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The gun is the rallying point of the detachment, its point of honor, its flag, its banner.
It is that to which the men look, by which they stand, with and for which they fight, by and for which they fall.
As long as the gun is theirs, they are unconquered, victorious; when the gun is lost, all is lost.
It is their religion to fight it until the enemy is out of range, or until the gun itself is withdrawn, or until both it and the detachment are in the hands of the foe. An infantryman in flight often flings away his musket.
I do not recall ever having heard of a Confederate artillery detachment abandoning its gun without orders.
Nor were the Federal artillerymen one whit behind in this loyal devotion to their pieces.
One of the Haskells, who, as I remember, served on General McGowan's staff, told me this vivid story.
It seems almost incredible, yet I have no reason to question its truth; at all events, it is too good not to be told.
In one of the late combats of the war, far away down on the right of our line, Pegram, passing ahead of his infantry support, had advanced his entire battalion against the enemy strongly entrenched-showering double-shotted canister into their infantry line and belching solid shot across the narrow ditch, in the very faces of their gunners and into the very muzzles of their guns.
The Federal artillerymen, as was their wont, fought him fiercely, muzzle to muzzle-until McGowan's infantry coming up, Pegram passed around the work, to the right and front, after the retiring Federal infantry, while the artillerymen and their pieces fell into Mc-Gowan's hands.
Most of the horses of the staff had been killed or disabled, and they had mounted Federal artillery horses from which in some cases the harness had not been removed, so that, as the staff officers rode to and fro delivering orders, the trace chains rattled and jingled merrily.
The Federal gunners had done what they could on the instant to disable their pieces for the time, throwing away the lanyards and running the screws down low, so that the muzzles pointed high in the air. Having rooted out a few friction primers from a gunner's haversack and fished a
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