THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
ing—all felt it, except the corps commander and, perhaps, General Devens, who permitted his judgment to be governed by the corps commander's opinion. Could there be better reason for this unrest? Within little more than rifle-shot of our right flank there stood Stonewall Jackson with more than 25,000 men, the most dashing general of the Confederacy with its best soldiers, forming his line of battle, which at the given word was to fold its wings around our feeble flank; and within his grasp the Eleventh Corps—originally 12,000 strong, but reduced to 9,000 men by the detachment of its strongest brigade and main reserve, and its commanding general gone away with that brigade; and, to cap the climax, hardly a Federal soldier within two miles on its left and rear, to support it in case of need, for Sickles' corps and a large part of Slocum's had moved into the woods after Jackson's wagon train—and in addition to all this, the larger part of the corps so placed as to be helpless against an attack from the west. It may fairly be said that, if there had been a deliberate design, a conspiracy, to sacrifice the Eleventh Corps—which, of course, there was not—it could not have been more ingeniously planned. This was the situation at 5 o'clock of the afternoon.
At last the storm broke loose. I was with some of my staff at corps headquarters, waiting for General Howard to return, our horses ready at hand. It was about 5:20 when a number of deer and rabbits came bounding out of the woods bordering the opening of Hawkins' farm on the west. The animals had been started from their lairs by Jackson's advance. Ordinarily such an appearance of game might have been greeted by soldiers in the field with outbreaks of great hilarity. There was hardly anything of the kind this time. It was as if the men had instinctively understood the meaning of the occurrence. A little while later there burst forth a heavy roar of
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