On that night Petersburg was evacuated.
But though time admonishes me to pass over in such brief fashion these last eventful days, duty bids me pause to make mention of two, who, everywhere conspicuous in the defence, yielded up their lives at the end.
One, high in rank, had been trained to the profession of arms, and at the very outbreak of hostilities offered to his native State a sword already forged to an heroic temper by fire of battle.
Endowed by nature with commanding resolution and marvelous energy, his “forward spirit” ever “lifted him where most trade of danger ranged,” and from that thrice glorious day when, leading in at
Mechanicsville his superb “light division” with all the fire of youth and skill of age, he dislodged
McClellan's right flank on the upper
Chickhominy, even to this memorable April morning, when, riding with a single courier far in advance of his men, he sought to restore his broken lines at
Petersburg — his every utterance and action was informed by the lofty spirit of a patriot, by the firmness and address of a valiant soldier.
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Much he suffered during this last campaign from a grievous malady, yet the vigor of his soul disdained to consider the weakness of his body, and accepting without a murmur the privations of that terrible winter, he remained steadfast to his duty until the fatal bullet stilled the beatings of a noble heart which had so often throbbed responsive to the music of victory.
No more splendid monument, no nobler epitaph, than of that
Latour d'avergne, “the first grenadier of
France,” to whose name every morning at roll-call in the
French army, answer was made, as the front-rank man on right of his old company stepped forward and saluted:
Mort sur le champ de bataille--“dead upon the field of battle.”
Such monument, such epitaph, at least, is that of
