Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 34.djvu/275

 Men of Virginia at Bait's Bluff. 2(57

Colonel; Charles B. Tebbs, Lieutenant-Colonel; Edmund Berkeley, Major, Lieutenant-Colonel; Norbourne Berkeley, Major, Lieutenant- Colonel; William A. Berkeley, Major; James Thrift, Major. Its Captains were: Edmund Berkeley, of Prince William; Richard Henry Carter and R. Taylor Scott, of Fauquier; James Thrift, of Fairfax; and Henry Heaton, Alexander Grayson, William N. Berkeley, M. Warn pie, Hampton; and Simpson, of Loudoun.

The other company officers and privates will have a proud place in the Virginia Roster, now being compiled for publication.

Only about three hundred of the Federals surrendered to Colonel Featherston, but many others were huddled along the river bank and in the woods, hoping to escape later in the night. Exhausted after thirteen hours' of marching and fighting, the Mississippians and Virginians retired to the vicinity of Fort Evans for rest and rations, except a detail of seventeen men of the Eighth Virginia, under Lieutenant Charles Berkeley, with whom White was ordered by Colonel Hunton, to remain, to picket the battle ground. It was a solemn vigil, relieved only by a bountiful supper, which the keenly solicitous and patriotic ladies of Leesburg contrived to get to them. Whether it was the inspiration and refreshment supplied by the viands, or the thought oi the bright eyes and fair hands of the ladies who sent them, we are not told, but the suggestion was made that they go to the river bank, for although the battle had rolled to the very edge of the bluff, none of our men had yet been quite there. Reaching the bank, they could hear, a few hundred yards away, the frantic cries for help from despairing, drowning Federals, and the sound of an occasional boat coming from Harrison's Island, to their rescue.

Their first impulse prompted by the savage spirit of the day's hard fight was to open fire and drive off the rescuers, but that "touch of nature which makes the whole world kin" and abides in knightly breasts, even amid scenes of blood and carnage, restrained their hands.

Let this be remembered, because the newspapers throughout the North, at the time of the battle, and Northern school histories, since, have sought to create the impression that the conduct of the Confederates, after the defeat and rout of the Federals at Ball's Bluff, was not in accord with the usages of civilized warfare; and only a few weeks ago, the Washington correspondent of the Boston Transcript, wrote to his paper of the tragedy, "where the Northern