Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 23.djvu/122

 116 Southern Historical Society Papers.

whose arm was bruised by a spent minnie-ball. Whilst we were here resting we saw the enemy at a distance, crowding toward the Stone bridge on their retreat toward Centreville, and soon heard the good news that they were defeated and in full retreat, and that the repulse was effected by the charge of our brigade of infantry, and other brigades to the left of it. We were allowed, some of us, to go to the Henry house, and many a haversack, well filled with army crackers ("hard-tack"), many a good blanket, such as we had never seen, and many a splendid canteen, was brought back from the field of battle and dedicated by our men to uses for which it had not been intended when it left Washington city. We then dis- covered the extent of the damage which was done by our guns not by the guns of our battery alone, however, for one or two other bat- teries were working with ours. At one gun of the enemy every horse had been killed or disabled, and at all the guns many horses were disabled, and the bodies of many men showed that they had stood bravely to their work under a most destructive fire.

During this afternoon, whilst we were on this hill watching the retreating enemy, President Davis rode near us, having just come from the station at Manassas. None of us, or few of us, had ever seen him. He was dressed in citizen's clothes, with a "beaver" on not such as "young Harry" wore, but the last "beaver" of its kind that some of us ever saw again till more than four years afterwards.

A gun from another battery which was near ours, was moved for- ward several hundred yards, and opened on the mass of men which was crowding toward the bridge. A reply was drawn from a gun of the enemy stationed out of our sight, beyond Bull Run. The shot fired by this gun passed near a battery in which a young gentleman from Richmond, known to some of our men, was a lieutenant. He was on horseback, and at the sound of the ball he lowered his head, following an impulse which is almost universal in such circumstances, and his head was shot off. This was a greater shock to us than if it had occurred in the heat of battle. He, like us, was only looking on, and we were not prepared for such bloody work at that time, on that calm and beautiful afternoon.

The day had been intensely hot, with very little, if any, wind, and was clear till after sunset. We moved several hundred yards east- ward from our resting-place, and bivoucked for the night within a few hundred feet of the Lewis house. We had had no tents up to this time, but a few hours before some of our men had got ' ' caisson