George H. Gordon, From Brook Farm to Cedar Mountain

1 [227] his skirmishers, who, although drenched with the dew, waded through the rank fields of clover and wheat, and stumbled across ditches in the darkness,¹ until they encountered my outlying pickets, with whom for an hour they kept up a constant fire. Notwithstanding all the fatigue of the two days through which our regiment had passed, Captain Cogswell maintained stoutly through the remainder of the night his unequal combat with the enemy's skirmishers, holding them on his front at bay. But not much to be envied were those regiments of my brigade who during that brief hour were allowed to rest. The constant firing at the outposts; the weary march of over twenty miles, prolonged through fifteen hours, and the constant fighting of one of them, the Second, from 3 P. M. of the 24th until 2 A. M. of the next day; the coldness of the night, and the want of shelter and blankets,--all combined to make sleep almost an impossibility.

“Yes, I will be there instantly,” I replied to Major Dwight, as I jumped from my blankets and threw myself into the saddle. Galloping rapidly to Banks's headquarters, I rushed into his bedroom, and exclaimed, “General Banks, the question of what is to be done has at last settled itself. The enemy, now moving in force, has almost reached the town. I shall put my brigade instantly in line of battle upon the heights I now occupy. If you have any orders to give, you will find me there to receive them.” Banks replied, “Yes, sir.” Was he thinking, I wondered, of the “opinions of his friends,” or of the bayonets beyond the dark crests of the hills,--where for more than an hour, in the early dawn, without a cloak to protect him from the chilling dews, standing as a sentinel at the head of his column, listening to every sound from his front, looking at the figures of the Federal skirmishers as

2 Dabney's Life of Jackson, p. 104.