Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Harvard Memorial Biographies

[146] Every little while he turned in his saddle, and cast his eye over the regiment pressing close behind, as if in that way to impart his own high spirit to his men; and that he did so was soon after fully proven.

The Excelsior Brigade was thrown out on the right of the plank-road, down which the enemy was advancing, and upon which Jackson, who had conceived and executed this brilliant move, intending to cut off and annihilate the army of the United States, was that evening so mysteriously killed. During the night the brigade threw up a line of log breastworks, strengthened by abatis, in preparation for the attack expected in the morning. The men were weary and hungry, but rest they had none: the constant alarms and driving in of the pickets kept them on the alert all night.

At daylight of the 3d, the enemy opened with artillery and musketry. For some hours the line was gallantly defended, until its left flank, resting on the road, was turned, and the breastworks enfiladed. Regiment by regiment the brigade broke off from the left before the column that bore down upon it. To meet its advance, Colonel Stevens immediately ordered a change of front; and while the movement was being executed, he was struck by a minie — ball, which pierced his chest. As the regiment was driven past him, he called to one of his old company, unclasped his sword, and gave it with the words, ‘Carry it to my wife,—remember me to my boy.’

Captain Bliss and two men attempted to raise him. The officer was shot, and the yelling masses of the enemy immediately closed around him. ‘Several of his men,’ writes his brigade commander, who regarded him with ‘particular affection,’—‘several of his men and officers come to me actually crying with grief to announce his fall.’

He was carried to a hospital at the house of a Mr. Chancellor, near the Wilderness Church, on the plank-road. He was tenderly cared for by our own surgeons and by the enemy, bearing his suffering with patient composure, and at times unconscious. When a wounded sergeant of his regiment came