Robert Stiles, Four years under Marse Robert

The enemy was coming on and everything was still as the grave. My battalion was formed upon and around a swell of the hill, which threw it further to the front than any other command in the division, so that I was compelled to shape my own course, as I had received no special orders. The Federal officers, knowing, as I suppose, that we were surrounded, and appreciating the fearful havoc their artillery fire had wrought, evidently expected us to surrender and had their white handkerchiefs in their hands, waving them toward us, as if suggesting this course; and yet, so far as I remember, they did not call upon us to surrender. I do not recall any parallel to this action.

I dislike to break the flow and force of the narrative by repeated modifying references to recollection and memory; but it is not safe for a man, so many years after the event, to be positive with regard to details unless there was special reason why they should have been impressed upon him a. the time. I will say, then, that my memory records no musket shot on either side up to this time, our skirmishers having retired upon the main line without firing. The enemy showed no disposition to break into the charge, but continued to advance in the same deliberate and even hesitating manner, and I allowed them to approach very close — I should be afraid to say just how close-before retiring behind my men. I had continued to-walk along their front for the very purpose of preventing them from opening fire; but now I stepped through the line, and, stationing myself about the middle of it, called out my orders deliberately — the enemy, I am satisfied, hearing every word. “Ready!” To my great delight the men rose, all together, like a piece of mechanism, kneeling on their right knees and their faces set with an expression that meant-everything. “Aim!” The musket barrels fell to an almost perfect horizontal line leveled about the knees of the advancing front line. “Fire!”

I have never seen such an effect, physical and moral, produced by the utterance of one word. The enemy seemed to have been totally unprepared for it, and, as the sequel showed, my own men scarcely less so. The earth appeared to have swallowed up the first line of the Federal force in our