Stonewall Jackson sat Little Sorrel near the Dunkard church. They brought him reports of the misery of the wounded and their great numbers. His medical director, of whom he was fond, came to him. "General, it is very bad! The field hospital looks as though all the fields of the world had given tribute. I know that you do not like hospitals—but would you come and look, sir?"
The general shook his head. "What is the use of looking? There have to be wounded. Do the utmost that you can, doctor."
"I have thought, sir, that, seeing the day is not ended, and they are so overwhelmingly in force, and the Potomac is not three miles in our rear—I have thought that we might manage to get the less badly hurt across. If they attack again and the day should end in defeat—"
"What have you got there?" asked Jackson. "Apples?"
"Yes, sir. I passed beneath a tree and gathered half a dozen. Would you like—"
"Yes. I breakfasted very early." He took the rosy fruit and began to eat. His eyes, just glinting under the forage cap, surveyed the scene before him,—trampled wood where the shells had cut through bough and branch, trampled cornfields where it seemed that a whirlwind had passed, his resting, shattered commands, the dead and the dying, the dead horses, the disabled guns, the drifting sulphurous smoke, and, across the turnpike, in the fields and by the east wood, the masses of blue, overcanopied also by sulphurous smoke. He finished the apple, took out a handkerchief, and wiped fingers and lips. "Dr. McGuire, they have done their worst. And never use the word defeat."
He jerked his hand into the air. "Do your best for the wounded, doctor, do all that is humanly possible, but do it here! I am going now to the centre to see General Lee."
Behind the wood, in a grassy hollow moderately sheltered from the artillery fire, at the edge of the ghastly field hospital, a young surgeon, sleeves rolled up and blood from head to foot, met the medical director. "Doctor, the Virginia Legion came on with General McLaws. They've just brought their colonel in—Fauquier Cary, you know. I wish you would look at his arm."
The two looked. "There's but one thing, colonel."
"Amputation? Very well, very well. Get it over with." He straightened himself on the boards where the men had laid him. "Sedgwick, too! Sedgwick and I striking at each other like two savages decked with beads and scalps! Fratricidal strife if ever there was fratricidal strife! All right, doctor. I had a great-uncle lost his arm at Yorktown. Can't remember him,—my father and mother loved to talk of him—old Uncle Edward. All right—it's all right."