Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 25.djvu/217

 tlu-i) tin ncd into the road th.it had been known for sixty years, and is known today, as the Quaker road. Having followed this road for nearly a mile, General Longstreet, whose troops were in reserve on the Lout; Brid^i- road, overtook Magruder's column, and after sev- 1 moments of earnest conversation, in which he insisted that this could not be the Quaker road, desired that General Magruder should return and take another road nearly parallel to the one he was on, and form to the right of Huger, who was already getting into posi- tion on the right of Jackson. Thus was added another serious mis- take to the chapter of mishaps that had followed us for three days.

While we find little in the written reports condemnatory of Gen- eral Magruder on this point, and nothing to show the displeasure of General Lee, whose patience must have been sorely tried, yet we have heard in the various criticisms on this battle enough to warrant any soldier who served under Magruder in coming to his defence; and I hope by a plain statement of the facts to vindicate his action and his memory to-night, in the presence of some who served under him, and many who admired his soldierly bearing.

Leaving for the present our lines on the right, where Huger and Magruder are forming for the attack, we see that General Jackson has reached the creek near the Parsonage, on the Willis Church road and Quaker road (the Federal map Quaker road) about noon. General D. H. Hill, in the Century Series, says: "At Willis Church I met General Lee. He bore grandly his terrible disappointment of the day before, and made no allusion to it. I gave him Mr. Allen's description of Malvern Hill, and presumed to say: 'If General McClellan is there in force we had better let him alone.' Longstreet laughed and said: 'Don't get scared now that you have got him

r whipped.' ' A little later, after describing the action of his five brigades, he relates an incident illustrating the power of the Federal rifled artillery, and I expect many an old soldier in this audience could duplicate it: "I saw an artilleryman seated comfortably behind a very large tree, and apparently feeling very secure. A moment later a shell passed through the huge tree and took off the man's head."

General Whiting's Division was on the extreme left. With the exception of a regiment on his right, his command did not fire a gun, but lay down in Poindexter's wheat field and received the shelling patiently all the evening, with a loss of six killed and 194 wounded. About 3 o'clock each division commander received the following order: