George H. Gordon, From Brook Farm to Cedar Mountain

[216] I assented; and Hatch — after leaving with me six companies of the cavalry that attended him — left with his staff for Winchester. Throwing the cavalry well out on my flanks, I continued the fight.

It was sometime after sunset, near eight o'clock, when an unexpected visitor was brought before me. It was one of Jackson's medical officers, a surgeon attached to a Rebel Maryland battery. While more than half drunk, probably on our liquor found in the captured wagons, the noncombatant surgeon stumbled into one of my batteries, supposing it to be his own. Not too much intoxicated to recognize the blue uniform of the Federal troops, and with wits quickened by danger, he demanded with admirable coolness the surrender of the first man he confronted.

“Surrender!” replied the burly sergeant. “Who are you?”

“I am a Confederate officer,” replied the man.

“I guess you'd better surrender yourself, then,” was the retort, with a revolver presented at the surgeon's head. Without more ado he was detained in the heavy grasp of his captor, and brought before me. Our commissary whiskey had so cheered his spirits that the prisoner was without prudence. In a word, he let out that our position was most perilous.

“ What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Don't you see,” I replied, “what we are doing?”

“Why,” exclaimed my inebriated prisoner, “you'd better get out of this. We are all around you!”

Glimpses of sobriety followed a partial shock, as he realized his situation, and he mingled exclamations of surprise, regret, and self-condemnation with a caution to treat him well; “for,” said he, “you will all be in the same condition as myself before morning.”

“ You have no idea of our force,” he added; “they are ”