"All night long Zeus, the lord of counsel, devised them ill with terrible thunderings. Then pale fear gat hold upon them."[13]
The roads were deep with mud. With many disadvantages Johnston attacked, with vigor, the corps of Keyes and Heintzelman, drove them back, and came near inflicting upon them a crushing defeat. Near the end of the fight General Johnston was wounded and borne from the field, smiling and saying, "I'm not sure I am much hurt, but I fear that bit of shell may have injured my spine."
He had already been wounded by a musket-ball, his enthusiasm having carried him nearer to the fight than a commanding officer has any right to be.
A little later he had observed one of his colonels trying to dodge the shell.
"Colonel," he said, "there is no use dodging! When you hear them, they have passed."
Just then he fell unconscious into the arms of one of his couriers. A shell had exploded, striking him on the breast. The moment he regained consciousness his unwounded hand sought his sword and pistols. They were gone!
"I would not lose my sword for ten thousand dollars," he exclaimed. "My father wore it in the war of the Revolution." The courier—Drury L. Armstead—dashed back through the storm of artillery, found both sword and pistols, brought them safely, and received one of the pistols as a token of the gratitude of his chief.[14]
In General George E. Pickett's report of this hard-won battle he says, "Pryor and Wilcox were on my right; our men moved beautifully and carried everything before them."
General Johnston was succeeded by General Lee. I did not know for a long time (for, so absorbing were the events that rapidly followed, the honors of battle were forgotten) that, after the capture at Fair Oaks of the Federal brigade under General Casey, "General Roger A. Pryor went around among the wounded, giving them whiskey and water, and told them it was a repayment of the kindness with which the wounded Confederate prisoners were treated at 'Williamsburg,'"[15]—an incident which I hope I may be pardoned for relating, since the generous tribute affords an example of the spirit of that true Christian gentleman, General McClellan.
"He never struck a foul blow and never tolerated mean men or mean methods about him. His was a high ideal of war, a high sense of chivalry which is the duty of fighting the belligerent and sparing the weak. His conduct was keyed to the highest point of honor and generosity in war." When his march led him to the "White House," whence General Washington took his bride, Martha Custis, he ordered a guard to be placed around it; and finding himself alone in St. Peter's Church, where Washington was married, he records in his diary, "I could not help kneeling at the chancel and praying that I might save my country as truly as he did." This was just before the battle at Seven Pines, in which there were probably arrayed against him the near kindred of Martha Washington. What would they have thought of the invading general's prayer to "save the country"? And his country! And at the altar he held in especial homage because of their grandsire!