Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon in front of them, Volleyed and thundered.This was at once amusing and aggravating, as we had felt peculiarly chagrined at not being able to fire even. so much as one shot while the battle roared in the thicket in front of us. The enemy, on the contrary, did have and use at least one gun, a brass three-inch rifle, which was captured and turned over to our battery.
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To us it seemed a mistake not then to have attacked the Edwards' Ferry force, but there may have been good reason for not doing so. The gallant Eighth Virginia, under its staunch Colonel, afterwards General, Eppa Hunton-since the war both a Congressman and a Senator of the United States from Virginia-took a prominent and honorable part in the fight, which was hotly contested and one of the most remarkable of the minor battles of the war in the disproportion of the enemy's loss to the number engaged on our side.
No part of the honor, however, belongs to our battery, as the fighting took place in heavy woods, where it was impracticable to carry our guns.
To me the battle of Leesburg, or Ball's Bluff, as the Federals called it, presented several points of rather special interest.
First, the gallant and almost marvelous escape of a young Federal officer, named Crowninshield, who had been the strongest man on the Harvard boat crew about the time I held the like prominent position among the boating men of Yale.
In the account of the battle, given by one of the Northern papers, I noticed, with great interest and pleasure, that Crowninshield, rather than surrender, swam the river and made good his escape, after his right arm had been shattered by a Minie ball.
It was really a plucky and splendid feat.
Then, too, I very much enjoyed a newspaper report of a speech of Roscoe Conkling, delivered in the House of Representatives at Washington, upon this battle, in the course of which, extolling the valor of the Federal troops, he quoted from Tennyson's “Charge of the light brigade” the lines:
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