Chapter 23: the retreat from Chaffin's Bluff to Sailor's Creek
- On the works, Sunday evening, April 2d, 1865, listening to the Receding fire at Petersburg -- evening service with the men interrupted by the order to Evacuate the lines -- explosions of the magazines. Of the land batteries and iron -- Clads -- a soldier's wife sends her husband word to desert, but Recalls the message -- marching, halting, marching, day after day, night after night -- lack of food, lack of rest, lack of sleep -- many drop by the Wayside, others lose self-control and fire into each other -- in the Bloody fight of the 6th at Sailor's Creek, the battalion Redeems itself, goes down with flying colors, and is complimented on the field by General Ewell, after he and all who are left of us are prisoners of war.
Not many weeks later, on Sunday, the 2d of April, I stood almost all day on our works overhanging the river, listening to the fire about Petersburg, and noting its peculiar character and progression. I made up my mind what it meant, and had time and space out there alone with God and upon His day to commit myself and mine to Him, and to anticipate and prepare for the immediate future. Late in the afternoon I walked back to my quarters, and soon after, George Cary Eggleston, who was then in a command that held a part of the line near us, dropped in. He tells me now that I asked him then what effect he thought it would have upon our cause if our lines should be broken and we compelled to give up Petersburg and Richmond; and that he declined to answer the question because, as he said, the supposed facts were out of the plane of the practical, and would not and could not happen. Now, years afterwards, recalling the peculiar expression and manner with which I propounded this interrogatory, he asks whether I had then received any official information, and I answer in the negative-no, none
