The night of the 15th of May the rebel chief, finding himself outwitted and outflanked, made a hurried retreat. When the morning revealed the flight of the foe, General Sherman’s army started in pursuit. General Thomas, second only in splendid achievements and gallantry to his commander, was “directly on his heels,” while Generals McPherson and Schofield took different routes. Amusing scenes occasionally lit up the darkest hours of night and conflict.
During the whole operations of Saturday and Sunday, while forcing General Johnston from his intrenchments, General Beatty’s brigade, of Wood’s division, was in reserve. The boys did not relish their position, and, while the battle raged with great fury, they showed unmistakable signs of uneasiness. One fellow, more daring than his companions, quietly sauntered out and made for the front. Meeting a wounded soldier returning from the front, the “Buckeye” borrowed his “fixins” and entered Hazen’s brigade, where he fought bravely until shot in the jaw. Retiring to the rear, he met a staff-officer, who inquired the number of his regiment, and, learning it was not under fire, asked how he came to be wounded. “Well,” replied the soldier, “you see I don’t like to be back in the rear, so I came out to take a shot at the Johnnies, and I be dogged if they haven’t peppered me.”
At nine on Saturday night the Nineteenth Alabama was lying in line, with a rebel battery separating it from another regiment. The battery was withdrawn, and the colonel of the Nineteenth went down to fill the gap with his regiment; he was accompanied by four hundred men. Arriving at the gap they found it filled with pickets, who quietly “took them in out of the wet,” and brought them in. Our boys had crawled up unobserved, and filled the gap in the enemy’s line, captured Colonel McSpadden and companions, and retired without receiving a shot. The rebel colonel himself highly praised the strategy of his captors.
Onward through forest, across streams, and over heights, the nobly proud and confidant columns pressed toward Atlanta. The song and joke—the sacred page and prayer—the inexcusable oath—all marked the long marches, the night encampment, and the morning hour of preparation to renew the tramp of embattled legions toward the interior of the Confederate Territory. How sublime the music, rising over that moving host, which a listener thus describes:
“At early dawn one morning, ere the troops were fully awakened from their slumbers, the melodious notes of ‘Old Hundred,’ given forth by one of the brigade bands, rang out upon the air, and were echoed by the green-capped hills beyond. Soldiers intently occupied in preparing the morning meal stood still and listened to the melody, and instinctively joined in it. It flew from regiment to regiment; brigade after brigade took it up, and, ere the notes of the band ceased to reverberate, five thousand voices were raised in ‘Praise God from whom all blessings flow.’ A moment later all was still. Breakfast was taken; and so silently did the veterans of many battle-fields break camp and fall into line that everybody remarked it, and complimented them for their conduct. I have heard ‘Old Hundred’ often, when the lungs of the organ seemed inspired with life, and a congregation joined their melodious voices, but never until to-day did I hear it sung with the full inspiration of the soul.”
May 25th, General Thomas’s troops, with the fearless Hooker in the advance, were sweeping toward Dallas, when the enemy crossed their path. The action of New Hope Church came off, leaving the Union colors streaming victoriously over the exulting volunteers. But there was a different flag taken from hostile hands. General Stoneman, the splendid cavalry officer, captured from the Third Texas Cavalry a black flag with a skeleton figured upon it together with a death’s head and cross-bones. This flag is no myth or creation of the wild fancy of some terrified trooper, but a reliable thing now in possession of a surgeon in the General’s command, and seen and handled by the members of General Schofield’s staff. They are said to have carried it from the first. What they expect to have understood by it is easily arrived at from the remark of a member of another Texas regiment who was taken prisoner and brought to headquarters. When asked by a member of the staff if he belonged to the regiment which carried the black flag, he replied that he did not, else he should not have been brought there. It is, perhaps, needless to state that our men are reported to have taken no prisoners from the Third Texas Cavalry.
While the forces were approaching Dallas, occurred one of war’s striking contrasts, related by a participant in the scenes:
“Last night the enemy kept up a lively demonstration along our whole line sufficient to interfere slightly with our slumbers at headquarters. About three o’clock yesterday afternoon Cheney’s First Illinois Battery, 20-pounder Parrott guns, opened a brisk fire upon a strong rebel fortification, one mile from Dallas, which frowns upon our lines at an altitude of nearly two hundred feet, and from which a fine view is easily obtained of our movements. The cannonade was continued till sunset, shells bursting in all directions, scattering their death-dealing fragments among loyal and disloyal. The monotony was relieved by the constant arrival of mounted orderlies bearing their important despatches of the enemy’s doings from the respective brigade and division commanders, while the music of the Minié balls, as they whistled through the trees over our heads, lent enough exhilarating excitement to the afternoon hours to dispel all thought of drowsiness. While the musketry rattled quite lively along our lines, causing the vales to reverberate, and the loud reports of the deadly rifles rang through the mountain forests, the military bands were discoursing sentimental and patriotic melodies within sound of the rebel lines.
“So near have our skirmishers advanced to the enemy’s front, that last night, while a prayer-meeting was being held in the rebel camps, our troops could hear quite distinctly their appeals to Heaven for peace. I regret to state that some of the ‘Yankees’ were sacrilegious enough to interpolate the names of Grant and Sherman, just at the point where the traitors invoked health and strength to Lee and Johnston. The tone of their petitions was for peace, which Gen. Sherman is determined they shall not enjoy until he secures that piece of Georgia which he has marked out as the reward for his invincible army.”
At this crisis in the march, already among the rivers flowing to the Gulf, with the iron-works on their banks at different points, General Sherman issued an order containing directions respecting care of the wounded, who were to be carried from the field by the musicians and others not in the ranks; and requiring hospitals to be kept nearer the moving columns, protecting them by the irregularities on the surface, and not by distance. Here is what he says of cowards: