkins was killed, and Longstreet severely wounded.
“What are you doing? What are you doing?” shouted Kershaw; and at last grey understood that it was grey.
Says the artillery officer, Robert Stiles, who has been quoted before: “I observed an excited gathering some distance back of the lines, and, pressing toward it, I heard that General Longstreet had just been shot down and was being put into an ambulance. I could not learn anything definite as to the character of his wound, but only that it was serious—some said that he was dead. When the ambulance moved off, I followed it for a little way.... The members of his staff surrounded the vehicle, some riding in front, some on one side and some on the other, and some behind. One, I remember, stood upon the rear step of the ambulance, seeming to desire to be as near him as possible. I never on any occasion during the four years of the war saw a group of officers and gentlemen more deeply distressed. They were literally bowed down with grief. All of them were in tears. One, by whose side I rode for some distance, was himself severely hurt, but he made no allusion to his wound, and I do not believe that he felt it.... I rode up to the ambulance and looked in. They had taken off Longstreet’s hat and coat and boots. The blood had paled out of his face, and its somewhat gross aspect was gone. I noticed how white and dome-like his great forehead looked and, with scarcely less reverent admiration, how spotless white his socks, and his fine gauze undervest, save where the black red gore from his breast and shoulder had stained it.... His eyelids frayed apart till I could see a delicate line of blue between them, and then he very quietly moved his unwounded arm, and with his thumb and two fingers carefully lifted the saturated undershirt from his chest, holding it up a moment, and heaved a deep sigh.”